• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PoliGAF Interim Thread of USA General Elections (DAWN OF THE VEEP)

Status
Not open for further replies.

GhaleonEB

Member
Obama "vetoed" the Nascar sponsorship.

And McCain is starting a "weekly radio address", in an effort to appear more presidential. I wonder if that will be perceived as hubris, ala Obama's presidential seal.

Nah.
 

Farmboy

Member
Cheebs said:
Uh.. he point blank said if he was asked he'd accept.

Yes, but since then he's said something to the effect of "I've never had a boss, I don't know how I'd handle it." I interpreted that as him saying he wasn't ready for the largely servile role the Obama camp seems to be seeking from the VP position. I could be taking that the wrong way though. Personally I'd love Biden to do it; he'd be a far more effective attack dog than Edwards was.
 
i'm glad biden seems to be seriously considered. an obama-biden ticket would be too awesome

but i wish both campaigns would reach their veep decisions soon because i'm tired of hearing pundits' speculation day after day on msnbc
 

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
i thought i read somewhere that Dodd was being heavily vetted right now, but no one has gotten to Biden (yet?)
 

Gaborn

Member
Tyrone Slothrop said:
i'm glad biden seems to be seriously considered. an obama-biden ticket would be too awesome

but i wish both campaigns would reach their veep decisions soon because i'm tired of hearing pundits' speculation day after day on msnbc

Biden strikes me as a very articulate, clean, bright, Caucasian-American.
 

librasox

Banned
Tyrone Slothrop said:
i'm glad biden seems to be seriously considered. an obama-biden ticket would be too awesome

but i wish both campaigns would reach their veep decisions soon because i'm tired of hearing pundits' speculation day after day on msnbc
Biden would be the perfect surrogate to continually lambast McCain's foreign policy through the general, but he seems like too much of a politispeak novice.

Remember how much of an issue the media made of his "confused" remarks? He'd be under greater media scrutiny as the VP choice, and with his history of rather dumb statements (Obama's articulate and clean, seriously now?), I'd rather keep him on the morning news programs.
 

Farmboy

Member
Tyrone Slothrop said:
but i wish both campaigns would reach their veep decisions soon because i'm tired of hearing pundits' speculation day after day on msnbc

No such luck, I'm afraid. I read an interesting piece on this on Open Left a while back:

DEMOCRATS

1984: Ferraro named on July 12, 4 days before the convention
1988: Bentsen named on July 13, 5 days before the convention
1992: Gore named on July 9, 4 days before the convention
2000: Lieberman named on August 8, 6 days before the convention
2004: Edwards named July 6, 20 days before the convention

REPUBLICANS

1980: Bush selected at the convention, July 14-17
1988: Quayle named at the convention, August 15-18
1996: Kemp named August 10, 2 days before the convention
2000: Cheney named July 25, 6 days before the convention

Edwards is the outlier here, and he was still picked less than three weeks before the convention. This year's convention is late, so even if Obama were to follow Kerry's timing, we'd know his pick in the first week of August at the earliest.
 
GhaleonEB said:
Obama "vetoed" the Nascar sponsorship.
source?


GhaleonEB said:
And McCain is starting a "weekly radio address", in an effort to appear more presidential. I wonder if that will be perceived as hubris, ala Obama's presidential seal.

Nah.
why must you always be correct?
 

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
GhaleonEB said:
Obama "vetoed" the Nascar sponsorship.

And McCain is starting a "weekly radio address", in an effort to appear more presidential. I wonder if that will be perceived as hubris, ala Obama's presidential seal.

Nah.
speaking as a libuurl, Obama's presidential seal was a pretty dumb publicity stunt and completely eclipses your example.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
The Lamonster said:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1052699,CST-NWS-race12.article
syllogism said:
Oh wow.

scorcho said:
speaking as a libuurl, Obama's presidential seal was a pretty dumb publicity stunt and completely eclipses your example.
I agree it was a dumb move. The point was, it was an attempt to look more "presidential" by mimicking the presidential seal. Conservatives have been pushing that as an example of Obama hubris. Now McCain is....attempting to look more "presidential" by holding a weekly radio address, mimicking the actual presidential address.
 

