Smugness doesn't win you any points either.


I don't think he did make a mistake. Even Presidential candidates shouldn't have to answer questions by phrasing every individual sentence as if they are the only ones that will be printed. I realize that news outlets will do just this to find a sentence that could be deliberately misconstrued to appear to say the opposite of what it does, but I don't think anyone can prevent that from ever happening.

So you think he meant to say "Muslim" after all?

If so, he's even dumber than I thought for choosing to put those words in that sequence in a sentence.

And yes, I read the longer context of the quote. I also saw saw Steph try to help bail him out. But without that help, then the longer context (which does seem to reveal what Obama must have been thinking) doesn't appear to have been coming & it leaves BHO saying something that really doesn't seem like a wise comment to put on the table.

Trust me, if he's even got two brain cells to bump together, he'd say his choice of words was a mistake. Or maybe even a miscue.

Yes, but that's a different argument regarding the modern media. Abe Lincoln could have made the same mistake and no one would have noticed. Obama makes the same mistake and it spreads like wildfire. It doesn't change the fact that, by definition, it was a miscue. I'm sure that we can start another thread on definitions, but this hair-splitting has probably run its course at this point.

I'm not sure it's a mistake, though. Do you think he really meant to say that John McCain hasn't said anything about his Christian faith?

I think he did mean to say it, leaving "or lack thereof" implied. I think Steph's interruption just highlighted it to the point where, yes, he will have to say his choice of words was a mistake. But if given time to talk about it in detail, he should be able to boil it down to something so boring and semantic that it will look ridiculous.

Latest Rasmussen Poll out with all data being post-convention data. McCain holds a 1 point lead. So after both conventions, we're back to a statistical dead heat...........

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election.

Yes he meant to say "Muslim", and Steph may have been trying to bail him out, though I don't see why that was necessary. He was clearly talking about attacks made by bloggers and others calling him a Muslim and saying that McCain hadn't directly taken part in that. McCain hadn't been making comments about his "Muslim faith". He could have changed that to say that McCain wasn't making comments about his "so-called Muslim faith", but the context seemed to make that obvious.

There's no way in hell she get asked the second question and she'd probably be thrilled to be asked the first as she'd hit that fat pitch out of the park. The Obama "question" is so utterly stupid that it needs little comment.

Again, it's two points. One, she won't tell the American public what her views are on foreign and domestic policy. Given her position, that should be unacceptable. Second, the McCain camp believes the media should show proper respect and deference. Have we really had a problem over the last eight years of the press not being deferential enough to our leaders? The outcry from certain folks from Missouri would be deafening if Obama only gave interviews to those that showed enough respect and deference.

Oh so now we don't want to take things out of context for our own profit? Gotcha. Mission Accomplished!

Assuming you're referring to me, you obviously could not be more incorrect. I argued that, using Arles' logic, she should have already hit the interview circuit. But as I mentioned earlier, she'll have plenty of interviews in the next two months. It's much ado about nothing.

This is actually a very good point. The more I think about it, the more I see this as another "low expectations play" by the McCain/Palin camp. They come out and say she's not doing any interviews initially to let all the anger die down a bit, but also know it will be spun as "she is not prepared". Then, in 2-5 weeks, she'll hit the talk show circuit and do fairly well - once again exceeding the low expectations they helped create.

My point was it makes no sense to do any interviews right now for two reasons:

1. It makes sense to wait a bit because of the initial anger and also to let some of these things work themselves out ("troopergate" and the pregnancy stuff).
2. It makes sense to wait until they actually need her. Either tied or in the lead, it doesn't make sense to trot Palin out right now when you could use her in a few weeks when Obama pulls ahead again (which will happen, IMO). It's akin to using your best pinch hitter tied 4-4 in the 5th inning with nobody on and 2 out.

I must say I saw the Heart flap coming the minute the song started playing. Its not that unusual for an artist to want to have some control over it's rights and its not that unusual to want to use the song so I dont necessarily see this as a big deal. The RNC will likely pay them some modest sum of money for the misstep and/or pay them to use it going forward.

I don't think you read it fully. The RNC did pay for the song usage. They didn't do anything wrong this time, it was just the artist being grumpy because they obviously don't support them.

Someone mentioned later that evidentally Heart is using their proceeds from it to give to Obama so win-win, but I haven't read that part anywhere else but it sounds like a logical thing to do. In a way, the RNC helped donate some money to Obama I guess :)

we agree on this point here. Anyone and everyone makes slips of the tongue, ask Ted Kennedy (Osama) or John McCain (his shia/shiite slip) but you make a good point...

many people will take X as fact even when it's not and base their vote solely or most heavily on X, which is a shame.

