Home » The Watercooler for 09/02/08 9:00 AM
The Watercooler for 09/02/08 9:00 AM
DFA's home for a free form, open-ended discussion of what matters most to committed progressive activists.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-01-poll-monday_N.htm?csp=34
Poll: Obama gets post-convention 'bounce'
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Updated 50m ago By Susan Page, USA TODAY
ST. PAUL — The DNC convention boosted Americans' views of Barack Obama as a strong leader who "shares your values" and can manage the economy and Iraq, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Saturday and Sunday finds.
Republican John McCain's advantage in handling terrorism was dramatically reduced, and his "unfavorable" rating ticked up to its highest level this year. ... •Obama eliminated McCain's advantage as "a strong and decisive leader." By 46%-44%, those surveyed says that characteristic applies more to Obama than McCain. Before the convention, McCain held an 8-point advantage. Obama has a 13-point advantage as someone who "shares your values," almost double the edge he held before. ... |
Obama has a 19-point lead in managing the economy.
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TRUTH PATROL: Obama tax-cut claim right on target
Laura Frank Katie Kerwin McCrimmon
Tue Sep 2, 2:05 AM ET
...
The Rocky Truth Patrol sets the record straight.
Can't we all get a break?
Claim: Barack Obama says he would cut taxes for 95 percent of working families.
Rocky Truth Patrol says: Rock solid
Claim: Iraq will have an extra $79 billion in its bank account from surplus oil money by the end of the year.
Rocky Truth Patrol says: Rock solid
* Claim: Former President Clinton said we've had the "biggest increase in income inequality since the 1920s."
* Rocky Truth Patrol says: Rock solid
...... Nicest Kind:
http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20080831/NEWS/808309973/1050/ADVISORY&parentprofile=-1
An inspiring experience at Denver's DNC
Sunday, August 31, 2008
...
I went to Mile High Stadium at Invesco Field for Obama’s acceptance speech. The anticipation had built up an overwhelming excitement in me that was hard to comprehend. I was standing still, taking it all in when suddenly Michelle Obama strolled by me no more than five feet away. No one noticed her so I waved and called out, “Hi, Michelle!” And she looked me straight in the eye, smiled and said, “Hey, how’s it goin’?” Smiling like a giddy fool I responded, “I’m great, thanks!” Did that just happen? I may have just interacted with the next First Lady!
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I can't do original posts because my old computer doesn't "get" the blog software, gives me only a title but no post body.
So I need someone who actually computes in the 21st Century to take this info and run with it.
First of all, in a WaPo article entitled "The Curious Mind of John McCain" (well worth the read -- http://tinyurl.com/5cl4sk), I found the following:
"That ambition (to run for president) led McCain into a moral lapse that appalled him. It involved an ongoing dispute in South Carolina over the tradition of flying the Confederate battle flag atop the state capitol, in Columbia. In a television interview, McCain said the flag was 'offensive,' and he appeared sympathetic to its critics. His aides were alarmed, fearing the consequences in the upcoming South Carolina primary, and they wrote a damage-control statement that McCain read repeatedly before television cameras. 'I understand both sides,' McCain said. 'Some view the flag as a symbol of slavery. Others view it as a symbol of heritage. Personally, I see the battle flag as a symbol of heritage.'
"But that, McCain wrote a year later, was 'a lie.' The flag symbolized both slavery and the South's secession from 'the country I love,' and 'should be lowered forever from the staff atop South Carolina's capitol.'
" 'I had promised to tell the truth no matter what,' McCain wrote in the book. 'When I broke it, I had not just been dishonest, I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable.' "
So now we know that his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is a past member of a radical party that seeks for Alaska secession from the Union. What does this do to McCain's regard for her and their personal relationship? Will McCain be able to live with himself if he tells 'the lie' for another four years by keeping her on the ticket and appearing to approve of her?
That's what I want to know.
-- volney
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/deerfieldbeachtownhall
Joe Biden in Deerfield Beach
Join Joe Biden at a Town Hall on Tuesday, September 2nd.
Town Hall with Joe Biden
Century Village at Deerfield BeachClubhouse Party Room
2400 Century Blvd.
Deerfield Beach, FL
Tuesday, September 2nd
Doors Open: 11:30 a.m.
Program Begins: 12:30 p.m.
Joe Biden in West Palm Beach
Join Joe Biden at a Town Hall on Tuesday, September 2nd.
Town Hall with Joe Biden
Palm Beach County Convention Center650 Okeechobee Blvd.
West Palm Beach, FL
Tuesday, September 2nd
Doors Open: 5:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 6:45 p.m.
Please recommend. Thanks!
http://democracyforamerica.com/users/185833-ellen-garneau/blog_posts/26557-online-auction-fundraiser
Wow, this Sarah Palin seems to be quite the celebrity among today's breathless news reporters and stargazers. A hunting and fishing beauty queen who eats the moose she shoots; she's got spunk! Look at those adoring crowds lavishing attention on her along the campaign circuit with that ancient artifact who's running with her.
