So who is watching the debate tonight?

[JoeChalupa]

Yeah, I know, the majority of you all don't give a crap about the debates and I know you conservatives and republicans don't give a crap either but I'll be watching it.
Curious to see how it goes. I think it is more important for Obama to hold his own against the Clinton machine.
It is the last one and Obama must come through unscathed.

Barack on!!!!

[PEP]

I dont care to hear them argue about which one is going to raise taxes higher than the other or who is going to sit down for tea with Iran and Cuba.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I dont care to hear them argue about which one is going to raise taxes higher than the other or who is going to sit down for tea with Iran and Cuba.


yes i agree. ignoring an 80 yr old dictator is the smart move.. :rolleyes

why do you care about taxes? Or are you in the top 2% who'se taxes will be raised? Or are you just being an ingenious partisan hack who spews talking points?

[xrayzebra]

Well did you hear the great response Obama made on Capital
gain taxes.

The man is an absolute fool. When it was pointed out to him
revenue has always increased with lower taxes. His response.
Well it may or it may not.......yeah. Yeah, it is not fair that
a secretary pays more taxes than a CEO. Give me a break.
This guy is not only a Socialist, he is a stupid Socialist. Or
one that wants to control business by his tax codes. How do
you say blackmail. OMG and all you think he is the second
coming. Silly, Silly people.

[xrayzebra]

plus we already sell food to them and they sell american goods

our farmers and companies benefit from cuba, just not the american people

typical

Why don't you move over there and start a business. If
it is such a wonderful place. Get in on those bennies.



And who says we want to influence them. We want
their government gone.

[ClingingMars]

VOTE FOR CLINTON! OPERATION CHAOS!

- Mars

[ClingingMars]

lame

no more like hilarious. everyone on this forum plz vote for clinton, kthnxbai.

- Mars

[Don Quixote]

I don't get cable, so I couldn't catch the debate. But I understand that tonight went rather poorly for Obama. Is this what people who watched the debate would say? Why or why not?

[possessed]

you act like clinton wouldn't beat mccain in the general anyway

crofl
Why, would you vote with your vagina?

[possessed]

Well did you hear the great response Obama made on Capital
gain taxes.

The man is an absolute fool. When it was pointed out to him
revenue has always increased with lower taxes. His response.
Well it may or it may not.......yeah. Yeah, it is not fair that
a secretary pays more taxes than a CEO. Give me a break.
This guy is not only a Socialist, he is a stupid Socialist. Or
one that wants to control business by his tax codes. How do
you say blackmail. OMG and all you think he is the second
coming. Silly, Silly people.
The man is fumbling his way through this whole debate. He sounds like a blithering idiot when he doesn't have his (umm) words (umm) prepared (umm) for him.

[Don Quixote]

That's what my sources tell me about Obama's delivery tonight. Very flustered.

And I understand that Hillary was on her game tonight. She was vicious, attacked him on some of his comments recently, went after his association with Wright and Ayers, and got him to flip-flop on "disowning" Wright. So Hillary clearly won.\

If I'm McCain, maybe I want to face Obama in the general? Hillary is a very formidable opponent, and will do or say anything to get elected.

(Then again, Hillary brought up that Bill pardoned two members of the Weathermen.)

[possessed]

I can't get over how awful Obama sounds, Bush would tool him in a debate for Christ's sake.

I predict buyer's remorse for Democrats. :donkey

[Nbadan]

Bush would tool him in a debate for Christ's sake.

:lmao

[BonnerDynasty]

I LOL'd when they were talking about the bombing dudes. Obama shot back with the Bill pardons. Golden.

It's all entertainment. That's it.

[Mr. Peabody]

The man is fumbling his way through this whole debate. He sounds like a blithering idiot when he doesn't have his (umm) words (umm) prepared (umm) for him.

I agree. He should have been better prepared to respond to questions like "Do you respect the flag?" and "Does Rev. Wright love America?" in a presidential debate.

[peewee's lovechild]

I LOL'd when they were talking about the bombing dudes. Obama shot back with the Bill pardons. Golden.

It's all entertainment. That's it.


Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton.

She didn't pardon anyone.

[MannyIsGod]

I don't get cable, so I couldn't catch the debate. But I understand that tonight went rather poorly for Obama. Is this what people who watched the debate would say? Why or why not?

It was on regular TV.