Why does a poll matter at all, sir. You disclaimed that polls dont matter because theyre rolling averages. why do you get to have it both ways?

Well if it was paid for, Heart can be grumpy all they want but they should STFU about its usage or else not sell the rights.

Quote where I said that polls don't matter because they're rolling averages? I've been very consistant in saying that the polls during both conventions didn't matter a hill of beans. I've said that the best comparison was the poll before the Dem convention should be compared to the one after the Rep convention. This is the first poll that is completely post convention, so it's a good measure of the net margin of the bounces of each convention. When all was said and done, the bounce was roughly even in the end. No benefit to either candidate.

Of course it makes sense for McCain, I just thought we were supposed to put country first.

They won't let her do interviews because of things like this:

And doing whatever is necessary to keep Obama from become POTUS is doing just that.

Lol. That's hilarious.

Nah, just honest.

Par for the course for Jon. He's an authoritarian with dictatorial impulses. I give him credit, though, for not varnishing his beliefs in a layer of bullshit.

me too.

This guy does a pretty nice hatchet job on Obama's activities as a "community organizer."

Barack Obama's closet - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

I can play this game too.

John McCain's chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann

Randy Scheunemann had close ties and was a major promoter of Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Chalabi was/is an Iranian spy

John McCain = Iranian Spy

JoninGA,

1. How do you feel a McCain administration differ with the Bush administration?

2. Do you feel an Obama administration is less able to deal with challenges and why?

I'm looking for facts and/or opinions, really. Its just that a lot of your posts are Obama can't succeed, and I like to know why you feel that way?

I post this article not for the content, but rather the picture. How have I not seen or heard about the Ukrainian prime minister before???? Talk about easy on the eyes. She could put forth the worse policies every and I'd believe every word she said...........

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Cheney: McCain-Palin administration will be unlike any other « - Blogs from CNN.com

You're assuming anyone in our media is capable of acting like an actual journalist. They might ask a few actual questions, but there's almost never a line of questioning to follow up on the canned BS answer.

Now various interviewers might act snotty while questioning, but that's simply bruised egos. As long a major politician lets the media in the cool kids club, their interviews will always be cupcakes.

There is only one state poll out today. A PPP poll has Obama up by just 1 point in Michigan, 47-46. The poll was taken Sept. 6th and 7th after the RNC. Michigan is a critical state for Obama to hold. 45% of respondents say they are more likely to vote for McCain with his pick of Palin for VP. 30% said the same thing of Joe Biden.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/p...chigan_908.pdf

I'm sure there will be a full round of state polls out by the end of this week. It'll be interesting to see how it affects the electoral vote projections.

The campaigns have their own internal state polls, but they don't publish the results. Obama and Biden have been spending a considerable amount of resources on Pennsylvania and Michigan recently. These should be fairly safe states for the democrats, so maybe their internal polling indicates that they're closer than they should be at this point.

Yulia....she's very easy on the eyes and all the reason I need to support the defense of the Ukraine against any enemy.

Ouch... what in the Hell is Obama thinking by undermining his tax argument?

My Way News - Obama: Recession could delay rescinding tax cuts

Oops. Tried to answer this earlier, browser crashed while posting & it looks like it didn't go through before the fritz. So let me try again.

re: how differs -- I'm almost certain to be unhappier with McCain than I've been with Bush. There are several key points I disagree w/ McCain on thoroughly & have no love lost for the man because of it. Worth noting here is that the majority of unhappiness I have with Bush's second term is from things he didn't do and/or things he wanted to do rather than things he did.

re: Obama -- Not only less able, but less likely to deal with them in a fashion I find acceptable. That distinction can't be overlooked & I'll get to it in a minute. As to capability itself, which is what I believe your original question mostly concerned, I don't believe he has remotely sufficient experience nor judgmental ability to make the right call in difficult situations.
(FTR, the experience factor also concerns me about Palin).

He's a relative babe in the woods, particularly where realpolitik is concerned, and that's generally not something I find appealing in regard to having their finger on the button. While I'm most likely fairly described as an ideologue when it comes to internal affairs (and some external as well) there's also an element of realism that I value with regard to foreign policy particularly.
I don't believe Obama has sufficient real world experience to recognize instances when practical reality is something that cannot be avoided.

And that brings us the judgment factor I mentioned earlier. You don't know me as well as some of the others here (as far as I can figure at least) so what they might take for granted I'll spell out here briefly as part of this reply. Be forewarned however, you aren't likely to like it or agree with it but neither of those is necessary for it to be a part of my answer.

I believe that he has shown a lack of appropriate judgmental ability based upon a number of the positions he has taken. I find some of his positions to be incompatible with good sense, reason, or good judgment. Doesn't really matter which ones for the purposes of this discussion because that isn't the point, what they boil down to is that I don't find being dead wrong or even downright destructive a virtue that I'm looking for in a President nor is it something that I can avoid considering when I assess someone's ability to make good decisions (aka their judgmental ability).

Hopefully that answered what seemed like a reasonable question in a reasonable way. If it didn't, it wasn't for the lack of trying.

I can't help but imagine that there's some internal polling that indicates an advantage to making this acknowledgment at this time. It doesn't mean he'll actually change (or that he won't) but rather just that there's some indication that it's to his advantage to suggest the possible shift in policy.

It seems to hint that he's trying to appeal to voters who have the difference in
the two plans as a deciding factor in their November vote and that his camp believes he can gain more votes with this than he would lose because of it.

I gotta say that's one of the best posts in the entire thread, eventhough I don't agree with much of it.

Somewhat unlikely source for praise in this thread but I'll definitely take it ;)
Thanks.

I'll give him credit for taking the correct stances on this, drilling, staying in Iraq and the surge. But, again, you have to wonder why he was against these 6 months ago given very little has changed on the issues of the ecomony/taxes/energy and the situation in Iraq. I'm going back to what I said earlier in that there will be little difference between McCain and Obama in the first 4 years on things like Iraq, education, social security, energy, climate and health care. Since I've said that, he's now for drilling, he wants to stay in Iraq longer, feels the surge did better than expected and he is now saying his "Robin Hood" tax policy might not be the best for the country given the state it's in financially.

Again, I'm glad to see he's coming around on all these policies - I'm just unsure on how motives. So, I am left with one or two situations:

1. He legitimately feels the surge has worked better than he anticipates, we need to ensure we get the best outcome possible in Iraq, that the economy can't handle a "take from the rich/investors, give to the middle class" tax policy right now and that we are now at a point where we need to consider serious drilling. If this is the case, I give him a ton of credit for his character and adjusting.

2. He's done some polling that shows the people/independents are now in favor of different policies in these areas and he's adjusting accordingly.

I would hope that number 1 is the case, but either way he's going to take a bit of beating politically for some of these fairly drastic shifts coming down the homestretch. In some ways, it makes me feel better should he get elected that he won't just be a shill for the left, but I can't see these changes helping him much down the stretch.

We'll see.

In 1988, GHWB continued to increase his lead after the convention bounce, and that time period included Dan Quayle getting absolutely destroyed by Lloyd Bentsen in the VP debate. After that debate, the Dukakis campaign spent a lot of money into "Do you really want this man a heartbeat away from the presidency" commercials. It had absolutely no effect on the polls.

In general, after Labor Day the public starts to pay a lot more attention to the candidates' stand on the issues and voting record. That's one of the key factors that lead to Dukakis' demise in 1988. His campaign was able to do a good job of shielding his far left stand on most of the issues until the public started paying attention in September and October.

This makes sense. McCain seems to be leading by between 3-5 points nationally right now. Michigan is a DEM leaning state, so it makes sense that it is 4-5 points to the left of the national numbers.

It will be panic time for Obama in Michigan if his national numbers start to move but Michigan stays close. Until then, I think that he's happy with 1% right after the GOP convention.

All that said, it does not mean much if it turns out that the move toward McCain isn't a bounce but a fundamental shift. And I don't think that anyone really knows that.

My 2c (with hindsight) is that this race was always closer than people thought. It was just that the GOP was such a damaged brand that people who were planning to vote for McCain told pollsters that they were undecided. Palin made it OK to admit that you were voting for the GOP--which you were really planning to do all along.

But 1988 was an historical outlier. Like I said, we'll know a lot more by the end of this week or the beginning of next. My instinct says this is still close to a tie and will stay that way until election day. I'd be surprised if either candidate has more than a 3 point lead in October.

Benn reading 538 today I see. ;)

Gore won Michigan by 5 points and Kerry won it by 3 points, so I doubt if the Obama campaign is turning cartwheels over being in a dead heat there right now.