Hopefully, the Obama campaign will run with this opportunity and begin airing its spots featuring Britney, Paris, and Sarah. I mean, she's a right wing rock star, but is she ready to lead?
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/02/Poll_Obama_gains_Clinton_supporters/UPI-62041220352958/
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama greets supporters in Irvine Park in Beaver, Pennsylvania on August 29, 2008 (UPI Photo/Stephen Gross)
Poll: Obama gains Clinton supporters
PRINCETON, N.J., (UPI) -- A Gallup Poll indicates last week's U.S. Democratic convention helped shore up support for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., with fans of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.
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Among former Clinton supporters interviewed for the poll, 81 percent said they would vote for Obama -- a jump of 11 percent in a poll taken before the convention, USA Today reported Tuesday.
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convincing disaffected Clinton primary voters that Obama is strong, decisive, honest, trustworthy
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12 percent of Clinton primary voter said they planned to vote for John McCain -- drop of 4 percentage points from ... before DNC Conve
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That is 12% of Clinton primary supporters too dumb to know what they're doing, who had no business getting behind Clinton in the first place.
of the NRA.
My name's Pallidan - "Have gun will travel"
Or as my grandpa would say in his immigrant vernacular "gotta gun, go away"
It is one persons word against another, but this lady claims she was Miss Congeniality - not Miss Mooseburger.
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this special message:
Frankly I'm sick and tired of the SP (Sarah Parker ? oops, Sarah Palin) talk by the CM.
I'm going to continue to spend the rest of the campaign talking about being FOR Obama and less so about being AGAINST McCain.
As for the respective VP candidates ?
Just that, I'm not casting my vote for a VP but rather for a prez candidate.
We now return to the regularly scheduled progamming.
Rosencrans (obviously not your real name)- Hitler would be proud of your insidious slander.
Now to get back to real life. Just for the record, Obama's mother was legally married when Obama was conceived.
Having said that, IMO there is nothing inherently wrong for a healthy 17-year-old getting pregnant, inside or outside of marriage, if the child was conceived in love...
(continued)
my sex ed teacher in Junior High was the HS football coach and was plain spoken, we had all the facts
my advice to the high school boys that worked for me was "don't think with your gonads", if they started talking about their relationships while we worked
Since the father of the bride to be is an adult, he is lucky not to be on some "sex offender" registry (here in Iowa he might be); and as an adult he might be the one to focus on, but I say drop it.
But the lack of sex education in today's schools because of religious extremists should be challenged
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/01/obama.palin/index.html?section=cnn_latest
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Obama says Palin's family off limits
CNN
MONROE, Michigan (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama said firmly that families are off-limits in the campaign for president, reacting to news that GOP running mate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.
Obama said reporters should "back off these kinds of stories" and noted that he was born to an 18-year-old mother.
...Sorry about that
This is a copy of something I wrote for another blog. Don't know what this blog did to it....but here goes.
The Moral Dilemma
Obama's mother was legally married when Obama was conceived.
Having said that, IMO there is nothing inherently wrong for a healthy 17-year-old getting pregnant, inside or outside of marriage, if the child was conceived in love.
Neocons are right to say that Palin's daughter should be commended for not aborting. I am a liberal, and agree that elective termination should remain legal, but I disagree with the feminist "choice" concept that says a woman is obligated, to herself and to society, to kill her baby fetus that she doesn't really want. Furthermore, abortion clinics have never agreed to share their outpatient data (what have they got to hide?)but the anecdotal evidence is pretty clear that abortion is at least "not better" for women's health and even risk of death, than childbirth, as historically was always true...
(continued)
The problem with Palin's daughter is that it reflects little virtue of family communication between her and her daughter, and too little parental time spent involved in her daughter's upbringing to explain the nature of the female fertility cycle, among other things.
These are core issues with religious-right conservative groups (as well as most liberal individuals) and of course the much-trumpeted "family values" crowd, which frowns upon how families become dysfunctional, as a result of aggressive yuppy material/monetary ambitions of both working parents, which all too often rise above the concerns for family life.
There is also the Palin's (and republican's) Pollyanna-ish treatment of the whole issue with a happy-marriage ending globetty-gook. Few poor and/or abandoned single women can ill-afford to enjoy any kind of such security in the face of a 9-month term, not only in financial support, but psycological/practical support of everyday living tasks.
(cont)
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Welfare reform [deform], the pride of neocon revolution, took the newborn baby away from her single mother, only 3-months after birth, by threatening to cut off all government support to the mother, including food and housing, if the mother does not stop breast-feeding, puts the baby on cow's milk with a caretaker (breaking the newborn bond with the mother) making the mother go out to do 40-hour job searches or 30 hour working, if she does find a job, a job she must take, even if it is a long bus ride away, adding substantially to the work requirement time away from her baby.