Mandark

Small balls, big fun!
Kaine was elected on Mark Warner's coattails. I doubt there's enough support for Kaine personally to change things in VA.

scorcho: Dodd's getting vetted but not Biden according to TPM.



PS http://youtube.com/watch?v=3zgQGfBOnh8 Mr. T = John Edwards, Face = Obama, Hannibal = David Axelrod, Murdock = Howard Dean, airplane = the VP slot. This can't fail!
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
I think getting Hagel on the trail for Obama is very smart. It can help offset any gains McSame might be getting from lieberman follwing him around like a puppy.
 

grandjedi6

Master of the Google Search
1iokro.jpg


sigh-1.gif
 
StoOgE said:
I think getting Hagel on the trail for Obama is very smart. It can help offset any gains McSame might be getting from lieberman follwing him around like a puppy.

How so? Didn't Hagel vote for the war before he was against it and was against the surge? Like I said, McCain and the Republicans would have a field day if Obama picked Hagel.
 
HUDSON, Wisc. -- Just a day after Obama held a town hall focusing on women's issues in New York, McCain followed suit with a female-focused town hall of his own here this morning, and he used the venue to draw distinctions between himself and the presumptive Democratic nominee on the subject.

"When you cut through all the smooth rhetoric, Sen. Obama's policies would make it harder for women to start new businesses, harder for women to create or find new jobs, harder for women to manage the family budget, and harder for women and their families to meet their tax burden," McCain said. "That's what the difference is all about between myself and Sen. Obama."

Although McCain often paints himself as the underdog, he seemed to be feeling more confident today and while leveling an oft-used critique about Obama's failure to adequately respond to his request for joint town hall meetings, McCain said that he believe he will win in November.

"I regret, not so much for me, because you know I'll still win this campaign, I believe, but I think the American people deserve more than the sound bite and the gotcha quote and the advisor that said so and so or whatever the back and forth that goes on," McCain said, adding later, "I hope that the American people will urge Senator Obama to come to these [town halls]. They're great. They're wonderful. He'll find them a great and exhilarating experience."
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/

wow
 
Jason's Ultimatum said:
How so? Didn't Hagel vote for the war before he was against it and was against the surge? Like I said, McCain and the Republicans would have a field day if Obama picked Hagel.

Obama definitely isn't picking Hagel. The DNC wouldn't approve it. It's POSSIBLE Hagel could be considered for a position in the Obama cabinet, but I don't think he's actually being considered for VP.
 

TDG

Banned
God, McCain is so clueless. I have nothing against him personally, I'm not going to call him names or anything, but I think that it's amazing that people actually want that man to be our president. The guy is clueless. People talk about Obama changing his positions, but holy shit, at least he knows where he stands, as opposed to McCain who regularly hems and haws about not really knowing about this or that.

It's completely irresponsible to run for president when you don't have what it takes to be a president, and if McCain doesn't even realize that he's not suited to be president, that's a whole other problem.

I swear, I cannot fucking deal with another 4/8 years of a president who has no clue. Except McCain isn't funny, Bush sometimes is.

FUCK
 
The debates this fall will allow for the country to see just how different these candidates are. I know the media claims that America does not know enough about Obama when in fact many policies o McCain are either totally ignored or glossed over by the media. If these debates do highlight these starkly different policy differences, it will be a win for Obama. If we get more tabloid debates ala ABC then it's a win for McCain.
 
Bernie Mac makes off-color joke at Obama event

"My little nephew came to me and he said, 'Uncle, what's the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?'" Mac said. "I said, I don't know, but I said, 'Go upstairs and ask your mother if she'd make love to the mailman for $50,000.'"

"Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos," Mac said, delivering the joke's punchline.

AP being retarded made me have to look up what got in in the news in the 1st place.

LOL if this makes any major news outlet.
 
I hate the media.

But RIP Tony Snow. He was a bright guy, even if you didn't agree with him...

