On October 18 2008 10:50 Savio wrote: Obama is not anti-American. That is ridiculous. However, I do think that he is too far from the center to be comfortable. If this year didn't have a handful of things going against McCain, I think that Obama could not win--and that its because of who he is. I'll explain...
Factors out of McCain's control that hurt him:
1. A wildly unpopular president 2. High disapproval of congressional republicans (even lower than of democrats and that is saying something) 3. A financial crisis that is blamed on his party primarily 4. Unpopular war 5. The fact that the GOP has held the presidency for 8 years and Congress for a while too.
On October 18 2008 11:02 Jibba wrote: Bachmann is essentially a Christian fundamentalist. I think she does well because she's fiscally a libertarian, but her social views are simply absurd. I don't think you can call her ignorant, she's an old hand at politics. I think she's just a dishonest, insulting bitch.
I heard an interesting notion the other day from a poli sci professor who has been studying the history of modern elections for a while, and it agrees with my view that the conservative base in the US is an extremely active minority while the liberal base is an inactive majority. Significantly more people identify with Democrats than Republicans, more independents are left leaning than right leaning, and even in "red" states the numbers are about equal. The purpose of attack ads and bringing up garbage like Ayers is not to persuade people to vote for McCain, but simply to dissuade people from voting.
Apparently it's pretty easy to demotivate the left, so the actual goal is to reduce the overall pool of voters by making people apathetic about politics. Anyone agree with that? o.o
1. A wildly unpopular president 2. High disapproval of congressional republicans (even lower than of democrats and that is saying something) 3. A financial crisis that is blamed on his party primarily 4. Unpopular war 5. The fact that the GOP has held the presidency for 8 years and Congress for a while too.
McCain obviously did the best he could to prevent your first point from happening, but to your other points, he was apart of the problem. To disassociate the presidential nominee of the GOP, from the GOP's approval rating, or an unpopular war from a man that has supported it, is a stretch.
On an unrelated note, there are reports now that there is actual documentation(as opposed to just oral approval) that the Bush administration supported water boarding. This seems to be a huge story that is being significantly overlooked.
I don't get it either. The link was saying, "I don't get it. I pretend I do. Here's a link, I hope it explains it more in depth." I thought it was just because he was also a senator from New York.
btw yeah jibba i think mccains routine was better, in sofar as he managed to get more subtle jabs in at obama.
i actually wouldn't be surprised if the footage of that event slightly helped mccain politically
Edit: and i know it's an old tradition to do that dinner, but still having the presidential candidate joke about the economic meltdown just didn't feel right...
On October 18 2008 06:10 Locke. wrote: You don't honestly use an article titled "When settlers strike, Palestinians point and shoot video" as a legitimate source of information eh?? reading stuff like this it's no wonder you thought Israel's security is "not that threatened".
BTW Arabs walk freely in Israeli cities, they are not threatened at all by the Jewish population. For a Jew it is extremely dangerous to simply walk into many Arab cities not to mention Palestinian Authority areas which are mortally dangerous for Jews, a hint, it's not because of their video cameras.
What? Arabs have to cross security checks at every point around their homes, and no other modern country maintains a second class citizenry like Israel does. Even non-Orthodox jews are discriminated against in Israel. There isn't even a comparison between the annual number of deaths between the two sides and who knows what the figure would look like if you took into account all the social atrocities like book banning and electricity/water cutoffs.
I read both CSMonitor and Haaretz and even they occasionally report some of the terrible things the IDF and settlers are doing. But I guess they're just the "liberal elite" media again. Gogo Palin arguments! The problem is that you're criticizing McCain for being hawkish, but he's only slightly more hawkish than Rabin was, Kadima are still bffs with all the neo-cons in the US like Wolfowitz.
BTW the point of that article is that we will literally start seeing what is going on when the videos start making it on the internet every week.
Right... there are so many inaccuracies and plain wrong statments in your post it will take way too much energy to point all of them so I'll shortly go over most.