Welfare reform [deform] severely punishes these women and their babies for unplanned or unprepared pregnancies.
The Pollyanna innuendo is an elitist mentality.
but she "appeals to the GOP base" and that speaks volumes about them and less about her
... with or without benefit of marriage. It used to be the kids were born to married people but Dad was always working and the kids never saw him. That's the way it was in my family, and it sucked.
Now the kids are born to single mothers and the dads run away. It still sucks. Kids need two parents who are fully involved with them.
I feel sorry for Bristol Palin because her parents are condemning her to a short and loveless marriage followed by a messy divorce and all the notoriety that goes with this when you're "famous". She's just a kid and doesn't deserve what she's going to get.
Meantime, given the picture upthread, McCain better snap out of it, declare it a new kind of "bimbo eruption", put an end to it and pick a real running mate.
He shouldn't forget that the vast majority of the population is 50+ and doesn't enjoy seeing our country represented by shallow people of any persuasion.
-- volney
- The scuttlebutt is the right wing is looking for Obama's parent's marriage license
By Marty S on Sep 2, 2008 11:59 AM EDTI remember when Sen. John Kerry and John Edwards mentioned more than once during the 2004 campagin that Mary Cheney is a lesbian. They thought it would turn off conservatives. However, it backfired because no matter the age children are off limits.
"[N]o matter the age children are off limits."
Doesn't this seem a little, I don't know, restrictive? Nearly every person I've ever met is a child of some age of some person.
... and I'll briefly break from my FOR Obama meme to talk about something that's not been posted here (unless I missed it):
http://www.keloland.com/custompages/kelolandblogs/madvilletimes/index.cfm?c=2091
Palin's Reverend Wright Moments
Posted by: Cory Heidelberger - 09/02/2008 7:30 AM
I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions.
—Joe Vogler, founder, Alaskan Independence Party
I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party convention in the Golden Heart City, Fairbanks.
—Governor Sarah Palin, video address, 2008.03.24
The difference, my dear Dr. Blanchard, between Governor Palin's wacky friends and Senator Obama's erstwhile pastor Jeremiah Wright is that we have Senator Obama on record disavowing Rev. Wright's "damning" of America (although, as you'll recall from April, I'm not convinced Wright said anything that needed disavowing).
(continued)
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Governor Palin, meanwhile, explicitly welcomes a party that disavows America and slaps America's institutions with the d-word. Governor Palin giggles at the b-word and worse insults on live radio, issues a half-hearted apology (after catching public heck) that misses the point, then essentially endorses the purveyors of that language by giving them a scoop interview the day Senator McCain picks her as his running mate.
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So, to review, by picking Palin, McCain has taken age, inexperience, foreign policy knowledge, fine oratory, and now Reverend Wright off the table as issues he can use against Obama. Bush and the Iraqi government have knocked the legs out from under McCain's argument that a timetable for troop withdrawal is a bad idea. History is killing McCain's argument that his Republican policies will be better for the economy than Obama's (a new analysis finds the economy consistently grows faster and more fairly under Democratic Presidents).
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(continued)
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Pretty soon all McCain-Palin will have left to run on is moose burgers and creationism. And at this point, nothing could be more ironic than a McCain campaign touting "intelligent design."
New campaign slogan: McCain-Palin: The Campaign to Nowhere.
what a pisser, moose burgers and patriotism? Not a strong platform.
Palin represents everything that's contradictory ass-backwards about this neocon revolution's core.
yuppie dysfunctional materialism "married" to intelligent design fundies
for which the oil companies' they subsidize (with our tax dollars) have no use - when their geologists are analyzing where to drill, based on evolutionary principles.
- The big question? will adults in the GOP step in and take the car keys away from
By Phil Specht on Sep 2, 2008 12:36 PM EDTthe juvenile "presumptive nominee"
Indeed.
I wonder if McCain's Country First motto is taken from the AIP's Alaska First slogan ?
Thank God in Obama we don't have an American who advocates anything or anybody first (lest with have an Hawaii independence movement called Aloha America or a Chicago first movement called Uno's for Chigago's).
and then decided to run for president. What's more he's been in the Senate for 24 months and has spent the last 19 months on the campaign trail. So the same thing can be said about Obama.
...and every damned Democrat in the country is gonna come out and whup you Gopers North, South, East and West. Y'all can slink back and hide in Limbaugh's pants next to his Viagracontin.
You either ignore the commentary available here and elsewhere, or you lack fundamental reading comprehension skills. This is a virtual reprise of information presented earlier, prompted by your stupid, annoying comments.
