Obama '08?

Diest TKO wrote:

You're full of crap.

No - you're full of crap and you know it.

Friday's rally will be held outside the Unity Elementary School, where Principal Chip Baldwin first thought the Obama staffer who showed up last week was just another photocopier salesmen.

"My initial reaction was one of awe, and also, 'C'mon, you're pulling my leg,'" Baldwin said Tuesday as several campaign workers took measurements of the school's field. He pointed out the classroom the school's 120 pupils in kindergarten through 8th grade use as their "gym" and said he hopes the weather cooperates Friday, given that there are no indoor options.

There isn't much in the rest of the town either, aside from one general store, the county jail and the county nursing home. The library, police and town offices are housed in a restored tavern, where a jar of homemade cookies sits in the selectmen's meeting room.

The town was founded in 1764 and named Unity because in granting the land, King George III unified a group of petitioners who had lost their land elsewhere in the colony. The 2,500 people expected to attend the rally far exceed the town's 1,700 population. Locals say the last time there was a crowd that big was for a 1970s performance by folk singer Arlo Guthrie.

"It's going to be quite a spectacle. It's a historic moment for the town," said Will Boutin, 58, owner of a general store. Both he and his wife Kathy voted for Obama, as did their daughter, Christine.

Though the two candidates tied in Unity, Clinton won the state, resuscitating her candidacy and setting up the long campaign with Obama

engineer wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

sozobe wrote:

engineer wrote:

But you can find a dozen threads where Obama detractors (there don't seem to be actual McCain supporters)

(Good observation.)

Bad observation.

Shouldn't you be posting an article on "10 reasons to vote for McCain"?

Isn't this thread about Obama?

See ... up there in the title?

H2O, yeah the old who supports the troops scam. Here's evidence rather than sound bites, "Vets Group Proves GOP Does Not Support Troops" by
Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and founder of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), the country's first and largest Iraq Veterans group, announced on Friday that IAVA has made available a web site giving the results of their analysis of who in Congress truly backs up their words on supporting the troops.

"Sure, politicians say they support the troops. But whose votes back up their rhetoric, and who's just wearing an American flag lapel pin?" asked Rieckhoff in a Huffington Post column last week. "Now there's an easy way to know for sure. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America's Action Fund has tallied up every Congressional vote cast on troops' and veterans' issues for the last five years. We've crunched the numbers, and given every legislator a letter grade - the IAVA Congressional Rating."

It is a wonderful idea to be sure and IAVA is certainly the organization to do it. So I thought I would go out over the weekend and do some crunching of my own to document what I think we already know about who in Congress really sticks up for the military and who are merely support-the-troops hypocrites.

I cover the Senate so I decided to do my digging there and what I found will not surprise anyone. IAVA analyzed 155 Senate votes that have taken place since September 11, 2001 and, to calculate their ratings, looked at "…each piece of legislation that affected troops, veterans or military families." IAVA then matched each Senator's votes with the organization's own view of what constitutes true support for active troops, Veterans and their families.

IAVA assigned an 'A' through 'F' grade using the scale at left showing the percentage of time each Senator has indeed supported troops and Veterans. As someone who has watched Senate Republicans vote time and time again against legislation that would benefit military families, the results did not shock me in the slightest.

No Senator in either party was given an A grade by IAVA. Thirteen Senators received a rating of A- and all of those were Democrats. A total of 23 Senators were given a B+ rating and 22 of those were Democrats as well. The other was Independent James Jeffords of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats.

Cutting to the chase -- and, perhaps more than anything I've seen in recent years, truly defining the difference between the two parties -- is that the worst grade received by a Senate Democrat was higher than the best grade granted a Republican. GOP-lite Ben Nelson (D-NE) received the lowest grade of any Democrat with a B- while Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) managed a C grade from IAVA.

And, when I averaged the scores of both the Democratic and Republican caucuses by assigning the numeric midpoint of the letter grade received by each Senator, which party truly supports the troops was made remarkably clear: The 44 Democrats and Jeffords had an average military-support grade of B+, while the 55 Republicans, who beat their chests with disgusting regularity about how strong they are on military issues, averaged a pathetic D. link McCain by the way got a D.