Palestinian Arabs have to cross security checks because of the numerous times terrorists came and slaughtered civillians, and also because of the constant stream of attempts to commit terrorist attacks in civillian population. I wish there would be no reason to use the security checks, sadly it's not the reality. Just to clarify, I AM a non-Orthodox jew and I am NOT being discriminated in Israel lol. Reading Haaretz I don't blame you for your views, it couldn't be farer from the truth. We use a strong military force and they hide between civillians and use bombs, rockets and guns. It makes sense we will cause the greater damage and I am not arguing about that. In fact if we would act sanely we should be right now causing a lot more damage destroying terrorist infrastructures and taking out their chain of command.
Yes you are right, Haaretz is widely known as one the most biased newspapers in Israel, even their editors publicly admit that.
If you want to have a discussion about Israel it should probably be on a different thread.
On October 18 2008 11:02 Jibba wrote: Bachmann is essentially a Christian fundamentalist. I think she does well because she's fiscally a libertarian, but her social views are simply absurd. I don't think you can call her ignorant, she's an old hand at politics. I think she's just a dishonest, insulting bitch.
I heard an interesting notion the other day from a poli sci professor who has been studying the history of modern elections for a while, and it agrees with my view that the conservative base in the US is an extremely active minority while the liberal base is an inactive majority. Significantly more people identify with Democrats than Republicans, more independents are left leaning than right leaning, and even in "red" states the numbers are about equal. The purpose of attack ads and bringing up garbage like Ayers is not to persuade people to vote for McCain, but simply to dissuade people from voting.
Apparently it's pretty easy to demotivate the left, so the actual goal is to reduce the overall pool of voters by making people apathetic about politics. Anyone agree with that? o.o
yea, genuine political motivation is so rare and fragile. this observation is actually the major reason why i write about the things that i do. cynicism is the greatest enemy of productive political action.
Ok, so it's not discrimination/bigotry when the sephardic chief rabbi says reform Judaism caused the Holocaust or that all marriage/divorce go through the two chiefs? The security checks are enforced on Israeli citizen Arabs!
Haaretz says it's left leaning, but again it's not the way the NYT (which actually isn't liberal on this topic either) or Guardian are left leaning. It's a middle-right newspaper anywhere else in the world. They just happen to show the most out of the rest of the papers. There's not really a reason to make a thread on it at the moment, but I'll do it the next time 100 people lose their homes because a 20 year old bazooka took out a fire hydrant.
On October 18 2008 16:31 Jibba wrote: Ok, so it's not discrimination/bigotry when the sephardic chief rabbi says reform Judaism caused the Holocaust or that all marriage/divorce go through the two chiefs? The security checks are enforced on Israeli citizen Arabs!
Haaretz says it's left leaning, but again it's not the way the NYT (which actually isn't liberal on this topic either) or Guardian are left leaning. It's a middle-right newspaper anywhere else in the world. They just happen to show the most out of the rest of the papers. There's not really a reason to make a thread on it at the moment, but I'll do it the next time 100 people lose their homes because a 20 year old bazooka took out a fire hydrant.
I agree what he said was very problematic and was generally a very bad expression, but seriously there are so many extremely bad quotes from all sides in Israel.
The marriage/divorce of Jewish people in Israel is done through the Rabinnate because Judaism is simply not a democracy. It doesn't matter how many people are reforms, conservatives or orthodox because it's basically just a strict set of rules, which cannot be changed. Israel being a Jewish state conforms to those rules in anything related to basic things such as marriage, divorce, burial etc. of course only when dealin with Jews.
I've really got to give you a lot of credit for being so nice about all this. You've definitely got me beat on experience/knowledge, but I do try and keep up to date with the english sources available (Haaretz, JPost, Aljazeera.) Most of the Israelis I've met in the US and at temple are hardcore Zionist assholes who try and pick fights with everyone. D:
What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or Anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that.
what the fuck she might actually be more retarded than Palin. Well not more retarded, but more dangerous. This is one of the most outrageous videos I have seen in the election threads so far. And she calls those people "radical leftists"? She doesn't even understand what that means :<
EPT
You've definitely got me beat on experience/knowledge, but I do try and keep up to date with the english sources available (Haaretz, JPost, Aljazeera.) Most of the Israelis I've met in the US and at temple are hardcore Zionist assholes who try and pick fights with everyone. D:
