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POPSMcCain Divorced his Crippled Wife to Marry Cindy "in sickness and in health....til death do us part"? McCain claims to be a man of honor and his word. This is an interesting test of that "straight talk". McCain claimed to be a Christian too during the primaries, so this is a fair consideration to weigh. "Maverick" should actually be "pragmatist", John will do whatever John wants.
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POPSHillary Shadow Lengthens As Obama's Fades
That discovery of racial chauvinism wasn't hard once his former associate, his pastor for over 20 years, the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, spewed his venom. Obama himself didn't help things as he taught the nation that his dutiful grandmother was at times a small-minded bigot—no different from a "typical white person." And in an impromptu riff, Obama ridiculed small-town, working-class Pennsylvanians' supposed racial insularity. Second, many are beginning to notice how a St. Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can't speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don't put enough air in our car tires. Third, Obama knows that all doctrinaire liberals must tack rightward in the general election. But due to his inexperience, he's doing it in far clumsier fashion than any triangulating candidate in memory. Fourth, Obama is proving as inept an extemporaneous speaker as he is gifted with the teleprompter.
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POPSReligion Out of Govt Our government is designed to operate without regard to religion. Unfortunately, many have not figured that out yet.
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POPSMajor DNC Donor To Party Treasurer: Obama Is A Bad Investment
Getting not one bill passed in the first 6 years of his career in not inspiring. Having Emil Jones hand him the ball 26 times on the one-yard line in order to make Obama a United States Senator does not cut it either. What deals he made, he did to benefit no one but himself. He never worked long enough in either Senate to help the people who elected him. Andy, I could never imagine you taking credit for legislation someone else slaved over. Starting in his community organizing days he claimed sole responsibility for other people's accomplishments all for the purpose to boosting his career. Every person I have talked to who worked at the Law Review at Harvard with him, or in the later part of his career, said the same thing: he was arrogant and self-centered. Substance matters. Barack is a politician, an inexperienced one at that, pretending he is different. I just see him as arrogant and power hungry. Our country deserves better.
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POPSObama and Iraq But he can’t alienate his supporters on the left or commit another “flip-flop” on a major issue, so — against all evidence — he maintains that he was right to oppose the surge even though it has worked. His political tap-dance on the war continues apace. It’s easy now to pretend that the surge and its success was inevitable. It wasn’t. President Bush had to implement it against stiff political headwinds, made all the stiffer by the likes of Barack Obama. If Obama had had his way, we would have lost in Iraq. But he positioned himself exactly right in the Democratic primaries. This is shameful. The disgrace is not John McCain’s in pointing it out, but Barack Obama’s in having been so wrong — and letting politics so influence his mistaken position — on the war.
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POPSIs the Web making young people vote? Youth voter turnout has increased in recent elections, including this year's primaries. I believe the Web has made it easier and more interesting to be politically engaged -- and young people are connecting online.
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POPSObama’s No-Brainer on Education The stakes couldn't be higher. The United States now ranks 25th among 30 industrialized countries in math. "If I told you your basketball team finished in 25th place, you'd be outraged," says former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education. When the landmark "A Nation at Risk" report was issued 25 years ago, the education system was ailing, but the United States was still No. 1 in college-graduation rates. Now we are No. 21. "We simply have not progressed," says former Colorado governor Roy Romer, who heads a commission that recently updated the report. "The rest of the world has." For example, the average European nation has 13 more school days than we do.
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POPSAre Facts Obsolete? Thomas Sowell now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election. The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to “the rich” in the name of “fairness” gains more votes. What matters politically is the image of coming out on the side of “the people” against “the privileged.” When ABC's Charles Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.
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POPSObama and McCain Both Changing Now The Maverick is not and the "Change" candidate is shifting. Politicians are like Chameleons, changing color depending their context to fit in. Trustworthiness and forthrightness are not to be found, and considered detrimental to obtaining power, ironically, when most Americans want to reverse the present course without question, instead of simply tailoring and amending it. Don't think the BBC article is correct about McCain however, he is shifting left, distancing from Bush, since republicans are left without an alternative (except for increasing third party candidates).
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POPSMany Dems Not With Obama on FISA Barack really needs to talk to Feingold about this one. Who cares about immunity other than Republicans? There is no downside to siding with the damned Constitution.
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POPSObama Shifts on Abortion Another disappointment , really. Obama's not a doctor -- and it shows. By making a distinction between "mental distress" and "a serious physical issue," he makes the far too common mistake of discounting mental illness -- like depression -- as a "real" and damaging illness. What he should do is leave the medical stuff alone and think like a lawyer -- which he is. Is there a reason to limit a woman's choices at a certain stage of pregnancy and, if so, what are they? Arguing from a position of ignorance is never a good idea.
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POPSOpen Revolt Takes Top Position at BarackObama.com
Do you think Obama will listen to his own supporters? It is sad to see that so much of what he offered up during the primaries has been tossed aside and he has "CHANGEd" his positions on, or rather, he has become more forthright with his positions on matters since the nomination was given to him. For me, that was why he never got my attention or vote to begin with, it was never very clear what his positions were from the start, I would always ask, "what are his values", "what is his position on such and such" and the answer was most often a rhetorical, "well, he is going to "change" things!" So now, what can people do? McCain is the same, 3rd parties rarely triumph, staying home doesn't really do much of anything except save the gas you might use to drive to the polls. Myself? I have joined in with the http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ There's a peaceful revolution going on, everyone is welcome to be a part of it. As Obama has quoted, "be the change"! (~ Ghandi )
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POPSAfter the Primaries - Politics as Usual
Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why "I can no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I can disown my white grandmother" - then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. 3 months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great "race speech" now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes. Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest disappointment.
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POPSObama caves on the spy bill Great, get others to spy for you and then go to congress to give them immunity. No, I don't feel like my civil liberties are being eroded.
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POPSMcCain's Playbook: Hate, Fear and Caveman Politics ..in!" McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who's ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway. Even the briefest of surveys of the supporters gracing McCain's events underscores the kind of red-meat appeal he's making. Immediately after his speech in New Orleans, a pair of sweet-looking old ladies put down their McCain signs long enough to fill me in on why they're here. "I tell you," says one, "if Michelle Obama really doesn't like it here in America, I'd be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa."
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POPSGoing Ba(ra)ck On His Word? Obama opts to pursue private financing, resulting in a blitz of protest from McCain's camp. This was expected as Obama raised an unprecedented level of cash during the primaries. It also invites more scrutiny of his donors.
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POPSA First Lady to be PROUD of! A stand by your man of the 21st century type of female? And with brains to burn. Not someone who left their best years in the 20th century and whose claim to fame is how much daddy left me so I can indulge my last hope of fame.
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POPSMatt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"