Republican VP with strong ties to big oil

[Haylo]

Lol that's perfect Martrae. Bill Maher calls them the Maverick and the Milf.

[Gypsiyee]

I think the democratic attacks are solely due to the fact that the entire platform has been to attack Obama's experience

Well in your own words the entire platform isn't to attack his experience, which is what I stated.

And no, McCain is not solely attacking Obama's experience... that was more a Clinton tactic due to the lack of actual difference in policy.

I'd do a little search for McCain ads and watch them all if you really think this. He's released ads almost daily targeting his 'lack of experience' and portraying him as an empty suit celebrity. There has been little to nothing in his ads regarding policy - his ads have been centric around the "inability to be ready on day one" rhetoric Clinton tried in the primaries.

Here is one regarding policy, so the entire platform is not lack of experience and you newly added portraying him as an empty suit celebrity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVy5REoiDJo

I didn't bother looking for the one I saw the other night concerning his relationship with William Ayers, while that one also is not about policy, it is neither a lack of experience add or a celebrity add.

Congrats on finding like 3 out of a ton of ads? You're still missing the entire point that it's been a huge part of his platform. Do I really need to specifically spell out for you that yes he has a couple ads that don't do that but 90% of them do?

[Narrock]

Palin is very impressive. Great choice by McCain. You think they just gave the obama camp a boost, Gypsiyee? rofl This pick by McCain just sealed the deal with them getting elected and pushing obama and biden out. I think it's cool that a woman is going to be VP. The hildebeast was just the wrong woman because of her retarded stance on social issues. Now we have a REAL woman to look up to and to help lead the nation and get it back on track.

The hilarity comes in when the liberal press is already saying stupid things like, "How is she going to do the job when she has a baby with Down's Syndrome at home?" HAHAHA They will stop at nothing with their dirty nonsense.

[Martrae]

Irony at it's finest.

[Narrock]

Irony at it's finest.

What irony?

[Tikker]

tee hee

[Lueyen]

Congrats on finding like 3 out of a ton of ads? You're still missing the entire point that it's been a huge part of his platform. Do I really need to specifically spell out for you that yes he has a couple ads that don't do that but 90% of them do?

You first stated that his entire platform was to attack Obama's lack of experience. I simply stated that this was not the only angle McCain's adds were taking. You then amended your earlier statement to include attacks regarding celebrity status. Now you insinuate that you really meant "the majority", which quite honestly is not what you said previous to this posts. At least some of his adds tackle both issues and experience and or celebrity status, and I suspect you would include these to make up your guesstimate of 90 percent. I have no desire to look up and watch every add he's done and keep a tally, as an add that do both would likely prove to be a much lower number then you site. In the end it might still be a majority at which point you'd again amend your argument to a simple majority, which may very well be true, however my point is that there is substance on issues as well. No you don't need to spell it out for me, I get your point, but if you are going to exagerate to support your point then I will point it out.

[Gypsiyee]

point taken - next time I'll be sure to get every specific aspect of my point spelled out lest you try to dissect it by arguing semantics.

I get it, he's your guy, great - but don't pick apart what I was saying just to try and make it look like a backtrack, because it wasn't.

If you want to look to my very first post about it in the thread, I said it was his primary angle, not that it was the only angle he's taken. Since you're taking a response and rather not my initial posts which I'm guessing you didn't read based on your accusations that I'm backtracking, I'll even quote myself, since you seem dead-set on picking apart my words and vamping them into something else.

My very first post about it:

it completely takes McCain's ability to use that excuse away, and it's the primary angle he's been taking.

Note that I did not say the only angle, I said the primary angle.

In the very same post that you quoted me before:

This entire campaign season, McCain has gone from "taking the high road" like he said he would to relentless attacks and averaging a new commercial a day just to talk about how Obama isn't ready and all he is is a rockstar with no experience.

This was not an expansion to band-aid and broaden what I first said, it was part of the very same post. your insinuation is that I went back and changed my ways of posting to broaden what I initially said, and I did not, considering this was indeed the same exact post, and was not, as you say, what "I first stated" - the first quote was what I first stated. You're taking me out of context specifically to skim over the big picture of what I said in the first place.

The only thing I will take back is my 90% because it was just a quick number written in a quick post - I should've said "large portion." my point still stands - it has been an enormous part of his campaigning to date - I imagine you won't disagree unless you're trying to be argumentative simply because I dislike your candidate.