Tony Snow and Bobby Murcer in the same day :( Cancer sucks.
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
ViperVisor said:
Bernie Mac makes off-color joke at Obama event

"My little nephew came to me and he said, 'Uncle, what's the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?'" Mac said. "I said, I don't know, but I said, 'Go upstairs and ask your mother if she'd make love to the mailman for $50,000.'"

"Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos," Mac said, delivering the joke's punchline.

AP being retarded made me have to look up what got in in the news in the 1st place.

LOL if this makes any major news outlet.


i posted it several posts up.. its on cnn..
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4322508.ece

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.


“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.

Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.

“It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.”

The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.

There was also resistance inside the Pentagon from officers concerned about Iranian retaliation. “The uniform people are opposed to the attack plans, mainly because they think it will endanger our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said.

Complicating the calculations in both Washington and Tel Aviv is the prospect of an incoming Democratic president who has already made it clear that he prefers negotiation to the use of force.

Senator Barack Obama’s previous opposition to the war in Iraq, and his apparent doubts about the urgency of the Iranian threat, have intensified pressure on the Israeli hawks to act before November’s US presidential election. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t wait,” the Pentagon official added.

The latest round of regional tension was sparked by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which fired nine long and medium-range missiles in war game manoeuvres in the Gulf last Wednesday.

Iran’s state-run media reported that one of them was a modified Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which has a claimed range of 1,250 miles and could theoretically deliver a one-ton nuclear warhead over Israeli cities. Tel Aviv is about 650 miles from western Iran. General Hossein Salami, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, boasted that “our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch”.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said she saw the launches as “evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one”, although the impact of the Iranian stunt was diminished on Thursday when it became clear that a photograph purporting to show the missiles being launched had been faked.

The one thing that all sides agree on is that any strike by either Iran or Israel would trigger a catastrophic round of retaliation that would rock global oil markets, send the price of petrol soaring and wreck the progress of the US military effort in Iraq.

Abdalla Salem El-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, the oil producers’ consortium, said last week that a military conflict involving Iran would see an “unlimited” rise in prices because any loss of Iranian production — or constriction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — could not be replaced. Iran is Opec’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia.

Equally worrying for Bush would be the impact on the US mission in Iraq, which after years of turmoil has seen gains from the military “surge” of the past few months, and on American operations in the wider region. A senior Iranian official said yesterday that Iran would destroy Israel and 32 American military bases in the Middle East in response to any attack.

Yet US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened. How genuine the Iranian threat is was the subject of intense debate last week, with some analysts arguing that Iran might have a useable nuclear weapon by next spring and others convinced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is engaged in a dangerous game of bluffing — mainly to impress a domestic Iranian audience that is struggling with economic setbacks and beginning to question his leadership.

Among the sceptics is Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst and author of a book on the Revolutionary Guard. “I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran is in a position to inflict devastating damage on anyone,” said Katzman, who is best known for warning shortly before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to attack America.

“The Revolutionary Guards have always underperformed militarily,” he said. “Their equipment is quite inaccurate if not outright inoperable. Those missile launches were more like putting up a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. They want everyone to think that if you mess with them, you will get bitten.”

A former adviser to Rice noted that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational attitude had earned him powerful enemies among Iran’s religious leadership. Professor Shai Feldman, director of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, said the Iranian government was getting “clobbered” because of global economic strains. “His [Ahmadinejad's] failed policies have made Iran more vulnerable to sanctions and people close to the mullahs have decided he’s a liability,” he said.

In Israel, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has his own domestic problems with a corruption scandal that threatens to unseat him and the media have been rife with speculation that he might order an attack on Iran to distract attention from his difficulties. According to one of his closest friends, Olmert recently warned him that “in three months’ time it will be a different Middle East”.

Yet even the most hawkish officials acknowledge that Israel would face what would arguably be the most challenging military mission of its 60-year existence.

“No one here is talking about more than delaying the [nuclear] programme,” said the Pentagon source. He added that Israel would need to set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success.

Even that may be beyond Israel’s competence if it has to act alone. Obvious targets would include Iran’s Isfahan plant, where uranium ore is converted into gas, the Natanz complex where this gas is used to enrich uranium in centrifuges and the plutonium-producing Arak heavy water plant. But Iran is known to have scattered other elements of its nuclear programme in underground facilities around the country. Neither US nor Israeli intelligence is certain that it knows where everything is.