The difference is Dukakis was an absolutely terrible campaigner. The first debate after the Bentsen/Quayle debate was his worst performance, with the answer on the death penalty question. I'm certain a better performance would have helped the momentum and made the Quayle issue a problem. I think what it came down to is people liked Dukakis so little that they were willing to roll the dice on the chance that Quayle would ever have to take over.

I think it's clear that Obama isn't nearly as bad a campaigner and he's certainly not as far left as Dukakis.

I suspect someone may have mentioned this but the thread is a little hard to search for every post so ... which one of the websites out there has a good chart to show polls vs actual results by state? What I'm looking for is something like "Gore eventually carried Michigan by 5 points but was up by X points in the polls on date Y". I have a general inclination of how they match up in my head but no idea about specific states (or whether my broad brush expectations even hold up).

I agree with both you guys. This thing is going to go down to the wire and the main issues are
A. If people feel that McCain has a good enough handle on the economy/energy/health care. If they do, many may vote for him.
B. If people feel comfortable enough with Obama as the commander in chief to handle foreign policy and that he won't kill their pocketbooks with taxes.

Whomever can answer their question above the best in the final 8 weeks will probably win. All this other stuff is just food for political junkies.

Always and forever ;)

I think that Obama was actually more upset when he was leading by 5 nationally but only by 2 in Ohio than he is when he is trailing by 5 nationally but tied in Michigan.

If the swing states lean toward one candidate or another, that is a HUGE deal. Of course, at the end of the day, the candidates have to move the national numbers as much as possible. But if Ohio is basically [National +3] for McCain then he has a great margin for error in the most important swing state. Obama needs a 3 point national lead just to make that state a toss-up.

100%. Bravo, sir.

yep

There's way too much at stake(either side can make this argument) to just altogether sit this election out. The Fundie block wasn't going to abandon McCain, I just think they wanted him to at least see where they were coming from. He throws them a pro-life bone, and suddenly everyone's on board.

I agree up to the point where you mention issues. The swing voters that will decide this election don't know enough about issues. It will be all about likability.

RealClearPolitics has at least swing state polls for the whole 2004 election cycle. Finding them can be tricky, though. I think "battleground 2004" will get them.

eh, youre still an idiot ;)

If Obama never gets around to flailing McCain over his plan to tax health benefits he deserves to lose.

There is no way to actually prove this, but I'll bet if Obama had chosen Clinton as his running mate, McCain would have chosen some yawner like Romney or Pawlenty. Obama would be up by double digits right now, and the election would essentially be over with.

Joe Biden might not turn out to be the genius VP pick that everyone was initially raving about. Heck, Palin got almost as many votes running for mayor as Biden got in the presidential primaries.

+1

Clinton would have been a game-changing pick, esp. since the Dems had first pick. If McCain had gone with Romney or Pawlenty, no one would care, on either side.

Close but no cigar....no links!

Clinton would have been a much better political pick, but IMO a much worse governing pick. Can you imagine the chaos in the White House with the Clintons as second bananas? McCain made a great political pick, but someone who doesn't even have opinions on most of the issues facing the country.

It's cute when you play with the big boy toys.

Did Hillary Clinton want to be Vice President?

I wish there was an easy way selectively read posts in a thread, besides skimming. There are only 5 people, to me, that are worth reading here (from various points along the political spectrum) but I have to sort through the garbage to find them.

Wouldn't have been second bananas for long I'd wager.
(since the VP assumes the top slot upon the death of a sitting President)

I wonder if molson still thinks this was obviously a joke?

Biden 2008: 76,165 (all after he had dropped out)
Palin 1996: 616
Palin 1999: 909

Yes, it's obviously a joke.

But if you want to be super-anal technical, weren't Biden's votes for the Democratic nomination?

But it's obviously a joke. The point is that Democrats didn't think Biden was worth shit when he tried to run for president.

I can't believe that someone would make that comment, and then people actually run to find the numbers. For the love of god.

It's so obviously a joke that some conservatives still seem to believe it.

State Polls by Rasmussen taken on September 7th:

Obama +2 in PA
McCain +7 in OH
Tied in FL
McCain +2 in VA
Obama +3 in CO

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election.

Obviously? Heck, I just figured it was a miscue & he meant governor instead of mayor. (a quick check shows Palin receiving 114,697 votes for governor in 2006).

They're stupid too

Yeah, I have to agree that the person that originated this talking point flubbed and inserted Mayor for Governor.

Whether it's a joke or a miscue, there's absolutely zero relevant connection or meaning that can be made from comparing votes to one state's election for governor/mayor and another state's presidential primary.

It's a silly comment that makes a point.