[Haylo]

On the Sarah Palin point, there's some huge internet rumor brewing that the baby with Down's syndrome is her grandchild rather than her child. Now, i'm not saying it's true but if it was true, it would be pretty damn crazy. The site I read lays the facts out and they don't just seem like garbage facts, it's kind of crazy stuff. Like the fact that no one on her staff or any friends knew she was pregnant before she announced it in her 7th month. How once she went into labor in Texas a month early, saying in a quoted article that at around 4am she started noticing leaking fluid, she went, gave a speech then she flew 8 hours back to Alaska then drove an additional 45 minutes after landing to give birth in a rural hospital. How her eldest daughter was out of school during the same time for 8 months because of mono complications. Nuts.

[Gypsiyee]

Numatu - the video I mentioned earlier - forgot to post it, sorry.. at about 2:50 she talks about the VP thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA

[Harrison]

I find this entire thing to be a huge fucking yawn. People obsessing over it is kinda making me sick.

[Gypsiyee]

The entire thing as in the election or the Palin thing?

If it's the election in general, I can respect that you don't care much for paying attention to it, but this is the future of our country and an election coming off one of the worst presidents in history who's royally screwed us.. kind of an okay thing to worry about, I think.

I mean if it doesn't affect you personally that's cool, but for example - you super-stress about RIAA stuff, and this is tremendously more impacting on the country (and the entire world for that matter) than that.

[Harrison]

The election has no substance for me. It's a big empty shell of "Fuck you.", "No, fuck YOU!"

*shrug* I can't stand politics this year.

[Diekan]

Gyps,

I have an honest question(s) for you. Now, I am not here to pick a fight, pick on your, whatever. I am genuinely curious where YOU think Obama stands on taxes, immigration, foreign policy, energy (specifically drilling), jobs. I don't want links to sites. Again, I am curious to see where you think he stands.

I am not going to vote for him. I really don't "want" to vote for McCain, but in this case it seems to be the lesser of two evils. By the way, the Obama campaign has NO place to attack Palin for "lack of experience." This is Obama's first term as a senator and he's spent the majority of it running for president. Not only that, but most of his votes have been "present," which as you know doesn't mean yes or no... I personally think Hillary would have been a better choice for the Democrats. And, I don't particularly like her either.

I'm always curious why people choose the candidates they decide to vote for. I've met and have some friends who are Obama supporters and what I find a little disturbing is that even they don't really know exactly where this guy stands on the most important issues. They keep saying he's going "change" things, but can't give me any specifics on WHAT he is going to change or HOW he is going to change them. At least with McCain I have a pretty good idea of where he stands. A lot more so than with Obama.

Listening to McCain to makes want to take a nap the guy is so boring. If he says "My Friends" one more time...

Listening to Obama leaves me scratching my head... he sounds great but says a whole lot of nothing.

The press has done a TERRIBLE job of asking Obama tough questions. They've done a TERRIBLE job of covering McCain as well. It's obvious who they want to win.

So where does Obama stand (in your eyes) on the issues that face us?

[Drem]

i'm not gyps but:

taxes: he wants to cut taxes for the poor and repeal taxes for the richest 1%. sounds great to me

immigration: he wants to give all illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship, because he's smart and realises that we can't just suddenly deport 12 million people. also he wants an increase in the H-1B visa program

foreign policy: this is pretty broad, so... energy security, stopping WMDs, stopping al-qaeda, etc.... standard stuff

energy: he's all about clean air, clean energy, etc. against drilling as far as i know

jobs: he wants to raise the federal minimum wage to 7.25 or something and he votes against a lot of bills that might endanger jobs

dunno why it's hard to grasp that stuff out of what he says. he always says what he means and he speaks pretty clearly imo

[Reynaldo]

Vast majority of Reps will vote McCain just "cause"
Vast majority of Dems will vote Obama just "cause"

It's really kind of creepy the small amount of people (percentage wise) that actually decide the election.

[Lueyen]

Gypsiyee I'd like to make it clear that McCain is not "my guy". I, when making my original comments, did not go back and re-read every post in the thread, and my response was to the notion that the only thing being attacked was his lack of experience. You will notice I didn't quote your previous posts and respond specifically to you initially, I was responding to what I had just previously read, quite honestly not paying a whole lot of attention to who had written it. It is for this reason that I didn't realize right away that your statements contradicted each other.

I would also not that you took issue with me stating "And no, McCain is not solely attacking Obama's experience... that was more a Clinton tactic due to the lack of actual difference in policy." , suggesting that I should do some research into the matter. The fact of the matter is that the first part of my statement is absolutely correct as I have shown with posted links. I suppose the second is arguable and subject to perspective, but there is so little difference between Obama's and Clinton's general platforms that there wasn't much for either to attack policy wise, as on most issues they are in general, if not specific agreement. By contrast while some McCain adds which attack only experience or celebrity exist, there are those that do not, or attack those and stances on issues. So I stand by that statement as being correct, so why suggest that I need to do research on the matter if what I stated was correct unless you believed otherwise?

On the Sarah Palin point, there's some huge internet rumor brewing that the baby with Down's syndrome is her grandchild rather than her child. Now, i'm not saying it's true but if it was true, it would be pretty damn crazy. The site I read lays the facts out and they don't just seem like garbage facts, it's kind of crazy stuff. Like the fact that no one on her staff or any friends knew she was pregnant before she announced it in her 7th month. How once she went into labor in Texas a month early, saying in a quoted article that at around 4am she started noticing leaking fluid, she went, gave a speech then she flew 8 hours back to Alaska then drove an additional 45 minutes after landing to give birth in a rural hospital. How her eldest daughter was out of school during the same time for 8 months because of mono complications. Nuts.

There is a lot floating around right now regarding Palin, and I find some of it suspect from both sides. For instance the topic heading of this entire thread. Last year Paulin signed into law a windfall profit tax on oil companies in Alaska. Quite honestly if Obama supporters want to argue hypocrisy, I would think pointing out McCain taking issues with Obama's proposals in this venue, and then picking a VP running mate who has supported the same thing in concept if not in scale.

As far as the actual issue you mentioned, I view it as not unlike the issue of the current investigation regarding her firing of a government official. Do you really think that if there were truth to it that she would not have let McCain know, and that he would have picked her if there was something to it? Maybe, but I seriously doubt it.

While her explanations might seem fantastic on the surface, I have known two women who carried babies to full term and went into labor to the utter shock of most everyone around them on a daily basis. One was a young lady I went to high school with, the other was a woman I worked with. This wasn't her first child so I suspect she was familiar with not only labor and giving birth, but her own bodies specifics in the process. The one thing I question in that latter part is that it is my understanding that for most women the time between initial labor and delivery tends to reduce with successive children, and hoping on a plane when you see the first signs of labor seems extremely odd, even if past experience indicates that delivery would not occur for quite some time.

[Arlos]

Uh, Diekan, Obama has never once voted "Present" as a US Senator. Not once, not ever.

As an Illinois State Senator, he did it 131 times out of over 4000 total times he voted. (That's about 3% of the time, by the way). Most of the times he voted that way, 10-20 other state senators joined him in voting the same way.

But, your claim that "most of his votes have been 'Present'" in his term as senator is absolutely and utterly untrue, and completely without any basis whatsoever. That's entirely right-wing baseless smear campaign, right up there with their claims he was sworn into the Senate on the Koran, etc. Utter BS.

See: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/artic ... ent_votes/

As for Obama's positions on things:

Foreign Policy: Diplomacy first and foremost. Go back to the old american tradition of working closely with our allies and strengthen those friendships, rather than the Bush unilateral doctrine. He wants us to stop spending billions a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on an 80+ billion dollar surplus, and could easily be paying for things themselves. He also (rightly) notes that it is Al Qaida who attacked us with aid from the Taliban, and that Afghanistan and going after them there should be our military's focus.

Energy policy: Drilling is at best nothing more than a stopgap, which wouldn't even help us for 10+ years while the exploration for proper sites occurred, and the rigs were constructed, etc. He has also noted how every other country that has worked at going to energy independence has had a major economic boom (like Iceland, which was one of Europe's poorest economies in the 70s, when it imported 80% of its energy needs, now is the 4th most affluent nation on earth and is 100% energy independent.) He wants to invest a lot of money towards wind, solar, geothermal and clean coal technologies, all of which are sustainable, and together could reduce our petroleum needs to what current domestic production could supply.

Immigration: I'm fuzziest on this one, because it's not as vital an issue for me, but from what I understand he is for greater border security, greater punishment for companies employing illegals, but also for providing those that are already here a path towards becoming full taxpaying citizens, as he realizes (quite properly) that there is no way whatsoever we can deport 15 million people, which would include splitting families, etc.

Taxes: He wants to cut taxes on everyone making less than 250,000 a year. He also wants to remove capital gains taxes for all small businesses, so that they can use that money to re-invest in the business. He wants to close up a lot of the tax loopholes and tax shelters that big companies and the wealthy are using to get out of paying their share. He will repeal the tax cuts on the richest 1%. He also would get rid of the Bush-era tax breaks that companies get when they outsource jobs to other countries, and instead give tax breaks for companies that generate local jobs.


I mentioned this before, but watch (or at least read) his speech from the Democratic Convention. He went into tons of specifics in that speech, which is exactly what you said you were looking for from him. Pretty much the entire second half of his speech was him going over specifics. If you want to know them, go read them.