“Maybe the Israelis could start off the attack and have us finish it off,” Katzman added. “And maybe that has been their intention all along. But in terms of the long-term military campaign that would be needed to permanently suppress Iran’s nuclear programme, only the US is perceived as having that capability right now.”

I am thoroughly convinced that Bush is an idiot. With John "Warmonger" McCain with Lieberman at his ear would prove disastrous to the country (especially on the economic front). Say hello to $10/gallon gas.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Jason's Ultimatum said:
How so? Didn't Hagel vote for the war before he was against it and was against the surge? Like I said, McCain and the Republicans would have a field day if Obama picked Hagel.

I didnt say make him VP. I said it was smart getting Hagel on the trail for Obama. especially going to Iraq with him.
 

Hazmat

Member
VanMardigan said:
I don't get the Bernie Mac joke. :(

I think it's being quoted wrong or something. The way I've heard that joke goes like this:

Son asks his father about the difference between realistic and hypothetical. Father tells the son to ask his mom and his sister if they'd sleep with the mailman for $50,000. He does, and both his mom and his sister say they would.

The son reports this to the father, who replies "You see son, hypothetically we'd get $100,000, but realistically we're just living with two whores."
 

VanMardigan

has calmed down a bit.
ah, I see. It's not that funny anyway.

And what type of jokes are you expecting exactly when you invite Bernie Mac to open for you?
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Hazmat said:
I think it's being quoted wrong or something. The way I've heard that joke goes like this:

Son asks his father about the difference between realistic and hypothetical. Father tells the son to ask his mom and his sister if they'd sleep with the mailman for $50,000. He does, and both his mom and his sister say they would.

The son reports this to the father, who replies "You see son, hypothetically we'd get $100,000, but realistically we're just living with two whores."

:lol :lol :lol

Damn that's funny!
 
Hazmat said:
I think it's being quoted wrong or something. The way I've heard that joke goes like this:

Son asks his father about the difference between realistic and hypothetical. Father tells the son to ask his mom and his sister if they'd sleep with the mailman for $50,000. He does, and both his mom and his sister say they would.

The son reports this to the father, who replies "You see son, hypothetically we'd get $100,000, but realistically we're just living with two whores."

Funny.

Now how is this tied to Obama?
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Clevinger said:
Good video at a town hall meeting with McCain being an asshole (and lying) to a veteran who questions his senate voting record towards vets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8


WOW!! So McCain is still getting crushed this week. Now vets are attacking him and his record.

Dude your own base doesn't like you. Again when will this get national exposure?
 
Clevinger said:
Good video at a town hall meeting with McCain being an asshole (and lying) to a veteran who questions his senate voting record towards vets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8

I don't understand how this man can just blatantly lie in a town hall meeting and not be crucified in the news for doing so when something like the public funding-gate can be reported on for a solid week. It boggles the mind.
 

Tamanon

Banned
Jonathan Martin notes how McCain is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't in the new media cycle, which accomdates his self-deprecating, inconsistent charm as badly as it does Bill Clinton's wide-ranging improvisations.

For better or worse, what's happened here is part of a broader democratization: The media has been disempowered, and canddiates are judged -- often utterly out of context -- by whatever is picked up by the unblinking eye of the embed's digital cameras and the blogs' telegraphic style. There's no space for reporters, who used to interpret these moments, to balance a bad minute with a good day, to tell readers and viewers how they should understand an utterance, or even to choose what's news: They're just racing to beat their rivals to the web with a terse dispatch and snippet of video. Some of the blogs and aggregators who pick them up will try to be fair and provide that context; others (more) will use them to reinforce the partisan stories they're already telling. And readers can choose how to take each moment.

It seems to me there are cases to be made on both sides of whether this is a good thing, but it's unquestionably more democratic

Now that it's hitting McCain, of course Ben Smith is all about how useful context is. Although one has to think there's not much context that would help the social security and whiners comments.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom