Pangloss

Definitely -- they have every right to tell people everything from what they think of the bill to how badly Richard Durbin's body order was that day. (grin) But joking aside, you're right that there's a political aspect to it for Democrats as well, or as you say face value is not always valuable -- certainly.

What did she do, specifically, that was against the law?

And Obama is a smoker, but his chances of dying from that poor health habit while in office are very slim, I agree. We have actually talked about that before, just not recently. I concede the point that his previous health record suggests a lower survivability rate, but I don't think we can state scientifically valid statistics on it. If you run across a study that can build actual statistics based on those factors, I'd be interested in hearing it. Regarding the subject of "which church is worse", in my opinion that actually comes down to ideologies, not absolutes. Many here apparently feel that Palin's goo-goo-ga-ga churchgoers are more dangerous than Rev. Wrights "take the LSD out of my cereal, CIA!" churchgoers. But I just came from a moderate conservative forum in which the general consensus was the opposite -- that the conspiracy stuff is the more serious, more detrimental thing. I think both sides have valid points of view, but I also think neither point is relevant to the current debate. Show me a presidential candidate that speaks in tongues or believes that the CIA is lacing our food with acid, and we'll talk.

It's definitely the latter, guy. Government in a democracy isn't an all-or-nothing affair. You get the two sides together on an issue and you find common ground. So for Republicans to pound the podium demanding X, and then reject one-half of X when they get it, that is anathema to how things work in a democracy. You accept one-half of X in the hope that some day you'll get some semblance of the other half. That's what you do. That's what governments in this country have done for 230 years. That's what makes this country great -- that ability to find common ground and make slow, gradual progress over time. Do you want to drill oil out of the ground and put it in people's gas tanks, or do you want to trounce Democrats and put them in their place? Which is more important to you?

What ParanoiA and john5746 said, and I will just add that the above is not an argument I've ever made.

Yeah, that church Obama was a member of was pretty extreme. Still, I don't hold it against him, no. As far as I know there's no evidence that Palin believes that. Just as there's no evidence that Obama holds Rev. Wright's just-as-dire views. Well now you know how those who had a problem with Obama because of his church association feel. I'm telling you, this is just not a good path to go down. It just does not play out with the public the way you want it to -- that's why I suggest staying above it. But hey, it's a free country, and I respect your opinion on it.

That's one way to look at it. Here's another. She wasn't the left's poster child for failure before she became John McCain's economic adviser. On the contrary, she was the left's poster child for women in business. She was the left's poster child for breaking the glass ceiling. She was the left's poster child for female ingenuity and invention in a man's world. And finally, when it all came crashing down, she was the left's poster child for rich white men using women to take the blame for their mistakes. But sign her up for a job in the Republican Party, and suddenly she's the left's poster child for corporate failure. That having been said, that doesn't make her a good economic adviser, and in fact there's reasonable evidence that she's not qualified, and very little evidence that she is. In fact what I suspect she really is is yet another example of how confrontational motivations drive the current political climate. She was chosen because she's female, because of everything I said in the paragraph above, and because they can lord all that over the left. All of which are bad reasons for selecting an economic adviser. Is McCain really trying to tell me that she was the BEST choice? The MOST qualified person to advise him on the economy? Really? I actually gave Fiorina some thought back when she was axed from HP, and I thought she got the short shrift at the time. So I actually have an opinion on this subject that was formed before she was named McCain's economic adviser. But yeah, even I think it was a bad choice, and it irks me to see that kind of selection process deciding what will likely be a key cabinet position in the next administration if he wins. All I can say is she'd better have a REAL economic adviser working for HER. (So... next can we talk about some of Obama's interesting choices for advisers? My personal fave is policy adviser Greg Craig, the lawyer who represented John Hinckley, the guy who shot Reagan, as well as Elian Gonzales's Cuban father. Gotta love the stickin'-it-to-the-Republicans angles there! But hey, he's definitely qualified.)

For months now Republicans have been telling us about how we need to start drilling, and it's all Democrats' fault that we haven't been. It's been, what, two weeks since the "drill drill drill" chanting on the floor of the convention? So what happens today? The House passes a bill that would allow offshore drilling, and Republicans threaten to filibuster it in the Senate and the President announced that he will VETO it! No really. This actually happened today. No no, I'm serious. No really, stop laughing, I'm not kidding. Really. Really. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/washington/17cong.html?hp

You're forgetting that that only applies when Americans elect Republicans.

What IS the percentage of workers with families who pay taxes? Just curious.

Didn't we just get through deciding in this forum that it was wrong to condemn Obama for his associations with Rev. Wright and that church's extremism? Why are we now doing the same thing to Sarah Palin?

Well I wouldn't let MS off the hook that easy -- I think the basic motivations that produced Apple's present behavior are the same in any software company. And MS has a long history of untoward behavior with regard to both customers and competitors. But no, you're right, they're not doing that here, and that could be an indication of a difference in their current corporate cultures. Not to get too far off the subject, but these things always seem to come down to a kind of three-way standoff between a company's legal, marketing and administrative departments -- legal holding them back, marketing driving them forward, and administration trying to keep an eye on the big picture. Google's "don't be evil" philosophy comes to mind as an example of an approach to dealing with that problem. Not that they haven't had their own share of controversies, but given the way they've inculcated their technologies into our lives it's not hard to imagine a few nightmare scenarios had they NOT had a philosophy like that. (Actually, given the stunning success of the iPhone, I wouldn't be surprised to see MS head in the same direction. I use a Windows smartphone myself, and it is a *dog* compared with the iPhone. And MS well knows it. I'm very concerned about what lessons MS is learning at the moment. Maybe they'll try to tackle an iPhone-like usability champion but with the openness and extensibility. On the other hand, they make Windows, so how likely is that, really?)

You have a remarkable insight sometimes, john. I wonder if any of that is attributable to society's present tone and attitude. There was an interesting bit of political wrangling between the two candidates yesterday when McCain made a statement along the lines of the economy's infrastructure being sound, which Obama immediately pounced on, portraying it as if McCain was saying that nothing was wrong. What happened next is interesting: McCain changed his statement at his next stop, talking about how badly the economy is hurting right now. The hyper-reactive aspect of that (the two candidates responding so quickly to one another that even the audience doesn't usually know what they're talking about) is interesting and much reported-on at the moment, but I think what's really interesting about it is how closely the candidates are watching the mood of the country. I don't think it's just the economy, either. I think it's a sign of what the mood of the country is as a whole at the moment. Which, by the way, makes the virtual tie between the two candidates even more interesting. I think that connects to your point about the difference between Obama's message and JFK's. Kennedy was definitely playing to the audience of the day as well. What does that say about the audience of today?

Seems reasonable to me. Certainly political progress needs to continue if Iraq is to have any chance at all, and I don't think anyone would disagree that the job isn't finished by a long shot.

I disagree, I think it has given them exactly that -- breathing room for long-term political progress, much of which will take years, if not decades, but which is very much more possible now because of the surge. And if you don't believe me, watch Obama take full advantage of it once he takes office. I'll split this off to a separate thread.

I've seen that viral email as well, and I think it's just as vapidly partisan as the thing it propounds to attack. If some idiot extremist accuses your candidate of being a Muslim, then the entire opposition must think he is a Muslim? Please. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Right. You wanna talk about parsing definitions, just ask a Democrat whether the Surge worked!

I responded to that point at the end of post #64. I just didn't quote it that way. Sorry for any confusion. To be even more direct, you're absolutely right, that's exactly my concern in this thread and in general. Partisan framing. I don't like it. That's my opinion. You can put lipstick on a pi-... er, never mind. That's why I've debunked every partisan thread you've created since you declared the Surge to have failed a month after it started. That was, what, over a year ago? You can call it "Karl Rove's playbook" all you want, but I apply the same critical eye to our conservative members and our resident crackpot extremists both left and right, and I've got the overflowing in-box to prove it. I could be less celebratory about it when I succeed, I suppose -- you made that point in another thread the other day, and I thought it was fair. I do tend to drag things out a bit sometimes, gasbag that I am. I enjoy your participation here and I want it to continue, so I will work on that. line[/hr] Mod note: Discussion of the Surge in Iraq moved to here.

http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-10042127-12.html Should be interesting to see how this plays out. The guy wrote an app for the iPhone that does podcasting better than Apple's app. So Apple is denying him the right to distribute it to iPhone owners. That fact alone should send chills up the spine of any programmer, but it gets better. Apparently the guy's distributing the app anyway, through some sort of back channel, asking for PayPal donations. But Apple has the ability to disable applications on people's iPhones remotely, so people are saying Apple will simply turn the guy off. Wow. If Microsoft did something like that the entire world would be in an uproar.

