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2008 US Election


Mont Royale

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WOW.

Somewhere, I already knew it, but last night debates confirmed me that US politic is ­­­>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Canada's politic.

Unless you are the CEO of a tank and fight plane companie, I don't see why in the world someone would vote for McCain.

I think I would even vote for Stephane Dion over him.

The biggest joke of this debate was :

Obama : IF the Pakistan government is not able, or doesn't have the willingness to take Ben Laden out, then we would thinking about doing it ourselves and go their military.

McCain : Senator Obama is clearly thinking about INVADING Pakistan !

:o:rolleyes:

It was nice to see candidates be able to talk without interruption...just goes to show how mickey mouse our debate was.

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Madness

First Pakistan now Syria. This latest military action seems designed to provoke Syria and the Palestinians into retaliating against Israel, igniting a powder keg. Maybe "tough on terror" McCain can benefit at the polls?

Bush should be indicted.

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Madness

First Pakistan now Syria. This latest military action seems designed to provoke Syria and the Palestinians into retaliating against Israel, igniting a powder keg. Maybe "tough on terror" McCain can benefit at the polls?

Bush should be indicted.

He should have been called up on war crimes when he invaded Iraq. The UN said no and Bush decided he was above international law. Any other country would have been nailed - with the US leading the charge no less. Unfortunately, under the Bush regime you can't fully express your opinion since that's against the new laws where freedom of speech is an illusion, even if you aren't in that country.

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He should have been called up on war crimes when he invaded Iraq. The UN said no and Bush decided he was above international law. Any other country would have been nailed - with the US leading the charge no less. Unfortunately, under the Bush regime you can't fully express your opinion since that's against the new laws where freedom of speech is an illusion, even if you aren't in that country.

And security is an illusion, no matter what country you are in. Now the cowboys are wearing black hats.

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And security is an illusion, no matter what country you are in. Now the cowboys are wearing black hats.

We will goven by fear. That will keep the masses in line.

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That's quite the immediate reaction guys.

You have Syria making an allegation...but no comment from the US yet.

I also don't see what this has to do with forcing Syria and Palestine to attack Israel...what is your line of thinking there?

If the US made a strategic strike against an Al-Qaida cell would this be justified?

What if Iraqi insurgents feld to Syrian safe-houses from across the border after bombing numerous places within Iraq?

During Vietnam, when VC's fled into Cambodia and when the US did not cross the border it led to a lot more people getting killed.

It's a fine line to cross when sovereignty is an issue, certainly, but I also think it's safe to say that without all the facts, and only an accusation from Syria, that it's not worth such reactionary comments.

They've put themselves in a bad spot since, like Vietnam, many of the insurgents do not recognize borders...further, most of the surrounding states do not want to make enemies of insurgents who have brothers-in-arms within their own country...let alone those states that openly despise the US and most western countries.

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...

Sorry, let me be clear: I have no clue what's going on with this recent business, none at all. I was just commenting on what I had seen before. Having said that, I wouldn't be the least surprised if Bush was churning the crap just to help buy votes. It's the kind of thing he'd do.

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Sorry, let me be clear: I have no clue what's going on with this recent business, none at all. I was just commenting on what I had seen before. Having said that, I wouldn't be the least surprised if Bush was churning the crap just to help buy votes. It's the kind of thing he'd do.

I wonder how interested Bush is to generate votes for McCain. I have no idea, but McCain has spent much of the campaign distancing himself from Bush's policies and criticizing various aspects of his presidency, no doubt to counteract the linkage that Obama is trying to make. I wouldn't think Bush would care much about McCain's fate at this point.

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MR ~ Bush and McCain are both products of the Republican Party. Bush sent an endorsement to the Republican National Convention last month. And made a show this week of voting for McCain. Plus, fear of the "dangerous world" is a cornerstone of the Republican platform.

Zow ~ respect but the Washington Post has reported it was a US bombing inside Syria. Four children were killed, surprise -- bombs are messy. If the US crossed the Canadian border to attack Lacolle and killed four children would you rationalize the same denial? Are some children less human than others?

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Zow ~ respect but the Washington Post has reported it was a US bombing inside Syria. Four children were killed, surprise -- bombs are messy. If the US crossed the Canadian border to attack Lacolle and killed four children would you rationalize the same denial? Are some children less human than others?

See, this is just putting things within a different context and then trying to make people sound like they are villians if they disagree with you. It's a ridiculous comparison to use Canada. The US isn't at war with a country neighboring our border, there is not a large radical percentage of our population supporting terrorist efforts with people, finances, guns and/or places of refuge to said "neighboring country".