Obama holds 12-point lead over McCain, poll finds

A Times/Bloomberg Poll says that in a two-man contest, 49% of respondents favor Barack Obama, while 37% support John McCain. With Ralph Nader and Bob Barr added to the mix, Obama holds 15-point edge.Among voters who describe themselves as conservative, only 58% say they will vote for McCain; 15% say they will vote for Obama, 14% say they will vote for someone else, and 13% say they are undecided.

By contrast, 79% of voters who describe themselves as liberal say they plan to vote for Obama.

Even among voters who say they do plan to vote for McCain, more than half say they are "not enthusiastic" about their chosen candidate; only 45% say they are enthusiastic. By contrast, 81% of Obama voters say they are enthusiastic, and almost half call themselves "very enthusiastic," a level of zeal that only 13% of McCain's supporters display.

"McCain is not capturing the full extent of the conservative base the way President Bush did in 2000 and 2004," said Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll. "Among conservatives, evangelicals and voters who identify themselves as part of the religious right, he is polling less than 60%.

"Meanwhile, Obama is doing well among a broad range of voters," she said. "He's running ahead among women, black voters and other minorities. He's running roughly even among white voters and independents."

Among white voters, Obama and McCain are dead even at 39% each, the poll found. Earlier this year, when Obama ran behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) among white voters in some primary elections, analysts questioned whether the African American senator could win white voters in the general election.

But the great majority of Clinton voters have transferred their allegiance to Obama, the poll found. Only 11% of Clinton voters have defected to McCain.

Nader, a consumer advocate who ran as the candidate of the Green Party in 2000 and as an independent in 2004, and Barr, a former Georgia congressman, both appear to siphon more votes from McCain than they do from Obama. When Nader and Barr are added to the ballot, they draw most of their support from voters who said they would otherwise vote for the Republican.

Obama's strong showing also stems from a broader trend among voters of support for Democratic candidates and Democratic positions after almost eight years of an increasingly unpopular Republican administration.

In this national poll's random sample of voters, 39% identified themselves as Democrats, 22% as Republicans, and 27% as independents. In a similar poll a year ago, 33% identified themselves as Democrats, 28% as Republicans, and 30% as independents.

The survey found public approval of President Bush's job performance at a new low for the Times/Bloomberg Poll: only 23% approved of the job Bush is doing, and 73% disapproved.

A bare majority of 51% of voters said they have a "positive feeling" about the Democratic Party; only 29% said they have a positive feeling about the Republican Party.

"It's a Democratic year," Pinkus said. "This election is the Democrats' to lose."

The Times/Bloomberg Poll, conducted under Pinkus' supervision, interviewed 1,115 registered voters across the nation June 19-23. The poll's margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Ticomaya wrote:

engineer wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

sozobe wrote:

engineer wrote:

But you can find a dozen threads where Obama detractors (there don't seem to be actual McCain supporters)

(Good observation.)

Bad observation.

Shouldn't you be posting an article on "10 reasons to vote for McCain"?

Isn't this thread about Obama?

See ... up there in the title?

OK then, send me to the A2K thread where all the McCain supporters are talking about all of this great policies, how much they like the way he's running his campaign, how they look forward to the things he will implement during his presidency, you know, stuff supporters post about.

Why, it almost seems as if the predictions of doom during the protracted primary were completely wrong.

Cycloptichorn

the real terror is losing your job and home - especially if you have kids.

I'd rather my taxes be spent on things that make me and my family comfortable and then one day be atomized in a nuclear explosion than I would have money funneled into some vague war and live a long time in a "safe" country with crumbling education, infrastructure and shitty living standard.

We all die, it's how we live that counts.

I'd rather my taxes be spent on things that make me and my family comfortable and then one day be atomized in a nuclear explosion than I would have money funneled into some vague war and live a long time in a "safe" country with crumbling education, infrastructure and shitty living standard.

We all die, it's how we live that counts.

Yes, We Can....

Been a long time since Latin class, I see

Cycloptichorn