You come here telling us that you don't know anything about Obama, but follow up that comment by telling us about him. Experience is a canard that's been thoroughly exposed during this campaign. McCain's experience has given him the expertise to fly planes and make decisions regarding military engagement that drain the country's resources and scuttle its prestige around the world. In other words, his experience qualifies him to do what Bush has done for eight long, dreadful years.
Obama's experience is a unique product of his upbringing, intellect and education. It takes the form of his community organizing, educating, writing, and public service at the state and national level (continued).
This experience ranges far, far beyond the hermetic life experience of the current president. Ultimately, there isn't any quintessential experience that qualifies a person to be president. Rather, the qualities necessary to become a good president are sound judgment, reason and character, however they are obtained.
Give this hypothesis a little thought and look at some examples in history before coming back with more of your inane ruminations.
http://media.2theadvocate.com/documents/a001mai.pdf
today is the day to focus on recovery if the GOP is genuine in their interest
...is scaring the H out of me
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/145314.shtml?3day#contents
- Hanna sorta of stays disorganized and will slow down and turn into a rain maker
By Phil Specht on Sep 2, 2008 1:01 PM EDTFORECAST POSITIONS AND MAX WINDS
INITIAL 02/1500Z 21.0N 73.5W 60 KT
12HR VT 03/0000Z 21.4N 73.7W 55 KT
24HR VT 03/1200Z 22.3N 74.2W 60 KT
36HR VT 04/0000Z 23.6N 75.3W 65 KT
48HR VT 04/1200Z 25.1N 76.8W 70 KT
72HR VT 05/1200Z 29.5N 80.5W 75 KT
96HR VT 06/1200Z 36.5N 80.0W 35 KT...INLAND
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ike is the intense tight spinning top making the beeline.
Hanna and Gustav will come together over Long Island.
storms have continued all day today in Baton Rouge, flooding is the next concern
...if you click on a link, then 'back' to the blog, it drops a bunch of posts unless you 'refresh.'
...they've adopted a health related online course. It has units on sex education, etc, and one on alcohol and one on drugs. It reminds me of self-paced tutorials. Anyway, to get into the program and set up your account they know exactly who you are b/c of the info you give. Then they ask a bunch of really personal questions that they say is so they can tailor the tutorial to you and that it is completely confidential. Yeah right. Not that the school would be sneaky, but I don't think anything you put into a computer is really confidential any more. I started the one on alcohol and they ask how many drinks do you have in a week, a day, etc. I am taking it just to familiarize and answer truthfully that I don't drink at all, but the course is 'required' for the students and I do believe I would balk if I had to take it - and if I drank/did drugs I certainly would not answer truthfully.
- Fred -- kudos to Biden (my third choice after Obama and Edwards)
By * rdorgan on Sep 2, 2008 1:24 PM EDThttp://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/mollyclaflinblog/gG5tZp/commentary#comment-gGQKJZ
...
Once I decided to support Barack, my contact with these friends became minimal - we wanted to avoid wrecking the friendship over a potential political blow-up.
My friends were furious at how the primary campaign wound up. They went to the convention, and when they left they still had a "Hillary for President" sign in their front yard! Now they've taken down that sign.
(continued)
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They told me that, in Denver, Michelle played the most important role of anyone in reaching out to Hillary supporters. My friends not only praised Michelle's convention speech, they also said that Michelle spoke at smaller venues and was extremely gracious.
My friends also told me that Barack's choice of Biden was critical. They said that if it wasn't going to be Hillary, they wanted it to be Biden.
Because of the success of the convention, my friends are now completely on board!
- Biden's "intelligent articulate African American" statement
By Fred from Oregon on Sep 2, 2008 2:00 PM EDTThat got him in trouble - LOL - is one for the history books.
Obama was so exceptional, I would have supported him in the beginning - thanks to people like you, who saw the diamond in the rough, I finally did get to know him.
Good thing, "pretty boy" Edwards didn't make it. I liked him but saw his campaigning in 2004 as anemic.
... is John McCain stable enough, thoughtful enough to be our next President, our next Commander-in-Chief ?:
The New York Post has excerpts from Johnston's MySpace page:
On his MySpace page, Johnston boasts, "I'm a f - - -in' redneck" who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes.
Story continues below
advertisement
"But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess."
"Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass," he added.
He also claims to be "in a relationship," but states, "I don't want kids."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/01/levi-johnston-bristol-pal_n_123089.html
- Somebody get my heavy bass going on my ghetto cruiser
By Fred from Oregon on Sep 2, 2008 2:06 PM EDTHand me my dragging hip huggers and skateboard, backwards-worn baseball cap, and stinky cologne.
I'm on my way to church to get married to my main squeeze
-Levi Johnston
- Howard Dean is still my hero...
By linda b on Sep 2, 2008 9:03 AM EDTspoke at the women's caucus at the convention...what a guy.