Several people asked for a debate thread. So here you go. Candidates were selected in alphabetical order–not preference of the one who set up the thread.

60 Thoughts to “The Great Debate: McCain v Obama”

  1. Red Dawn

    I would just like to set the background music of this debate:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVxsd6yywX8

  2. Red Dawn

    lol, McCain said earmarking is like a gateway drug. I agree puff, puff PASS.

  3. Is sister Palin a thug
    taking huffs off a fiscal drug?
    Take off your robe!
    It’s time for a probe!
    And maybe a polar-bear hug.

  4. Moon-howler

    clap clap well-done, Ms. Gotthardt!

  5. Red Dawn

    So big brother turned into GOOGLE for government( Obama)…ummm world wide? Where can YOU run and hide?

  6. I can’t stop! It’s taking over….the Limerick-Ick! Did you ever get sick from the Limerick-Ick? It’s really quite vile–your spit up rhymed bile until you get whapped with a stick!

  7. Now you’re doing it, Red:

    World wide….Where can you run and hide……

    Alanna, Elena, can we do the next Anti posting in Dr. Seuss? Please?

  8. Red Dawn

    KG,

    I am NOT getting old….it is just HISTORY REPEATING

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crUC9X9s6sA

  9. Moon-howler

    Is anyone else tired of the word ‘maverick?’ If the mavericks win, I expect a bunch of wild horses to troop into DC. GAG!

    Both candidates seem to be doing well and covering many topics.

  10. There’s nothing new under the sun….

  11. Red Dawn

    KG,

    YES, she was related to my GRANDPA

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40YjWtdIZxY

  12. YEEEE HAAAW! What ever happened to them Judd people anyway?

  13. BTW, not impressed with this debate. They both keep saying how they will handle Iraq but they aren’t really saying anything at all. Besides, once they get in the Generals will tell them what they are going to do anyway, and the Prez will just nod and say, “Hey, sounds smart” until someone whispers, “NO! NOT SMART!” Then it will start all over again. Sorry….these debates are so bleached, they barely tell us a thing.

  14. Moon-howler

    As important as I think Iraq is, I think right this minute there are more pressing problems.

  15. Red Dawn

    So McCain said ( not quote) that the Iranians have a lousy government which is the reason for their lousy economy…..WTF? And I further listened to Obama..they seem to have a STRATEGIC PLAN and plentiful reasons why we have to spend the money but cannot come up with a admittance of a lousy economy and reason that maybe it is our government? I heard lets talk about when I am president ( not what went wrong or what is wrong CURRENT with our OWN government)

    …….here we go…let’s start with DIPLOMATIC talks…they can’t even do this sh^t in Washington… I give up 🙂

    If things get too bad….you know where to find me…I will be with the country boys -some people call them rednecks when it makes them feel superior, LOL( have and will always be there-Michael, I saw your post and prep of 10 years…same concept but not as fortunate to have the assets to come out ahead like you did but I will share my bread with you bro. 🙂 lol

    KG,

    Naomi was sick ( hep b)

  16. Red Dawn

    or c….who keeps score….lol

  17. Red Dawn

    LEGALIZE MOONSHINE ( bring back the farmers)……energy independence 🙂

  18. Rick Bentley

    There once was a chap named McCain
    Who fought for amnesty, again and again
    He fought hard to ram it
    Through Congress but dammit
    Americans yelled and complained

    There once was a guy named Barack
    Who said we were on the wrong track
    He acted all clean
    Said lobbyists were obscene
    But took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

    George Bush, asleep on the job
    George Bush, your pockets will rob
    A billion here, a billion there
    700 billion everywhere

  19. Red Dawn

    Mackie,

    When do you think the martial law bomb will drop( due to potential CIVIL unrest)….. as they seem to have answers for EVERYTHING else….tommy can you hear me….feel the waves and puff of air…floating……away……AMERICA)

  20. Red Dawn

    Rick,

    I like me some Ron Paul. His campaign was CLOUDED with ohhh my gosh…..TRUTH tellers…well, we ALL know they are CRAZZEEE…lol.Regardless, outside of Bob Wills,I will write him in 🙂

    This would not be a ham sandwich but a HERO 🙂

  21. Moon-howler

    Vote for money. You will never be sorry. If the religious right is for it, I am against it.

    Rick, good job. Both took money from Fannie and Freddie. I don’t think it was intentional dishonesty. These guys don’t keep their own books.

  22. Slowpoke Rodriguez

    Rick Bentley,

    Very Nice!

    I must say that this thread reminds me of Andrew Wilkow:
    “Perfectly Executed Political Analysis”

  23. Old man John reminded us that we have a great leader and a great candidate being hampered by a historically lousy campaign. We see now why he wanted 10 debates instead of three. Without Karl Rove’s choir boys and the Washington DC lobbying establishment in his hair, McCain is and comes across as a man worthy of the highest office in the land.

    I thought McCain did a lot to right the ship. He stopped the bleeding from the Letterman thing, the national embarrassment that is Sarah Palin, and this bizarre diversion some idiot cooked up to “suspend the campaign” and meander/race to Washington to … I still don’t know what … but it certainly was not what they said it was.

    This debate could have been the McCain campaign’s last gasp. But the old man came through. He reassured Republicans who were losing faith and losing hope.

    McCain gets a B+ from me. Not an A for two reasons. He seemed cantankerous and he reminded us about Palin. Each time I see her standing in front of a sign that says “Country First,” it is all I can do not to vomit.

    Obama get’s a C+ as he did not take many risks, and did not land many punches, perhaps the best tactic for someone with a lead. Or, rather, the best tactic for someone with a lead who is still looking to introduce himself to undecided voters.

    For those undecided voters who had not been exposed to Obama until now, I think Obama made the right call by being conservative and gracious, and rarely taking McCain’s bait.

    For those undecided voters who are cautious rather than oblivious … and these, I feel, are the more important ones the candidates need to win … the truth is that on the two issues they discussed the most, Iraq and the economy, Obama showed a stronger command of the variables and complexities.

    The cautious voter knows that the world is more complex than the catch phrases McCain was using. Catch phrases are designed for the Republican base. But the cautious voter understand the situation in Iraq is more complex than simply saying “we have to win or else our soldiers died in vain.” That’s not a strategy. It’s not even a tactic. I don’t even think it’s true.

    McCain was heroic in salvaging a horrible week of bad decisions and bad press. In reassuring the Republican base, he has kept the race alive. But the Republican base is shrinking, and may not be powerful enough for McCain to win with them alone. So, in a debate where McCain obviously landed more punches, Obama may have come away with more of the undecided voters.

  24. Red Dawn,

    The American public has shown an alarming tolerance for police state tactics. Example, mass arrests and mass blatant false charges against people exercising free speech at the DNC and RNC.

    If we have martial law someday, it will be because most people have become complacent in the face of police state tactics. I’m guessing that after the next mass scale terrorist attack, we’ll see martial law.

  25. WHWN,

    McCain is a neocon warmonger. In the debate tonight he essentialy said, vis-a-vis Russia, that he wants to restart the cold war.

    If we get McCain, we get conscription and war with Iran and war with god knows who else.

  26. NotGregLetiecq

    WHWN, McCain’s punches don’t land if they are all based on false propositions and irrelevancies.

    I thought it was funny that McCain spent so much time bashing the Bush administration and the Republican power establishment. The pundits made a big deal of the fact that Obama said he agreed with McCain 8 times, well, that’s about how many times McCain confessed that he, President Bush, and the Republicans have failed our nation and betrayed our trust. I AGREE TOO!!!!

    Obama certainly seemed more at ease on the national stage, and more comfortable standing a few feet away from an opponent. If he can’t look another man in the eye, how will McCain look into Putin’s soul when he rears his head and flies in Sarah Palin’s air space?

    I’m glad that Obama set McCain straight on taxes. I don’t understand why McCain flip-flopped on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Who bought him off exactly? Are there really voters who still fall for the trickle down thing?

  27. DiversityGal

    A CNN poll showed that 51% of those polled believed Obama fared better in the debate, while 38% believed McCain fared better. A political researcher said that when you account for the slight Democratic bias, that it was a virtual tie. However, he believed than in a tie situation in this debate, Obama actually comes out a winner (given the recent course of the campaign):

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/27/debate.poll/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

  28. The good thing about McCain is that at least with him, you know you get conscription and war.

    You get conscription and war with Obama as well, but you just don’t know it.

  29. Moon-howler

    Tie. Both men had strengths and weaknesses. McCain looked grumpy and Obama interrupted the first half hour. After that, both loosened up somewhat. Both men looked presidential. I wasn’t sure that would happen.

    Bush continued to hurt McCain throughout the debate though. McCain did a fairly decent job of extricating himself from the Bush albatross … as well as anyone could.

  30. Here’s a good article about the gradual government take over of our free market. In light of recent developments, this article made some accurate predictions. The free market liberates us from the state. When it becomes enslaved to the state, so are we enslaved to bureaucrats.

    http://mises.org/story/3066

  31. A curious poet named Rick
    wrote us a limerick.
    The sky might be falling
    but this is his calling!
    Turns out, Rick’s quite a kick!

  32. “If we get McCain, we get conscription and war with Iran and war with god knows who else.”

    Mackie, I agree.

  33. ““Perfectly Executed Political Analysis”

    Does that mean we all killed it?

