FIRST A2K STRAW POLL White House 2008

It isn't that Tenet now doubts the lethality of the terrorists. What he disputed was an organizational connection which argued for war against Iraq as if Iraq were a vassal state of al Qaeda. A measure of George Tenet's respect for the reach and malevolence of the enemy is his statement that he is puzzled that Al Qaeda has not, since 2001, sent out "suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half dozen American shopping malls on any given day." By way of prophecy, he writes that there is one thing he feels in his gut, which is that "Al Qaeda is here and waiting."

I'm thinking some still don't differentiate between great sounding campaign rhetoric and specifics.

Rhetoric: Every child should have access to adequate health care.

Specific: If elected I will ask for and fight for legislation mandating federally funded comprehensive health care for every child who is without health care.

Rhetoric: It is wrong for the most tax relief to go to the richest Americans.

Specific: If elected I will roll back the tax cuts given to the rich by the Bush administration and in fact will increase the tax rates on all person earning X $$$ or more.

Rhetoric: We must end the war in Iraq.

Specific: If elected, I hope that the first bill passed by Congress and the first bill signed in my administration will be to defund the war and bring our troops hope.

Rhetoric: Strong families raise successful children and keep communities together. While Senator Obama does not believe that we can simply legislate healthy families, good parenting skills or economic success, he does believe we can eliminate roadblocks that parents face and provide tools to help them succeed. A husband and father of two, Senator Obama has promoted strong families in the Senate.

Specific: If elected I will do (something specific)

You dumb sh!t, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid a$$hole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing sh!thead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid sh!t.

A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Our situation is a little different from the one Churchill faced in the 1930s. Rather than being a voice in the wilderness, our Churchill is actually President. But taking a firm stand against the great evil of our time has made President Bush as unpopular as Churchill was before Munich.

The truth is that the Bush administration has been extraordinarily scandal-free. Not a single instance of corruption has been unearthed.

New polls have her winning it all

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BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Wednesday, May 9th 2007, 4:00 AM


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WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton is riding a surge that has her beating all comers, Democrat or Republican, thanks to Iraq and a strong start to her presidential campaign, polls say.

Four surveys in the past few days find the New York senator with double-digit national leads over fellow Democrats Barack Obama, John Edwards and noncandidate Al Gore.

The latest, a Marist College survey, has her with double the support of Obama or Edwards and with 5-point leads on Sen. John McCain or ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a general election matchup.

"She hasn't made a lot of mistakes in the campaign," said Marist's Lee Miringoff, who thought Clinton's uptick comes in part from her showing in the Democratic presidential debate two weeks ago and in part from a strong overall start.

Her edge over Giuliani and McCain likely stems from the public's unhappiness with the Iraq war. "The Republicans are all tied to Iraq," Miringoff said.

Iraq has not hurt Clinton, even though she voted to let President Bush go to war. "With Iraq, she's made a successful effort to minimize fallout among Democrats," Miringoff said.

Clinton strategist Mark Penn said the debate helped. "People reframed the race, that it was about being ready to be President," he said.

Another factor is some bloom coming off Obama's rose after all the attention he got for being new and equaling Clinton's fund-raising efforts. "We've gone through a phase where people talked about buzz," Penn said. "I think now we're in a phase were people talk about experience."

Miringoff said Obama hasn't yet taken his campaign to the next level. "He had a wonderful start to the campaign," Miringoff said. "Now he needs more."

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I'm thinking some still don't differentiate between great sounding campaign rhetoric and specifics.

Rhetoric: Every child should have access to adequate health care.

Specific: If elected I will ask for and fight for legislation mandating federally funded comprehensive health care for every child who is without health care.

Rhetoric: It is wrong for the most tax relief to go to the richest Americans.

Specific: If elected I will roll back the tax cuts given to the rich by the Bush administration and in fact will increase the tax rates on all person earning X $$$ or more.

Rhetoric: We must end the war in Iraq.

Specific: If elected, I hope that the first bill passed by Congress and the first bill signed in my administration will be to defund the war and bring our troops hope.

Rhetoric: Strong families raise successful children and keep communities together. While Senator Obama does not believe that we can simply legislate healthy families, good parenting skills or economic success, he does believe we can eliminate roadblocks that parents face and provide tools to help them succeed. A husband and father of two, Senator Obama has promoted strong families in the Senate.

Specific: If elected I will do (something specific) to strengthen American families.

Hopefully in time we will get down to this kind of specifics in order to help determine who will be the most dangerous person to elect to office and which one will frustrate us the least.

1) I dont think any mainstream Democrat wants to "increase the tax rates on all person earning X $$$ or more", beyond "rolling back those tax cuts given to the rich by the Bush administration".

But I wish they would.

Quote:

1) I dont think any mainstream Democrat wants to "increase the tax rates on all person earning X $$$ or more", beyond "rolling back those tax cuts given to the rich by the Bush administration".

But I wish they would.

<raises>

I do

Cycloptichorn

Quote:

1) I dont think any mainstream Democrat wants to "increase the tax rates on all person earning X $$$ or more", beyond "rolling back those tax cuts given to the rich by the Bush administration".

But I wish they would.

<raises>

I do

Cycloptichorn

Advocate, is that supposed to make the point that Obama doesn't give specifics?

It's a website. That's what the candidates do, with the exception of Kucinich (even Mike Gravel keeps things general). They want the surfer to get a general idea of what the person stands for and not get overwhelmed.

The first thing you see, that anyone sees, is a general overview. Want specifics? Click through for more. Want technical specs? Click through there for more.

I suppose the idea is that people like you will find the information no matter what, and they have to try to reach the people whose attention spans are significantly shorter.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The first thing you see, that anyone sees, is a general overview. Want specifics? Click through for more. Want technical specs? Click through there for more.

Agreed, but if the general overview is as bla-bla-ish as that family paragraph that was quoted here was, they've lost me already even before I get to the "click here for more information" link. If I read three sentences like that, I'm off elsewhere. It should be easy to find specifics (talking about low thresholds!)

I remember - I dont know about pres candidates right now, havent given it a try for a while - but trying to convince some newbie radical conservative here that, you know, his local Democratic candidates did not propose eating babies and selling the US to the Arabs, I checked out the sites for the Dem Senate and House candidates for his state. Looking for some program page, however cursory - some kind of bullet points list with things they proposed doing when elected or something.

Nothing doing. In the end I found one candidate who had a very generally formulated platform page with six or seven points or something. The others all only had stuff like this families-para, which I skip as soon as I see it - nothing I could bring here to say, look this is simply what he proposes. Was a deflating experience..

We need politics sites that have a front-end loader which says 'wonk/non-wonk....'

Cycloptichorn