Like when someone calls Bush a chimp - I don't run to find proof that he's actually a human being.

Man, are you really bad at analogies.

My statement was in error.

Palin got almost as many votes for mayor as Joe Biden got before dropping out of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Joe Biden got 2,328 votes in Iowa and then dropped out.

Y'know, I think you secretly have the hots for me. :D

I'd question your definition of close, but I don't think it's a worthwhile point no matter what.

I definitely am.

But it's very difficult to express how silly I think it is that people are trading numbers back and forth over something so silly. It's just a lame attempt in people's desperate attempts to feel right about something. I don't know if the writer meant "governor", but that would also be lame humor - OF COURSE the winner of an important statewide election is going to get more votes than the loser in a party state primary. What's the point?

But if it makes you feel better, Biden actually received 0 votes for president.

Admittedly, it was a weak attempt at humor on my part. Let's not rip out our hair plugs over the situation.

I don't think there can be much doubt about this. Especially when all the media talking heads were lamenting this after Palin's speech. If he had picked Clinton, all the Dems would be swooning over their party unification love-fest. After winning the election, the only thing Obama would have to do is make sure he took Hillary with him on all trips he took by plane. Too bad for the party the two apparently can't stand to be in the same room together for more than five minutes.

I'm guessing Obama's handlers felt he had to pick someone like Biden to help with the male white vote. Plus they made a big deal about Biden's experience to counter the charges that Obama had none. I think they are kicking themselves right about now.

I just saw this on CNN.com from Ed Rollins, and it sums it up pretty well:

Ten days ago, Sen. Joe Biden was the most brilliant vice presidential pick imaginable. He was going to add the experience and foreign policy credential that Sen. Barack Obama's thin resume was missing.

The so-called expert commentators were arguing that blue-collar Joe was going to guarantee Pennsylvania (because he was born in Scranton) and other states and get Catholic voters because he is a pro-choice Catholic.

I guess they forgot that Joe didn't do so well with Iowa Catholics (23 percent of the population) when he campaigned there for more than a year in the Democratic caucus race. But then getting less than 1 percent of the vote and coming in fifth place showed he didn't do real well with any voter group in Iowa. Nor did he do well anywhere else, other than Delaware.

Interesting development at MSNBC

MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

Don't have time to find quotes but I find it funny that today the race would have been "over" in the minds of the Republican talking heads in this thread had Obama picked Hilary. I am sure SFL Cat, MizzouBball, JonMiddleGA, etc. were saying that when Obama was getting ready to pick is running mate.

Yay. Another quality Dutch post, full of insight and non-trolly at all

SI

Actually, I've never thought Obama would pick Hillary. As I said, its obvious they don't like each other, and I'm not sure the campaign could accomodate two egos that massive. However, I've never thought Biden was the slam dunk everyone was saying it was.

You can't deny that if Obama and Hillary had been able to bury the axe, the Palin selection by McCain (and I think there is a good chance he doesn't even select her) wouldn't have generated the kind of buzz it did.

I just took a look at this “fivethirtyeight.com” that some posters here are fond of citing. I hadn’t looked at it before, and I assumed that it was some scientific, non-partisan polling site. I found out that it’s essentially a left-wing blog, with a big ad for MoveOn.org at the top of the home page, and another ad for “The Progressive Book Club” on the left sidebar. Virtually all of the topics are built around spinning the polling news of the day into some advantage for Obama, regardless of whether it is good or bad news.

If you guys want an proven winner with objective analysis of the popular vote and electoral college, RealClearPolitics.com blew away every other site for accuracy in the 2004 election. They nailed the popular vote down to less than 1%, and they only missed one state in their electoral college projection (barely missing Wisconsin, where they had Bush winning by 0.9%, and Kerry actually won by 0.4%). The other sites, like electoral-vote.com were all over the dial. Zogby’s final projection had Kerry winning over 300 electoral votes.

Actually, if you look around you might just find a post from me that says that. Or you might not. Given the length of this thread I don't know if I actually said it here since I didn't believe it was much of a realistic possibility but I certainly told my wife that was a real danger several times.

If Obama picks Hillary then Palin is likely off the board, having been neutralized for the skirt vote at least (just because she may not hit that target successfully in hindsight doesn't mean that isn't what McCain was hoping for at the time).

That would have left McCain to either go with someone who doesn't energize his campaign the way this choice apparently has and didn't add any more than Hillary added to Obama or to go off the board & pick someone like Lieberman who would have maybe picked up some tweeners but would have further damaged him with the party base.