  34. NotGregLetiecq

    Mackie, I honestly don’t know WHAT we’ll get with McCain. Whatever “maverick” was supposed to mean, he’s switch slogans to “loose cannon.”

    He sings “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and takes Cold War postures with regard to Iran and Russia, but really, anything he has said since he became a serious contender for the White House has got to be suspect. In the pressure cooker of Presidential politics, he is simply melting down. How else do you explain all the flip-flops, the choice of a nitwit he hardly knows for V.P., and the “suspend the campaign but not really” ploy to use the economic crisis as a campaign rescue plan?

    On Bush’s policy of corporate welfare for the oil companies, the war industry, and the wealthiest of the super-wealthy, McCain has completely reversed himself and there is just no telling why. Now that Americans are up in arms about how Bush/McCain Economics have screwed the American taxpayer out of 700 BILLION dollars (and that’s not counting the gi-normous debt they’ve run up BEFORE we realized they’d melted down our economy), it’s entirely possible McCain will flip-flop again. No one can predict what he’s going to do. Each time his poll numbers drop he comes up with another Sarah Palin incredibly stupid stunt. Maybe he’ll follow Obama’s lead again and start proposing a sensible way forward with a new energy economy that creates millions of jobs and puts America on the cutting edge of 21st century technology. He’s followed Obama’s lead on most other things.

    Where HASN’T he followed Obama’s lead. On major foreign policy issues like whether a war of choice / war from profit in Iraq was sound judgment or not. Was that a mistake or not? Would you do it again if Halliburton and the oil companies really needed a boost? The fact that he can’t reevaluate his foreign policy ideas for the better, but he’s willing to flip-flop on tax cuts for the super-wealthy for the worse, means he’s lost is marbles. He’s flailing around with no compass and no clue.

    I can’t predict that he’d start a war with Iran and Russia. No one knows what this man will do when the pressure gets too hot.

  35. No doubt in my mind McCain wants war. And he’s got that freako Palin on his ticket. Obama is a crap shoot, but he doesn’t seem so aggressive. The more money we spend on war, the more our economy suffers. The more these thug banks get their bailouts, the more we all suffer. No war, no white collar criminals, no vigilantes. Please, some peace while we clean up our domestic act!

  36. Alanna

    Hold up, Katherine. Palin is not some ‘freako’. Would you care to explain why you hold that opinion?

  37. Oh boy. Here we go 🙂

    1. Wants to take polar bears off the endangered species list.
    2. Thinks she can run a country because she was a governor of a state pretty remote from the rest of the country and has virtually no experience.
    3. Did some pretty shady things as governor (fiscally).
    4. Brags about using guns.
    5. Wants to drill in national parks.
    6. Prances around like an ex-beauty queen, not like a would-be-VP.
    7. Thinks lesbians and gays are the curse of sexuality.
    8. Thinks it’s okay to inflict her religion on us.
    9. Has a pregnant 17 year old daughter and claims abstinence only works.
    10. Hired by McCain after a phone interview!

    Anyone want to add a #11?

  38. Moon-howler

    Palin is an empty dress or suit, if references to dresses sounds sexist. Limited substance –at least not at the national level. She is probably a great governor of Alaska which is a big state with a tiny population. Alaska only has about twice as many people as PWC. It has over 300k fewer people than Fairfax County.

    Palin cannot stand up to scrutiny with moderately tough questions. In fairness, she just isn’t ready. She is in way over her head. She was a cheap political trick to bring in the extreme conservatives and the religious right. She is one big conversation with sound bites. All major interviews illustrate this.

    I do not like her but I would like someone in line for the president to at least accept that the earth is millions of years old and its existence is the result of physics and other natural phenomena. I am also horribly offended that anyone would think women supporting Hillary would just switch over to Sarah because she was a woman.

  39. She should have turned down the VP Ticket offer, IMHO. She took it which shows great arrogance on her part. It would be like me saying, “Sure! I’ll be the Chair of the BOCS!” I can’t stand Stewart and think he and Stirrup have ruined our county, but I’m not that stupid to believe I’m qualified for the job.

  40. Moon-howler

    KG,

    I don’t mind at all that Sarah can use a gun or field dress a moose. I don’t mind that she is a former beauty queen. (would you rather look at her or Fred Thompson?)

    I don’t mind that her daughter is pregnant. Kids are off limit in my world, both here and politicians. I do mind anyone in public office advocating abstinence only as a means of sex education. It is irresponsible to suggest and immoral to legislate.

    National Parks should be preserved. I don’t know how she feels about gays and lesbians. I have not heard her particularly pushing her religion as public policy. However, the RR sure was quick to embrace her so they must know something I don’t.

  41. TWINAD

    Moon Howler: 10:55 post.

    Great post and I agree with all your points, especially the entire third paragraph.

    I did not realize that Alaska has fewer residents than Fairfax County. Yikes! Thanks for that frightening fact.

  42. NotGregLetiecq

    Alanna, have you seen Palin go off script for more than 12 seconds yet? Would you trust the fate of our country to someone who has cult leaders perform witchcraft exorcisms on her in church? Okay. Forget it, that’s minor. Everyone has their religion. But how do you feel about her abusing power to try to fire her sister’s ex-husband from the state troopers, and then firing the head of the Alaska pubic safety commission because he refused to LET her abuse power in that way, and then being part of a massive cover-up where the top GOP lawyers descended on the Republican State Senate oversight committee to stop them from performing their duties to protect the people from such abuse? Treating everyone who disagrees with her as “the enemy?” Can’t come up with a definition of the Bush Doctrine but knows she agrees with it? Foreign policy experience amounts to “I can see Russia from my house????”

    The campaign screams at her every time she comes back from doing an interview. They have her shell shocked and frozen with fear. They’re blaming her for ruining McCain’s chances when THEY are the ones who put her in that position.

    The White House is not American Idol. We cannot afford to trust the Vice Presidency to just anyone when the President would be 72 years old and unwilling to share his medical records re. his four bouts with cancer. As great of a distraction as she has been for McCain who has no leg to stand on with regard to the issues, what does Sarah Palin add to the ticket, and more importantly, what would she add to an administration other than the same stubborn mean-spiritedness that Bush has exhibited only with less experience and less calm under scrutiny?!?!?!

    And aren’t you offended by the tokenism? Would she have been offered the job if she were a man? With those credentials? Can you imagine someone that is more of a lightweight than Sarah Palin? Is there a man in politics with less qualification to be President? If you can think of a man with so little exposure to national issues and the national stage (there’s no one in Virginia by the way) but if you can think of one, would HE have been offered this job?

    No. This was a ploy to sucker women into voting gender before country. We are not that stupid.

  43. Marie

    FORGIVE ME. THIS IS TOTALLY OFF THE SUBJECT OF “THE GREAT DEBATE” BUT I FEEL COMPELLED TO POST THIS.

    I am sorry that many of you could make the Study Circle on Immigration at Geo Mason Univ today. I hope that some of you will be participating.

    I feel at last there is a platform to begin to heal and bring our community together. As I have said in the past for me the whole issue about illegal immigration is about dignity and respect to which everyone is entitled. It concerns me that my community has been torn apart by the “illegal immigration” issue and I take responsibility for my part. Sometimes the parties involved have not been kind or very respectful of one another. The arguing and name calling from both sides has not been productive nor has it helped any of us come together to work towards a solution. Everyone has their own opinion but opinions are like noses everyone has one. Opinions do nothing to create change.

    I really want to take this opportunity to thank Chris for her efforts and willingness to work with others of different views to bring healing to our community. I know she invited many to participate. Please, please, please think seriously about participating to bring some intelligent dialog to the table without the name calling and fighting and let us work together to solve the problems within our communities.

  44. Moon-howler

    NGL said

    …what does Sarah Palin add to the ticket…?

    Quick answer: The votes of the religious right and the ultra conservative.

  45. Moon-howler

    Marie,

    Thank you for your thoughtful post. From what I have heard, this endeavor is very worthwhile and helps takes the emotion out of the problems.

    I agree with your recognition of Chris. She does not deny ‘from whence she came.’ She has reached out to everyone on this and in some cases has been smacked in the face for her efforts.

    I recommend Chris for the Prince William County Nobel Peace Prize actually. Shame on those who are sniping at her. They are moral cowards who lack her courage.

  46. —I don’t mind at all that Sarah can use a gun or field dress a moose. I don’t mind that she is a former beauty queen. (would you rather look at her or Fred Thompson?)—

    I don’t care either. So why is she bragging about it? Does she think this makes her more qualified somehow? Also, I don’t care who I look at. I’m not paying these people to look good.

    –I don’t mind that her daughter is pregnant. Kids are off limit in my world, both here and politicians. I do mind anyone in public office advocating abstinence only as a means of sex education. It is irresponsible to suggest and immoral to legislate. — She BRINGS her kids into the debate. Then she brings her forced-celebacy into it. Hypocritical in my book, never mind dangerous.

    –National Parks should be preserved. I don’t know how she feels about gays and lesbians. I have not heard her particularly pushing her religion as public policy. However, the RR sure was quick to embrace her so they must know something I don’t.–

    I have to find her statements on gays and lesbians. They were pretty bad, closed minded, and insulting. Look, you don’t have to agree with what people do in bed, but you don’t have the right to condemn entire populations because you don’t like it!

  47. Marie, did GL show up? He was personally invited 🙂

    I thought they were just going to discuss how the study circles would run, not HAVE one today. Did I misunderstand?

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