You make it sound like I'm trying to be a bigot or racist by questioning in such a tone that implies I must think these children are worth less then Canadian children. This is exactly the type of crap I see the more extreme left wing types pull all the time...use the politically correct card to try and brow beat everyone into your opinion because no one would ever want to say some children are worth less then others. Meanwhile, all I did was question an extreme lack of information in the article and that it's not worth jumping to conclusions.

If a terrorist bombs and shoots at you while hiding behind women and children who is to blame for what happens to those children and women?? Should the US just sit back and allow insurgents to simply stop in for a bomb party and leave with no concern for retaliation?

No one wants to see children and women put at such risk, let alone killed. However, to simply blame the US without all the facts is just as black and white an opinion as anything else...these situations are never as clear cut as you want to make them out to be. You are letting a very clear hate for the Bush administration cloud the picture. As such, it's worth finding out a few more facts on what happened...such as WHY did it happen, WHAT led to it, WHO (I'm sure there was a lot more behind this then a US bomb and 4 children...even you would have to admit the US doesn't go to war to kill children).

The media drives your reaction by giving you only the information it wants you to see...such as, US bomb kills 4 children, end stop...of course, at the end of that you still don't know if they killed Osama Bin Laden, numerous terrorists, a bomb making factory, or anything else. The killing of civilians is unfortunate but it's not the first time that terrorists have hidden behind children, held children and women hostage for this result, etc...and having said that I could also say it wouldn't be the first time the US has made a mistake with their intelligence or a bomb hit the wrong target. For all you know the children were being held there as shields. I'm not saying any of that is true, or not, I'm just saying you don't have a clue as to what really happened but you've formed a full opinion on the subject.

Look, I actually dislike Bush a whole lot. I dislike the McCain/Palin ticket. I think Bush was just a puppet for a lot of shady characters within his government...and that ultimately, he knew enough about what was going on but just chose to look the other way. But that's just my belief, opinion and pure speculation about Bush. Having said that, I'll still take each instance at a time and judge them on the context they occur in...being wrong a couple times in a row doesn't mean you're wrong everytime.

Edited by Zowpeb
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Alright - 8 days to go, time to resurrect this thing! :lol:

Obama looks to have this baby locked up: a healthy lead in the polls, and expanding his reach into several traditionally Republican strongholds. I think a win from Obama will benefit the U.S. because of his policies, but regardless of one's political stripe, it will be an incredible achievement for the country. Electing a black man to the top job highlights the distances that the civil rights movement has travelled. Of course there's still racism out there, but it's one more barrier knocked down... and if a black man can be elected president, what other barrier will seem more unassailable than that?

... well, there's a few. Like a black woman, for instance, or a Muslim person. But progress is progress, and we should allow ourselves to dwell on the positives for awhile.

Some will say that Sarah Palin as VP would be historic too, and they're right. But I don't think it has the same significance. A woman has run for VP before (albeit unsuccessfully), and the demographic she 'represents' is half the population. Quite different from a candidate from a minority group who were historically treated as property. And let's face it, the top of the ticket is where the power is.

Speaking of Palin, she is apparently at odds with the McCain campaign managers, and is positioning herself for a run in 2012. If I was a Republican, I'd be very unhappy with any perception of bailing out (even emotionally) before the race has run. Of course, when someone is picked for their appeal to a certain demographic instead of their unique capabilities, one shouldn't expect much.

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Mount Royale, i wouldn't be so sure about the polls. Like it or not, beleive it or not the media is totally in the tank for Obama and i wouldn't trust the accuracy of the polls. In 04, they had Kerry up big just before the election and even on Election eve they were predicting a Kerry win and obviously Bush won.

Only 1 poll had it right in 04 and they only haver Obama up 1 point.

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Mount Royale, i wouldn't be so sure about the polls. Like it or not, beleive it or not the media is totally in the tank for Obama and i wouldn't trust the accuracy of the polls. In 04, they had Kerry up big just before the election and even on Election eve they were predicting a Kerry win and obviously Bush won.

Only 1 poll had it right in 04 and they only haver Obama up 1 point.

I'm not seeing a major national poll (at least on realclearpolitics.com, a republican site) that shows the current election so close. The closest I can find are the IBD and Battleground polls, which have it at 3 pts (I'd argue that IBD is a particularly suspect poll). To which poll are you referring?

