US 2008 Presidential Campaign/Debate Discussion Thread #6

[2861U2]

Originally Posted by BonoVoxSupastar

What better to unite them, but a black liberal...

Wow. And you say I sound stupid sometimes...

I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you seem to go through life believing that if conservatives don't like someone, it is because he is black. That you seem to believe that the reason that Beck and Hannity and Rush, and even myself despise Obama so much is because he is black. You really sound ignorant.

"Oh my! What a way to unite and ignite conservatives! A black guy! Forgot about his liberal ideas and harmful policies and inexperience! He's BLACK!" Sounds about right, huh Darin?

YIKES. I truly feel bad for you.

[Diemen]

"Oh my! What a way to unite and ignite conservatives! A black guy! Forgot about his liberal ideas and harmful policies and inexperience

Did you not notice the second word in that phrase? "black liberal" I think that just about negates your point. Besides that, just the fact that you despise Obama is enough.

You really sound ignorant

That's pretty funny.

[2861U2]

Originally Posted by Diemen

Did you not notice the second word in that phrase? "black liberal" I think that just about negates your point.

Huh? You think that he was not implying that conservatives are a bunch of racists?

Originally Posted by Diemen

Besides that, just the fact that you despise Obama is enough.

Yeah. How dare I say such a thing. It's not like anyone in here despises President Bush.

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by 2861U2

Huh? You think that he was not implying that conservatives are a bunch of racists?

You certainly could've provided a better response than "nevermind his liberal yadaya" despite the fact that the phrase used was "black liberal" and not simply "black man."

As for racism, I think you'd be utterly foolish to deny there isn't a fairly strong undercurrent of latent racism among conservative tv personalities.

Yeah. How dare I say such a thing. It's not like anyone in here despises President Bush.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't actually despise the man. Despise has pretty strong connotations for me.

[deep]

The whole 'race' issue is a 'bucket of glue'.

One can not touch it without getting it all over themselves.

I have always said 'race' issues are a problem.



let's not kid ourselves,
there are a lot of Obama supporters, that have racist attitudes against blacks.

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by deep

.

McCain has a real shot at an Electoral College win
and popular vote loss. Perhaps even more than the margin that W loss to Gore back in 2000.

Actually, I could easily see a McCain electoral victory with a magin of defeat greater than Kerry's defeat in the popular vote in 2004. The African American vote will be the highest its ever been in many southern States, but will not be enough to win any of them. Add that with some very close McCain victories in swing states, and McCain could be President despite Obama winning with as much as a 4 percent margin in the popular vote.

Then there is the 269 to 269 tie senerio which could happen for the first time this year, given certain swing states and who is likely to win in them.

[maycocksean]

Originally Posted by deep

I'm not sure I want to take a chance another President that is not capable of admitting a mistake.

But don't you see, deep? If he admitted the mistake (which I tend to think he SHOULD), you'd simply say that you're not sure you want to take a chance with another preisdent who's judgement is so poor on foreign policy as to not recognize the surge was a good idea.

Your mind, at least from my perspective is pretty much closed on this issue.

[financeguy]

"Why Bush has been a liberal's best friend"

Nick Cohen The Observer


Nick Cohen: Why Bush has been a liberal's best friend | Comment is free | The Observer

If you search on the net for 'Jon Stewart', 'finance reform' and 'Obama', you will find one of the most unintentionally funny sketches the US Comedy Central network has broadcast. Stewart dissects Barack Obama's hypocrisy with his usual goggle-eyed relish. He shows that the Democrat had been all for the public funding of presidential candidates until he realised that his privately raised campaign donations would allow him to outspend John McCain.

Stewart's audience makes a far better spectacle than the comedian on the stage, however. They had roared when he mocked Bush, Clinton and McCain, but when he ridiculed Obama, a few tittered nervously and most sunk into a shocked silence. Ordinary political satire had become a kind of blasphemy.

'You are allowed to laugh at him,' Stewart said. Hardly anyone wanted to.

Like other US comedians, Stewart wonders if the public is frightened of seeming racist. I do not underestimate the significance of America rising above its original sin of slavery by electing a black President, but anti-racism cannot explain soft questions and kid gloves. Black politicians who have not conformed to liberal expectations have found that anti-racism counts for little and the veneer of politically correct manners can vanish faster than breath off a windowpane.

Gary Trudeau had Bush addressing Condoleezza Rice as 'brown sugar' in his Doonesbury strip. Ted Rall decided she was Bush's 'house nigga' and sent her to a 'racial re-education camp' to learn the error of her conservative views. Jeff Danziger drew her as Prissy, Scarlett O'Hara's slave in Gone With the Wind. All three white men had reached for the dirtiest racial insults they could imagine when confronted with a black woman who disagreed with their politics.