[MannyIsGod]

I agree. He should have been better prepared to respond to questions like "Do you respect the flag?" and "Does Rev. Wright love America?" in a presidential debate.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1731655,00.html

The Democrats Play Trivial Pursuit


In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama tells an amusing story about his first tour through downstate Illinois, when he had the audacity to order Dijon mustard on his cheeseburger at a TGI Friday's. His political aide hastily informed the waitress that Obama didn't want Dijon at all, and thrust a yellow bottle of ordinary-American heartland-values mustard at him instead. The perplexed waitress informed Obama that she had Dijon if he wanted. He smiled and said thanks. "As the waitress walked away, I leaned over and whispered that I didn't think there were any photographers around," Obama recalled.

Obama's memoir dripped with contempt for modern gotcha politics, for a campaign culture obsessed with substantively irrelevant but supposedly symbolic gaffes like John Kerry ordering Swiss cheese or Al Gore sighing or George H.W. Bush checking his watch or Michael Dukakis looking dorky in a tank. "What's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial," he wrote.

Last night at the National Constitution Center, at a Democratic debate that was hyped by ABC as a discussion of serious constitutional issues, America got to see exactly what Obama was complaining about. At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Senator Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly "friendly," and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel — with a single detour into Senator Hillary Clinton's yarn about sniper fire in Tuzla. Apparently, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ran out of time before they could ask Obama why he's such a lousy bowler.

It must be said that Obama did not seem very comfortable on the defensive, and he had trouble answering questions like whether he's more patriotic than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Since "performance" is all that the talking heads ever notice, they'll probably declare Clinton the winner of the debate. She constantly salted Obama's wounds, all the while insisting that she was merely concerned that Republicans would salt them in the fall, and that his various controversies simply "raised questions" about his electability; at one point she claimed that his exhaustively chewed-over relationship with Wright "deserves further exploration," which is kind of like saying that Whitewater deserves further investigation. "These are legitimate questions, as everything is when you run for office," Clinton said.

But maybe Obama is right that Americans are tired of "the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with," as he put in his lapel-pin answer. And even if they aren't, it's nice to hear someone critique that image-obsessed, context-deprived soundbite culture — a culture, incidentally, in which Stephanopoulos flourished when he was spinning for the Clintons.
Last night's debate did not reveal any big policy differences between Obama and Clinton. But it did reveal their different approaches to politics, and the different arguments for their candidacies that stem from those approaches.

Clinton's main argument was that she can beat John McCain because she's already been vetted in this culture, "having gone through 16 years on the receiving end of what the Republican Party dishes out." She's basically saying that her dirty laundry — the questionable money she made in cattle futures, the Travelgate firings, her kiss of Suha Arafat, her husband's pardons, the unpleasantries of 1998 — is no longer newsworthy, and the mere fact of her political survival shows that it's irrelevant. "I have a lot of baggage, and everyone has rummaged through it for many years," she said. Obama hasn't rehashed that baggage, although he did slyly remind Americans about her 1992 crack about staying home and baking cookies, ostensibly to make that point that she had been treated unfairly, probably with an ulterior motive. But in any case, it's not like she's survived all that baggage unscathed; she's got sky-high unfavorable ratings. And it's not like Republicans would agree not to raise all that baggage in the fall if she somehow became the nominee. Hey, she even said everything's legitimate when you run for office.

Obama's argument is that he can rise above the divisive politics of the '90s — not just the intense partisanship, but the constant posturing and point-scoring in the service of winning a news cycle. He portrays Clinton as a victim of those war-room politics — but also a veteran practitioner. "Senator Clinton learned the wrong lesson, because she's adopted the same tactics," he said last night. He's talking about the culture of perpetual spin (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1714840,00.html), where everything is fair game in the service, including your opponent's kindergarten dreams of grandeur. It's a game of guilt by association (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1724888,00.html), as Obama said last night, "the kind of game in which anybody I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship, their ideas can be attributed to me."

This makes for extremely stupid politics, where substance is only relevant to catch politicians in flip-flops or mistakes. Last night, for example, Gibson tried to nail Obama over capital gains taxes, revealing only his own misunderstanding of the difference between correlation and causation. For all the back-and-forth over a crazy Weatherman he once served with on a board, Obama never got to tell voters that he opposed the war in Iraq from the start. For all the back-and-forth over her Tuzla goof — Obama stayed out of it, although he acknowledged that his campaign aides addressed it when asked — Clinton never got to mention anything she's done in the Senate. And the only real constitutional issue that got discussed was the right to bear arms.

It's funny, because the intended point of Obama's ill-advised comments about small-town voters was that they "cling" to wedge issues involving God and guns because they've lost faith in our political culture's ability to solve problems. It's an arguable point. But last night suggests that there's little denying that our political culture has lost its ability to illuminate any issue more complicated than the appropriate condiments for a red-blooded American to eat.

[RandomGuy]

yes i agree. ignoring an 80 yr old dictator is the smart move.. :rolleyes

why do you care about taxes? Or are you in the top 2% who'se taxes will be raised? Or are you just being an ingenious partisan hack who spews talking points?

As a friend of mine is fond of saying, there are two kinds of republicans, millionaires and suckers.:stirpot:

[RandomGuy]

such crucial matters as Senator Obama's ...former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly "friendly,"


In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines. In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation. What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.__This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.


I might not agree with the guy's words, but he has more than earned the right to say what he thinks about his country.

[Don Quixote]

It was on regular TV.

Good grief. What a silly mistake. You're right, it was on ABC.

You'll have to forgive me if I was justified in thinking that this debate would be a snooze like the 22 before it. It most assuredly wasn't.

I was too busy to watch it anyway ... but, wow, what a bad performance by Obama, according to the "day-after" sound bites and transcripts!

[Don Quixote]

I might not agree with the guy's words, but he has more than earned the right to say what he thinks about his country.

Yes. It goes to show that you can find some good in every person. Hitler loved his dog! He was fond of children, too. (I'm not saying Ayers and Wright = Hitler.)

Nobody ought to be challenging his right to say what he wants to say, no matter how foolish (this is not lost here at ST!). What we're interested in is the content of what these men and women are saying. For instance, if Ayers, as late as 2001, is expressing regret only that he couldn't have planted more bombs and done more damage to America, and Obama knew about this and associated with this guy (and guys like him), then it's only natural that he's being called out on it.

I'm glad he's finally being held accountable for his associations!

You know ... it's not too late for the Democrat party to get another candidate.

[xrayzebra]

I might not agree with the guy's words, but he has more than earned the right to say what he thinks about his country.

And we have ever right to disagree with him and call him
what he is. A hater of America!

[MannyIsGod]

Good grief. What a silly mistake. You're right, it was on ABC.

You'll have to forgive me if I was justified in thinking that this debate would be a snooze like the 22 before it. It most assuredly wasn't.

I was too busy to watch it anyway ... but, wow, what a bad performance by Obama, according to the "day-after" sound bites and transcripts!

I didn't watch it either. I watched parts, but com'on dude the last day of the NBA season with some awesome games and (as you said) this one was the 22nd.

[atxrocker]

this is a clip of barack talking about last nights debate. at the 2:27 mark he does the "shake the haters off" gesture to a standing ovation. does he think he's hip now? was he on B.E.T or something? :rolleyes

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FlR9DNfqGD4

does he seriously not rub anyone else the wrong way?

[BonnerDynasty]

Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton.

She didn't pardon anyone.

She is affiliated with Bill therefore believes and supports all of his actions and discussions 100%.



Isn't that how it works? Clinton Book on Politics changes so fast it's hard to keep up lately.

[Don Quixote]

So is President Obama still the inevitable candidate? Is he still the man that will bring hope and change? Is he even the front-runner now?

How is Hillary looking?

[MannyIsGod]

So is President Obama still the inevitable candidate? Is he still the man that will bring hope and change? Is he even the front-runner now?

How is Hillary looking?

Obama has had this won for quite some time now.

[Nbadan]

Obama has had this won for quite some time now.

Oh no doubt, the only people who don't get it are those in denial (i.e. the wing-nut pundits), those who are math challenged, and Hitlary Clinton....

....people better start listening, after all, historically, Manny and I don't agree a lot....

[Ignignokt]

Obama has had this won for quite some time now.

and we know it's not the general election.

[Nbadan]

this is a clip of barack talking about last nights debate. at the 2:27 mark he does the "shake the haters off" gesture to a standing ovation. does he think he's hip now? was he on B.E.T or something? :rolleyes

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FlR9DNfqGD4

does he seriously not rub anyone else the wrong way?


I like this one better...oh yes he does...


DygBj4Zw6No

[Don Quixote]

Obama has had this won for quite some time now.
And you feel the superdelegates will go his way? And what happens if the Clintons steal his nomination?

[PEP]

Nobama is a clever SOB, did anyone see the vid of BJ calling Nobama a whiner?