I also went back to try to find 2004 election polling. The first real source I found was CNN's 2004 election page which has their poll of polls for 2004. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/special/polls/index.html . According to this, the polling generally had it close but tilting toward Bush. I'd be interested in seeing your source.

I hope you don't take me as sarcastic, I'd be very interested in your source for numbers - it'd give me something interesting to read.

As far as the media being in the tank for Obama, certainly you don't look at the media as a homogeneous goliath. Even if you think the great majority of media outlets are pro-Obama, you'd concede that there are, if only a few, pro-McCain outlets... or at least outlets that are predisposed to embracing a conservative world view. The classic, oft-cited example being FoxNews, but of course also the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Investor's Business Daily among others. The FoxNews poll has Obama +9 - certainly you don't allege that this is a manifestation of liberal bias.

Perhaps instead you mean that the conventional pollster wisdom as to likely voter models has the effect of creating a pro-Obama result in polling. This might be true. Perhaps pollsters, through ignorance or the built-in unpredictability of the future, are erroneously predicting a higher proportion of young, urban, minority, or educated voters than will actually be represented in the electorate. Conversely or perhaps correspondingly, pollsters might be erroneously under predicting the proportion of rural, white, older, poor, or religious (particularly evangelical christian) voters. While such erroneous models need not be developed because of a given pollster's liberal (or conservative) bias, they could of course lead to results that erroneously favour Obama. An erroneous result need not be derived by a malicious liberal agenda. In other words, we need not believe post hoc ergo procter hoc.

Edit:

One interesting development since 2004 has been the rise of early voting. The popularity of early voting this cycle offers pollsters an opportunity to re-tune their likely voter models in anticipation of election day. Look at it this way: a pollster knows that about 10% of the registered electorate self-identifies as evangelical. Of that 10%, perhaps Gallup assumes that 30% will vote -> if we assume a general voting rate of 50%*, Gallup's model will predict that something like 6% of the electorate will be evangelical.

Let us say that in Gallup's phone survey today, of the 100 evangelicals polled, 40 claim to have already voted. Now it should seem likely to Gallup that it's earlier presumption that the electorate will be 6% evangelical is wrong. Already (acknowledging the fallacy of small sample size), it looks like the 30% projection has been blown out of the water. Gallup should serious think about revising its model to predict something like 50+% evangelical participation and so in the new model 10% of the electorate will be evangelical.

As a result of such rejiggering, McCain would gain in the poll even though no respondent changed their answers. Obama would gain points in the same way if it turned out more women or young Jews (like myself) were voting.

In previous elections, pollsters didn't have this error-checking mechanism available. Hopefully this will mean that election eve poll results will be more predictive. If not, then either the pollsters are not reconstructing their models based on new information or are doing so incorrectly (or standard voter samples are so small as to be unreliable in providing information on this quesiton).

**I have no idea as to whether evangelicals are more or less reliable voters than the general electorate - I'm just illustrating the mathematical proposition.

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Don't they arm children over there?

"How could you attack these innocent AK-47-weilding cherubs?"

I know this is a quasi-joke, but do you really think these children were armed?

I should note that although JLP and I are both internationally minded left-wingers, we do differ to a degree on the actual and proper role of American influence both militarily and diplomatically.

At the moment I am very ignorant as to the nature of the attack describe above and as such will refrain from commenting on it directly.

I do not believe, however, that instigation of a new military foray into Syria would have positive implications for McCain's political aspirations.

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Zowpeb, context can only go so far. You want to use that line of logic to lessen the death of civilians, fine. Then by that same logic, in the Middle East context terrorists are not terrorists but freedom fighters/patriots fighting an evil invading country.

Either you use moral relativism for everything or you dont.

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From the above link:

-“Even while it's preparing itself to leave the White House, the Bush administration seems determined to demonstrate its foolishness, and this is a dangerous indication of political madness and stupid arrogance,” Al-Baath said.-

Wasn't that Bush's campaign slogan? He may very well be the only President... nay the only leader who's lived up to his advanced billing.

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Yes Simonus, i was pointing out that nothing is in the bag until all the votes are counted. It was a smaller poll site that got the 04 election right. I never heard of it until i saw an article on how accurate they were.

I also agree it depends on what you are reading or watching to determine who is in the tank for who. I think it will be a little closer then most think.

I only have 1 vote, so i will cast it and see what happens.

The other thing you point out is sad, the voter rate in America is disturbing. I can't beleieve so few people actually vote.

Although ACORN got alot of fictional characters to vote.

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