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the 'root cause' of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired.

In their book, After Bush, professors Timothy J Lynch and Robert S Singh highlight the obvious truth that the West is in a new Cold War. Whatever his disagreements with Bush on detail, the new President will have to stop radical Islamist movements and regimes gaining nuclear, chemical or biological weapons because he will know, as we already know, when we are honest with ourselves, that they will use them. Even if we have a President Obama, the continuities in American foreign policy will be more striking than the contrasts.

Obama made their point for them in his Berlin speech. Repeatedly, he emphasised that the resolve that had won the Cold War had to be applied to the war against terror. 'Partnership and co-operation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity,' he declared.

Not all Europeans will want co-operation. A minority will never escape from the slogans and attitudes of the Bush years and Obama and his wife must expect the same treatment as Condoleezza Rice. However, now that the majority of liberals seems likely to get the American President of their dreams, they will have to offer him their support, won't they?

[BVS]

Originally Posted by 2861U2

Wow. And you say I sound stupid sometimes...

I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you seem to go through life believing that if conservatives don't like someone, it is because he is black. That you seem to believe that the reason that Beck and Hannity and Rush, and even myself despise Obama so much is because he is black. You really sound ignorant.

Infer much? I never said anything about not liking him because he's black. But I do think if it was a white male liberal it wouldn't unite them as much. I hear a lot of talk about affirmative action, why is he talking about being black in America, is he going to push a "black" agenda(whatever that is), etc... Status quo will start to crumble, and that does scare many...

Instead of feeling sorry for me, try reading people's post and not infer so much...

[A_Wanderer]

When asked in a USA Today/Gallup poll how religion, race, and sex might influence one's '08 presidential pick, more than 90% of respondents said they would vote for a Catholic, Black, or Jewish candidate -- as long as that candidate was "well qualified" and someone their party had nominated. Yet sex, marriage, and religion proved more sensitive subjects:

If Your Party Nominated A Generally Would You Be Comfortable
In Voting Well-Qualified Candidate For WH '08 For A WH
'08er Who Was ___, Would You Vote For That Person?

Yes No
Catholic 95% 4%
Black 94 5
Jewish 92 7
A woman 88 11
Hispanic 87 12
Mormon 72 24
Married for third time 67 30
72 years old 57 42
A homosexual 55 43
An atheist 45 53

Hotline On Call: USA Today/Gallup: Watch Out Old Divorcees

So atheists beat gays in a race to the bottom.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

So atheists beat gays in a race to the bottom.

[deep]

Gays are on the bottom

and Catholics are on top,

and the Mormons are hovering just above the people that have had multiple marriages.

who knew?

[Vincent Vega]

You gotta get your priorities straight.

[Irvine511]

In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias
Cable talking heads accuse broadcast networks of liberal bias -- but a think tank finds that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Barack Obama than on John McCain in recent weeks.
By JAMES RAINEY
ON THE MEDIA

July 27, 2008

Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of conventional wisdom last week.

Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.

Such pronouncements, sorry to say, tend to be wrong since they describe a monolithic media that no longer exists. Information today cascades from countless outlets and channels, from the Huffington Post to Politico.com to CBS News and beyond.

But now there's additional evidence that casts doubt on the bias claims aimed -- with particular venom -- at three broadcast networks.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

Conservatives have been snarling about the grotesque disparity revealed by another study, the online Tyndall Report, which showed Obama receiving more than twice as much network air time as McCain in the last month and a half. Obama got 166 minutes of coverage in the seven weeks after the end of the primary season, compared with 67 minutes for McCain, according to longtime network-news observer Andrew Tyndall.

I wrote last week that the networks should do more to better balance the air time. But I also suggested that much of the attention to Obama was far from glowing.

That earned a spasm of e-mails that described me as irrational, unpatriotic and . . . somehow . . . French.

But the center's director, RobertLichter, who has won conservative hearts with several of his previous studies, told me the facts were the facts.

"This information should blow away this silly assumption that more coverage is always better coverage," he said.

Here's a bit more on the research, so you'll understand how the communications professor and his researchers arrived at their conclusions.

The center reviews and "codes" statements on the evening news as positive or negative toward the candidates. For example, when NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell said in June that Obama "has problems" with white men and suburban women, the media center deemed that a negative.

The positive and negative remarks about each candidate are then totaled to calculate the percentages that cut for and against them.

Visual images and other more subjective cues are not assessed. But the tracking applies a measure of analytical rigor to a field rife with seat-of-the-pants fulminations.

The media center's most recent batch of data covers nightly newscasts beginning June 8, the day after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination, ushering in the start of the general-election campaign. The data ran through Monday, as Obama began his overseas trip.