-Arlos

[Haylo]

Luey, John Edwards was running for President and he had a dirty little secret. I certainly do believe that Palin could have done the trooper thing, and have lied to McCain and said she didn't. 87% of her constituents believe that she's lying regarding the incident. As far as the pregnancy thing, I don't know if it's true or not, I just think it's weird. I have also known a lot of women who didn't show, but almost universally they are larger women. Palin is fairly slim, so for her to go 7 months and have no one know just raises a question. Here's a picture of her on Super Tuesday when she was supposedly 6 months pregnant



Anyway do I know that she's lying, nope I don't, but it's suspect. I definitely don't think that running for office means you're going to tell the truth, hell it's just the opposite. As far as McCain fully vetting her, here's a link to an article that details exactly how skimply that happened as compared to the time invested in the other candidates for his VP. http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar ... -came.html

[Gypsiyee]

And no, McCain is not solely attacking Obama's experience... that was more a Clinton tactic due to the lack of actual difference in policy.

My issue with this quote was my perception of the intention - it sounded to me like you were saying McCain isn't doing it, Clinton did. If that wasn't your intention then it was simply a matter of my perception.

Diekan:

Taxes - I think he's been pretty clear on this; he intends to lower taxes for the middle class, by his definition in other statements this would refer to those making less than 250k a year. He wants to repeal the "temporary" tax cuts Bush passed - as I mentioned earlier in the thread, they were intended to be temporary and I'm not sure why this is viewed as a raise on taxes to some people - it's simply putting it back to normal.

Immigration - obviously you know this one hits close to home for me because of everything we went through with it. Obama seems to recognize a whole heck of a lot better than McCain that the immigration system is horrendously broken. He also realizes it's not feasible to just deport millions of people - this would cost the taxpayers a ton of money, it would divide families, it makes no sense. While some people do not agree with a pathway to citizenship, I'm of the mindset that these people are already living and working here - it'll take ridiculous effort and money to find them all; the fiscally smart thing to do *is* to provide a pathway to citizenship so that they can pay taxes just like everyone else. Expand opportunities to people so there is a feasible way to get here legally - there is currently almost no way for a middle class upstanding hard working person to immigrate here permanently and legally.

Foreign policy - It depends on what exactly you're targeting when you say foreign policy because it means a whole vast array of things. If you define specifics, I'll answer the best I can - on the whole and as a general, he's for getting out of Iraq, accountability in finding the responsible parties (Bin Laden, et al) and repairing our international image through *gasp* diplomacy.

Energy - Like much of his dem brethren, he intends to allocate funding into researching alternative energy and reducing our dependence on foreign oil and creating a ton of jobs right here at home to do that research. Re: Drilling - he has been opposed to the drilling, but has so much as said that he is in favor of compromising to satisfy both sides of the fence including some offshore drilling so long as there are environmental protection procedures in place. Some people have accused him of flipping on the issue, but I don't see it that way at all - I see it as him being smart enough to recognize that compromise is sometimes necessary, and honestly for me it makes me view him in that much greater of a light - it speaks volumes of someone to admit sometimes compromise is the best option.

Jobs - So far, much of his job stance has tied into his stance on energy and creating millions of green-collar jobs. He's also for tax breaks on small businesses, which often encourages job growth within those businesses.

I'm sure I didn't answer everything, if you have more questions let me know.

(I just posted that and looked up to see that Arlos and Drem answered as well ><)

Oh, regarding Palin - you know, I haven't heard any of the stuff Haylo posted, but one of the alarming things to me is that so far along in her pregnancy she found it appropriate to travel and handle such a busy schedule - if the story about her daughter isn't true, to me that judgment call is questionable at best.

[Martrae]

Palin says daughter is pregnant
Sep 1, 12:33 PM (ET)
By LIZ SIDOTI

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin said Monday that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant.

A statement released by the campaign said that Bristol Palin will keep her baby and marry the child's father.

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family," they added.

Senior McCain advisers said the Arizona senator and his top aides had known about Bristol's pregnancy before offering Palin the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket.

McCain's campaign and the Palins asked that the media respect the couple's privacy.

[araby]

I hope they name the baby "Algebra"

[Haylo]

It's funny that they want her privacy respected, I have to wonder if the shoe was on the other foot, how those socially responsible Republicans would be screaming from the rooftops about how because the parent is a liberal devil, something like this happened. Palin is against sex-ed in schools and thinks that teaching Abstinence only is the best way to go. Maybe she should rethink her stance.

All of this stuff surrounding her calls into play McCain's judgment. I mean really was she the best choice and once again, if he drops dead 1 day after taking the oath of office, is this woman the person you want leading the country. Seriously I don't get it at all.

[leah]

I hope they name the baby "Algebra"

hehe isn't one of the sons named Trig?

sarah palin picks some dumb names :P

[leah]

Irony at it's finest.

i disagree. irony at its finest:

-10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife
-rain on your wedding day
-a death row pardon two minutes too late