Except they will find 3 ponies in New Mexico and 9 in Mississippi that weren't cared for, therefore, all ponies regardless of state of residence will have to get their oats from federal distribution centers.

And they'd damn well better be FDA inspected oats to boot.

Can we play polo?

Well, that comic strip ended just as things were getting interesting... :popcorn:

It's been absolutely riveting to follow the media's obsession with tracking each of the VP hopeful's every move.

Oh wait...

Seriously, no one is going to care, except maybe for the neo-cons. And it sounds like Rep convention schedule might be screwed up anyways.

The Minneapolis media is doing that, though it's not any more worthless than their typical stories during the state fair.

Great speech by Obama tonight. Lots of policy stuff plus he came out swinging vs. McCain.

My Little Pony.

Some people on here are going to say that he didn't go into enough detail, just watch. He needed to go up and actually read the bill.

The Wall Street Journal is dead on with their analysis of this evening:


A Shooting Liberal Star - WSJ.com

Uh, are we reading the same article? This is the same old regurgitated nonsense that we've heard before. There's very little about the actual evening, so little in fact that I'm certain this article was written before the evening and posted afterwards. I don't see how it could be classified as a "view of the evening", much less an accurate one.

But maybe there was an error and you meant to post a link to an article that actually talked about his speech.

"Maybe if John McCain went to Pennsylvania and he met the man who lost his job, but can’t even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he’d understand we can’t afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators."

So he's saying that with McCain, we'll still be addicted to oil, but with Obama, we won't be (within 4 years)

I just don't believe him, I think he's full of shit.

"And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country — and we will win that fight — she will be central to that victory."

This one, maybe he can be given the benefit of the doubt and that he means "we" as in "America, eventually". But if so it's misleading. He wants us to think he'll do it in his term.

And I just don't believe him, I think he's full of shit again.

Will Obama supporters admit he's a failure after 4 years when we're still addicted to oil and we don't have universal health care? I guess it's better to attempt great things than not. But Obama is selling A LOT. And there's still little discussion of how he can actually do all this.

And now the campaign begins in earnest.

I've heard that there was some recent controversy with Obama's campaign plane. Does anyone have the details on this?

Yeah, I agree. No specific reference to anything Obama said, just a lot of generalities, so I don't see how it can be "dead on with their analysis of this evening" since there is no analysis of the evening at all. Definitely sounds like it was written before hand.

if you listened to his speech you'd hear that he said he'd lay out a roadmap and begin a process so that in 10 years we wouldn't be addicted to foreign oil anymore - not saying it'd be done in 4 years

I was disappointed to hear such promises, but not at all surprised. I'll be voting for Obama, no secret there, and I do truly hope that our government does something serious about our energy policy, but the big points he made sound like the same rhetoric that any candidate would promise. I'm curious to see what things McCain promises in his acceptance speech, I expect similar vague promises to resolve impossible problems, just from a different angle.



Perhaps I'm just cynical here, but isn't a fundamental part of campaigns today to have to promise the most idealized vision they have, and its just never possible. I don't expect any of those promises to occur over the next 4 or years, though I will certainly in part measure the next president based on the changes that occur in our nation's energy and healthcare policies, among other things.



Don't forget McCain's speech in May where he predicted where the US would be after 4 years in office(caveat, he did say he does not presume he will be able to do all of this, but hopes that he can). Some of the most lofty goals excerpted here:



Full text of this speech; Text of McCain's Speech on First-Term Goals | The Trail | washingtonpost.com


The bolded parts are the very similar to Obama's goals(clean coal technology and nuclear power anyone?)

If McCain wins, I hope he is able to be a bi-partisan president that can accomplish even a few of his goals too.

I didn't catch the speech, but did he happen to lay out that roadmap during it, or any part of it?

If not, isn't that just more pointless talk?

he didn't lay it out in specific-specifics no. But no candidate ever does. That would be one hell of a "boring" (albeit very informative) speech. You'll never see that. Now I wish the candidates would put these types of details out on their websites or something for those who are interested, yeah.

But he did talk about doing it by utilizing other sources of power, and in general terms how he'd go about that, yeah. In as much detail as you get in any of these speeches.

It sounds like Pawlenty won't be in Dayton today so I think he's out and Romney is in for the VP.

This, what a terrible article. The Republican spin machine doesn't even need to read or hear the speeches anymore, they'll just repeat the same stuff anyhow.

And LOL at molson complaining Barack promised energy independence within four years. Learn to read or buy a hearing aid.


Can this happen within ten years? Hell if I know, probably not. But we gotta try something...

Unfortunately, the speech given last night contained little more than general comments about Democratic platform issues. Not only that, but he used rhetoric about the economy that simply isn't backed up by the latest economic numbers that were released this week. Large growth (3.3%) and a low unemployment rate. How quickly we forget that the ideal presented by the Democrats (Bill Clinton's presidency) had a higher average unemployment rate than the Bush presidency, higher average percentage of people below the poverty level than the Bush presidency, and a -.5% growth in his final quarter in office. All this despite the fact that Bush had the added issues associated with 9/11. Obama presented it well, but the WSJ article was spot-on in its analysis.

Honestly, if the debates came before the conventions, Obama would have a pretty good shot at winning the election as he's probably the better speaker of the two. Unfortunately for him, the debates come after the conventions and McCain is expected to do very well in the debates against a relatively inexperienced Obama. If McCain fails in the debates, it's no secret that he'll lose.

Apparently Romney won't be in Dayton either says Chuck Todd so maybe it will be Palin.

The information is on their respective websites.

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/facts...ech_080308.pdf

and

http://www.johnmccain.com//Informing...f1468e96f4.htm

The information is out there. People(not saying you Torgo) want spoon fed info or use the saying, "he's not specific with his ideas" to justify irrational decisions. Looking at both sites, one thing that jumped out when comparing the two energy policies is that McCain's FIRST bullet point is expanding domestic oil exploration. WTF? Isn't the main priority supposed to be, doing what we can to move away from oil?

Another thing that pisses me off about McCain's plan is the idea of giving a "prize" for creating a plug-in/hybrid car. Another WTF for me. I feel like Chris Rock on this one. Its like we are giving a prize to people for something that they are SUPPOSED to do. If someone can make a cheaper, more efficient electric powered car, believe me its going to sell without the requirements of a gotdamn, jeopardy prize. That's a waste of money in my opinion.

Like I've said before, there's plenty of reasons for ideological conservatives to dislike Obama's policies, but I don't see how you can rationally argue that the speech last night wasn't effective. God knows if McCain put together something similar I'd be very nervous about the election.

Fox is hinting at Palin for VP. She's young, white, and Pro-life. Wow, this could be a very, very interesting turn. If McCain chooses her does the pick appeal to Hillary supporters who identify with Hillary?

Imagine how long the speech would have needed to be to satisfy the FOFC critics decrying the lack of substance, he still wouldn't have finished yet.

As for Palin's potential appeal it depends on how many of Hillary's supporters were only there because she was a woman.

MBBF, you are misleading with your statistical analysis, at least with the higher avg. unemployment rate. Of course, he had a higher AVERAGE % rate, the place was in shambles when Bill took office. Unemployment was above 7% and in 8 years was down to below 4%. G-Dub took the baton from Clinton and subsequently it rose back up to 6.0 where its been for most of Bush's presidency. I guess you can give him an A for consistentency.

Give me 8 years of declining unemployment rates over consistently high rates any day.

MSNBC seems to be hinting that it will be Lieberman, but it is kind of funny the way they are doing it. They are saying that ABC confirms that the govenor of Alaska is in.... Alaska! Anyhows, I'm not really holding my breath trying to figure out who it will be I am sure that I will find out soon enough, and I don't really think either way Palin or Lieberman it's a big enough deal to me to get me to vote Republican, so not that worried about it.

Yeah, it sure was too bad we didn't make it to the moon in 10 years after JFK gave his speech that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, because he didn't list out a detailed road map of how to do it in that speech.

She's a bold choice. And I think that McCain needs to take some chances. But, my goodness, if he ever wanted to remind voters that he is OLD, he can do that by making sure that he stands next to a young woman as much as possible.

If I were McCain, I'd pick Huck. Huck is very very likable, will energize the base, and his humor will allow him to play the attack dog in a very effective and unorthodox, IMO, way.

There are people who would be afraid of Huck as president who I think could be persuaded to vote for a ticket with him as VP.

The article did mention the only real "debatable items" he mentioned in his speech (ie, selling tax rebates to people who don't pay taxes as cuts to balance out the increases on people who do). The problem is that there's nothing you can really analyze from the speech. According to Obama, he's the magic elixir for whatever ails you. Energy costs, he'll fix it. Use of foreign oil? No more when he's president. Have issues with health care or losing your job? Obama will fix it the first day in office.

I don't know how you can have an article on his speech last night with any substantive policy debate. It was a well-delivered speech where Obama said he will be the combination of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to all Americans.

I wish such were the case, but this is kind of the point. There's nothing new that a person with any critical thinking skills could have taken from that speech on how Obama actually plans to make a difference in the issues that face us. Either you buy that he's the pied piper leading us from danger or you don't. There's nothing in last night's speech that really changed that.

Honestly, I'm not sure we can believe much of anything at this point. McCain's PR machine is pumping rumors into the media food chain on an hourly basis at this point. The Palin comments come from her spokesperson, not Palin. The Romney and Pawlenty comments were directly from them. The Republicans could just as easily be trying to keep attention on McCain and off of Obama this morning by pumping the media pipelines full of information.

That speech did nothing more than solidify some Democratic support, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But the 'best political speech I've ever seen' rhetoric on some of the liberal websites is WAY over the top.

JFK should have built the rockets and trained the astronauts right on stage during the middle of his speech.

It seems then that he is taking a cue from Reagan's 1980 campaign. You can substitute Reagan for Obama in your post above, and have a pretty good description of his race against Bush in the primaries, then Carter in the general. The biggest knock against him was that he have good speeches, but no details about his policies in those speeches.

I'm not sure why people were expecting a detailed, policy wonk style of speech. That has never been what the acceptance of the nomination speech has ever been for either party. The place where more details come out is later on, during stump speeches and during the debates. And on both sides I can see the public speaking being more general in nature, with the campaign websites supplying the detailed info, to hedge against misspeaking about the details.

My question for the McCain folks. What the hell has he laid out in detail?

All I hear from the McCain camp is why Obama shouldn't be President, not why McCain should be President.

A jet chartered by a McCain backer just arrived in Dayton, Ohio. It flew out of Alaska earlier this morning.

Let's wait until after the Republican convention before we make that comparison. He hasn't even had that opportunity. You might be right, but it's a tad premature at this point.

This is the thing though, McCain has outlined what he plans to do in these comments. They make sense, and can be done. Obama has not even done this in many of his speeches. Additionally, how much more of a road map can we expect in a speech?

It is a hell of a lot easier to make promises in a speech and make it sound good than it is to outline how you plan to meet those promises.

The 'health care for every American' promise alone should raise eyebrows. Anyone involved in health care or the insurance industry knows that it would take a Herculean effort to make this happen. Even a Dem president with a Dem Congress couldn't make that happen anytime soon, if at all.

The convention had two goals. One, solidify Democratic support. I saw Dem support numbers at roughly 60/20 with 20 undecided. I imagine after this week he'll gain 10 to 20 points in Dem support. Given the skew in self-identify numbers, an extra ten percente of Dem support likely would mean a win. Secondarily, he'll raise an astounding amount of money and pull in thousands of new volunteers.

Two, he had to reassure reachable independents. Based on what folks like Luntz were saying I think he did that, but we'll have to wait to know. There's a lot of people that won't vote for him no matter what, as even landslide elections still have a relatively split popular vote.

80 - Reagan 50/41
84 - Reagan 59/41
88 - Bush 53/46
96 - Clinton 49/41

Even with a best case scenario Obama can't get 40-45% of voters no matter what. What's important is looking at what support is open to him and how well he did at attracting that support. My guess is he did very well.

That being said, it's also important to remember that the debates will have an audience probably twice as large and will still play a bigger role in the outcome.

I definitely see your point, but people have been railing on Obama for some time about his abstract calls for change.

Then when he does, it's not enough.

Again I ask, what do you expect him to say? The information is there for those that are interested, but in reality, this is a political campaign. As a whole, people don't vote on the issues. People in my family didn't vote for Kerry because they thought he worshiped the devil(seriously).

The flip side is that the guy has to fight insignificant trash like, "he's a muslim, he's not REALLY American since he was born in Hawaii, or where's his American flag pin? How can talk about the issues when you've got to spend so much time and energy proving that you are as American as John McCain. How about when he tried to explain the complete futility of oil-drilling and the American people said no to rational thinking (25% of world consumption vs. 3% of reserves). Then when he changed his stance to appease more American people, he was called a "flip flopper" although McCain was against drilling just 2 weeks before. :confused:

If the issues and proposed policy changes are as important to some voters as they claim to be, get out and do the research because, NEWS FLASH, you will not find substance on the surface of any major political campaign.

I think it's more of a case of people that never seriously entertained the thought of voting for Obama wanting more substance from him even though they know they aren't going to like the substance.

Once McCain gives his non-substantive speech, then they can both get in to the nitty gritty.

I didn't think he was promising to be the Easter Bunny and Santa, I thought he was saying Americans have to get off their asses too and help him make "change" or something.

You called that specific?

And that's the BS I'm talking about. There are not 20 new nuclear reactors being built in the US. There have been 20 applications for new reactors. I hate that kind of misleading politics.

So yes you are right, in the fact that:

There are 20 applications but there are also 8 orders already booked for plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. I'm not pulling that number out of my butt either, the company I work for supplies the Main Coolant Pumps for Nuclear Reactors.

That doesn't mean that those 8 plants can't be canceled, but those utilities, Georgia Power being one, has already started payment.

He didn't say anything new last night that hasn't already been said by a Democrat candidate in past elections. I'm sure he'll get more specific at some point. The major reason that there are calls for him to do it sooner is that everyone already knows McCain's policy thoughts because he's been around forever. Obama doesn't have that kind of legacy built up yet, so the public needs more info than a candidate like McCain.

I think he'll be more specific at some point, but he needs to do it sooner rather than later.

So if Palin is the Vice Presidential nominee does Joe Biden go after his counterpart's inexperience? :)