Most on-air statements during that time could not be classified as positive or negative, Lichter said. The study found, on average, less than two opinion statements per night on the candidates on all three networks combined -- not exactly embracing or pummeling Obama or McCain. But when a point of view did emerge, it tended to tilt against Obama.

That was a reversal of the trend during the primaries, when the same researchers found that 64% of statements about Obama -- new to the political spotlight -- were positive, but just 43% of statements about McCain were positive.

Such reversals are nothing new in national politics, as reporters tend to warm up to newcomers, then turn increasingly critical when such candidates emerge as front-runners.

It might be tempting to discount the latest findings by Lichter's researchers. But this guy is anything but a liberal toady.

In 2006, conservative cable showmen Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly had Lichter, a onetime Fox News contributor, on their programs. They heralded his findings in the congressional midterm election: that the networks were giving far more positive coverage to the Democrats.

More proof of the liberal domination of the media, Beck and O'Reilly declared.

Now the same researchers have found something less palatable to those conspiracy theorists.

But don't expect cable talking heads to end their trashing of the networks.

Repeated assertions that the networks are in the tank for Democrats represent not only an article of faith on Fox, but a crucial piece of branding. On Thursday night, O'Reilly and his trusty lieutenant Bernard Goldberg worked themselves into righteous indignation -- again -- about the liberal bias they knew was lurking.

Goldberg seemed gleeful beyond measure in saying that "they're fiddling while their ratings are burning."

O'Reilly assured viewers that "the folks" -- whom he claims to treasure far more than effete network executives do -- "understand what's happening."

By the way, Lichter's group also surveys the first half-hour of "Special Report With Brit Hume," Fox News' answer to the network evening news shows.

The review found that, since the start of the general-election campaign, "Special Report" offered more opinions on the two candidates than all three networks combined.

No surprise there. Previous research has shown Fox News to be opinion-heavy.

"Special Report" was tougher than the networks on Obama -- with 79% of the statements about the Democrat negative, compared with 61% negative on McCain.

There's plenty of room for questioning the networks' performance and watching closely for symptoms of Obamamania.

But could we at least remain focused on what ABC, NBC and CBS actually put on the air, rather than illusions that their critics create to puff themselves up?

bottom line: Obama gets more air time because that's where the "story" is -- what's interesting, what's new, and what's going to get the view to watch.

this does not at all mean that the coverage is by definition "positive," and in fact, due to the whines and sobs about "liberal bias" in the media, the media are actually tougher on Obama in order to counter any appearance of liberal bias.

[U2democrat]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

bottom line: Obama gets more air time because that's where the "story" is -- what's interesting, what's new, and what's going to get the view to watch.

this does not at all mean that the coverage is by definition "positive," and in fact, due to the whines and sobs about "liberal bias" in the media, the media are actually tougher on Obama in order to counter any appearance of liberal bias.

That's what I suggested to a coworker the other day...coverage of Obama is likely to get more ratings than McCain, and in this capitalist society that's what the media would cover, naturally. Also that more coverage does NOT equal favorable coverage, rather it gives Obama less wiggle room with mistakes and McCain more.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by U2democrat

That's what I suggested to a coworker the other day...coverage of Obama is likely to get more ratings than McCain, and in this capitalist society that's what the media would cover, naturally. Also that more coverage does NOT equal favorable coverage, rather it gives Obama less wiggle room with mistakes and McCain more.

it's been astonishing the gaffes and contradictions and factual inaccuracies that have come out of McCain's mouth this past week that have gotten no airtime.

and don't think that the network anchors weren't following Obama around the globe last week as much to catch him screwing up as for any other reason.

[A_Wanderer]

Channeling W

YouTube - Obama lost without a teleprompter

[Vincent Vega]

This is why I, when I hold presentations, refuse to rely on any cards or other notes. When you have prepared a certain speech and something goes wrong or you lose a line you stand there stumbling and not making any sense at all.
On the other hand, I guess as a politician holding a speech you need it in some way to be prepared, and here you see what happens when he doesn't put in the effort to also learn it by heart.

[U2democrat]

If we're posting things like that, someone should find the video of McCain with the Dali Lama reading his statement off a folded piece of paper.

Come on, you're standing there with the Dali Lama and you can't say a few words off the top of your head?

[Vincent Vega]

That's something I don't understand with so many politicians and other people regularly speeking in front of crowds. The easiest sentences they need to have on a piece of paper and even read them out instead of just having it as security.
A few weeks ago in Uni we had a panel discussion and the director introducing the panel read each single sentence from a sheet of paper. Even the "Thank you for attending and enjoy the discussion" he read from the paper, hence his intonation was awful.
How can you become a director of a university and not even being able to just say "Thank you"?