Then again, I wasn't sweating it too much if Obama did or didn't since if he picks Hillary his life expectancy is about 10 days after taking office, meaning she's President and we've already established that I really didn't care whether McCain or Clinton took office since even Congress knows we can't pay for most of her wacky schemes and McCain is just another RINO.

Incidents like this just hammer away at the myth of the "liberal media". In the end, everything is still run by corporations which are, on the whole, conservative.

So, you can have an admittedly right leaning outlet and it's ok because they admit it. However, the other sides that aspire to remain neutral- they get hammered for being leftist despite being kept in check by their corporate paycheck writers.

SI

If FoxNews had Sean Hannity as an anchor, you would have a valid comparison. He is there for entertainment purposes on a talk show. I do agree that Fox should get an adequate foil for Hannity. Alan Colmes is a lightweight marshmallow. They need to get somebody like Bob Beckel or James Carville opposite Hannity.

I would hardly consider the two main FoxNews anchors, Shepard Smith and Britt Hume to be right-wing anchors. MSNBC’s anchors Matthews and Olbermann weren’t even making an effort to conceal the fact that they are in the tank for Obama.

And Olberman was taking shots at his own people on air (which I suspect had as much to do with their removal as anything else). Granted, I also suspect that it might not have been entirely accidental that some of that ended up on the air in order to force the issue.

I suspect that you never looked up the word neutral?

Olbermann was beyond ridiculous. He wasn't even trying to remain neutral, especially with his snide little comments during the RNC. Matthews was better but still gets a tingly feeling in his groin whenever Obama speaks. Tim Russert is probably rolling in his grave. MSNBC is trying to be the liberal alternative to Fox News with the Olbermann-Maddow tag team in primetime.

538 is entirely different from RCP. RCP is a poll aggregater and averager. They do a very good job, but there numbers reflect the race as it stands. RCP's numbers at any time before the last couple of weeks aren't necessarily predictive at all.

538 tries to predict what the final numbers will be based on where things stand and historical trends. They may or may not be accurate, but they aren't trying to be RCP. 538 is fascinating for me because it's run by Baseball Prospectus guys and there's a lot of discussion on how to use the statistics we have to predict future performance. They're new, but their Democratic primary performance was very good.

Whatever spin they may or may not give the days polls doesn't matter for the algorithms. The calculations only change after community discussions. Right now the numbers are way off, but that's due largely to a mechanism that penalizes short term gains compared to long term trends. If McCain's number stay up the numbers will be much more favorable to him by the end of the week.

You're way off in thinking this is merely partisan spin. I've learned a lot of good information about polling there. Things like the Shy Tory Factor, the built in party benefits of different polling outfits, difficulties with likely voter models, etc. If you're a numbers guy, it's a great place to learn more about polling.

This was more about ratings (MSNBC was dead last for the conventions) than ideology. And while Hume is right-wing, he's more fair minded when he's an anchor and less so when a commentator (plays both roles on Fox). Their main anchors are Sheppard Smith and Chris Wallace and both of them are miles ahead of Olbermann and Matthews on coverage. Ironically enough, Brian Williams is also very good for NBC.

In the end, I'm not sure it matters. People flock to Fox News because it's the only channel where a conservative won't get brow beaten for 50 minutes on most shows. You'd think one of the other network/cable networks would pick up on this and maybe try to take some of that pie. The fact that they don't seems to indicate it's more than just corporate capitalism at work.

Take away the allegedly rampant voter fraud in Milwaukee and they might have been right.

MSNBC tried to be Fox light and they couldn't get ratings suggesting that the Fox audience isn't going to go elsewhere. Glenn Beck also gets really crappy ratings. Conservatives are happy with Fox and aren't looking for another alternative.

"I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas pipeline built. So pray for that ... I can do my job there in developing my natural resources. But all of that doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart is not good with God."

....... DaddyTorgo just sent me that quote. Yeah, I know, I'm not the target audience but.. to say that a $30 billion gas pipeline may not work right if Alaskan's heart have doubts with God? What. The. Fuck?

foz - the israel quote was better

oh and the best part about the quote foz just posted. it was in a cnn.com story refuting a statement by her campaign spokesman that she doesn't mix her religion with her politics.

heh

thanks fozzaloo - that's your new silly nickname btw

...........

You know.. I'm stuck on the phone at work.. so I can't follow up with the obvious next line.

So.. ahem.. could someone KEEL DADDYTORGO NOW for me? Thanks. I'll owe ya one. :)