I did respond to each of your points, directly and completely. line[/hr] Oh look, it's another world-renowned expert talking about how the crisis in the financial sector is spilling over into the economy. http://www.forbes.com/wallstreet/2008/09/15/forbes-banking-aig-biz-wall-cx_pm_0916forbestranscript.html Pretty serious stuff, alright. But just not cooperating with the action plan. Darn those economists! Didn't they get the memo from the Democrats' Rapid Response Team?!?!

They did, in fact, misquote him. That's a factual statement, and if it's wrong then you should be able to demonstrate that it's wrong by showing me a quote in which Alan Greenspan says that the economy is in a once-in-a-century crisis. On the contrary, we've looked at several quotes in which Alan Greenspan clearly says that it is the financial sector is in a once-in-a-century "crisis", and we've also looked at quotes that clearly separate the two lines of thinking. So I've made my case. QED. No, nobody's ruled it out. I said that yesterday right here in this thread -- depression is a possibility. It's possible you misunderstood this quote, which on reflection I see could have been more clear: Greenspan said nothing of the kind. You should be asking yourself why he didn't predict depression' date=' if he was so convinced that this was a century-level economic crisis. [/quote'] Greenspan didn't say it was impossible, he just didn't predict it. Greenspan didn't say what you're in here preaching that he said. He just did not. You're the only one predicting ultimate doom. The only one.

Did they, or did they not, take one word out of his mouth and insert a different one? Interesting article: "Economists see more pain to come, but no depression" http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10471920 Still not unraveling..................................

It is pretty hard to resist pushing the button sometimes.

I think the concerns above are perfectly valid, though I think bombus's "screws loose" assessment is contemptible, and I think it's quite reasonable for people to wonder what kind of president Palin would make. Her lack of experience is a legitimate issue, just as it is with Obama (iNow raised some pretty good points in response to that issue earlier, talking about how he's had a couple years of vetting by the public now). Even though McCain is unlikely -- actually VERY unlikely -- to die while in office, people have a right to be concerned about something that has a 15% chance of happening before we get another say in the matter. And the trend towards eight-year terms has been pretty obvious -- it could be argued that the rise in polarization has actually contributed to a HIGHER chance of incumbent re-election. Which puts McCain in the 32% category, and then it gets a little more interesting. So I think the concerns are legitimate, and I think people are right to ask questions. I do wish some in the media and on the far left weren't so quick to throw harsh judgments around while we're still light on facts, but that's not a reflection on anyone here. Interesting point.

One need look no farther than the previous two posts to see the vast difference between what Alan Greenspan was saying and the dire extreme being peddled in this thread. And iNow, none of those quotes disprove my point. They actually support it. Greenspan said nothing of the kind. You should be asking yourself why he didn't predict depression, if he was so convinced that this was a century-level economic crisis. You can't deny that they did actually remove a word from his mouth and insert a different word in its place. If Greenspan was referring to the economy as opposed to the financial industry then why would he feel compelled to go on to talk about the impact of the crisis on the economy? I think CNN is just equating the two words, which is understandable, if naive. Here's a version of the story that shares the same headline but look at how the first line reads: http://att.cnn.mlogic.mobi/cnn/lt_ne/lt_ne/detail/168352;jsessionid=8997D827272C1E52A4DBCE4AC1BBFF5D He goes on to talk about the "significant" effect on the economy: Clearly he differentiates between the two, and he says nothing about depression, makes no claim about the greatest economic crisis in a century, nothing like that. Just a significant impact. Nothing to justify the headline they gave it. It's not a strawman at all, it's what you're actually saying. There's another example right there in the post above this one. I simply don't see any evidence here that Alan Greenspan shares your dire, fatalist view, nor your political motivation behind it.