finknottle

AQ has based it's strategy on the premise that liberal persusion is the achilles heel of the west. And in a few cases, they were right - a well-timed bombing in Madrid, and the liberals took control and the Spanish backed down. They tried it in the UK too. AQ moved into Iraq becaue they thought delivering a bloody nose to the US would send us home humiliated. And it's not just AQ that thinks this way. Hussein believed that his best defense lay in making the American public believe that invasion would result in unacceptable casualties - hence his conscious deception over having deployed chemical weapons.

Adhere is not the same as Have. They all have them, but I would suggest that there is not a single organization that fully adhere's to its regulations. As a rule of thumb, the more important the person, the more likely they ignore the regs. How many bigshots of both political parties have been found to have taken classified documents home in the past decade?

Does this help? The story was broken by the leftist NYT, so it must certainly be true and unslanted: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion...;pagewanted=all

But, but, but - according to the media, you have to be a straw-chewin' racist or an embittered feminist to switch! Worrying about the leftward shift of the party towards moveon and code pink and the marginalization of the centrist DNC is not supposed to be a legitimate reason to support a moderate republican.

This is true - I wasn't particularly impressed with her controversial tenure there, and cringed at the thought that he might pick her to shore up his economic credentials (much like I cringe at Biden for foreign policy expertise). I am a big fan of experience, but experience by itself doesn't always mean expertise or even competance. You need results too.

No, they would be bombing the ACLU. Didn't mean to imply you said it, but it was frequently stated by the left in the first two years after the attack (that pushing us to a dictatorship would mean the terrorists have won).

And if you can't use it against a terrorist, you shouldn't be able to use it against a candidate

I have no problem with her not attending under the circumstances. But it would have been much more effective (as well as truthfull) to say something like "This cause is of great importance to Mrs Clinton, and she doesn't want the clear message of the rally to be undermined by the media circus that would inevitably ensue." Geez - how hard is it to come up with that?

But I thought the reason they hate us because of our freedom and our civil liberties, and that the Patriot Act means they ae getting what they want.

How about a quick tour of Europe?

And please explain how going to more of a welfare state model will make them love us.

Southwest Asia? If it hadn't been for Clinton, there is a very real chance that the '99 Kargil war between Pakistan and India would have gone nuclear. The details are still shrouded in secrecy, but the consensus is that at the critical point where both sides were preparing for a full war and readying their nukes defensively, Clinton effectively dressed down Sharif at the White House. The rest is history - Sharif pulled back from the LOC, tried to blame the military for starting the war in the public upheaval which followed, then tried to prevent Army chief of staff Musharaff (his appointee) from landing his plane in Pakistan, and the military coup followed (and with it, a period of relatively good relations between Pakistan and India).

I think DC_Tom is right here. Yes, they were given guarantees a long time ago, but it takes time to get to where houses are being bought in volume by those who cannot afford them. It takes time for pressure on the lenders to translate into the kind of lending practices we have been seeing the past few years. It is more accurate to say that lending standards have eroded over time rather than been abruptly abandoned.. Each successive administration/congress enters office with home ownership at a certain level, and puts pressure on lenders to increase it. This means incremental pressure to relax lending requirements, and to implement programs to increase ownership rates among minorities and the poor. That also means the next administration/congress has to raise it to an even higher level if they want to claim credit for advancing the 'american dream' - more relaxation and more risky lending. Eventually we get to a situation where the loans being made can only be paid back if the housing values keep increasing... when they stop, you have massive defaults.

Good one!

Backers of tall, handsome, eloquent Obama are now going to complain about an unfair mismatch against short, old and crippled McCain because McCain's running mate is cuter than Obama's. Pathetic.

Who here trusts Obama to authorize an effective national defense against cyberwarefare? Just about everything you might want to do runs afoul of the constitutional interpretations of civil liberties groups.

Yeah, she is a shrinking violet. Keep whistling in the dark.

Because that 3AM call might be "Mr. President, the White House servers are down!"

I am as comfortable with her as I am the One. Both need receive on-the-job training from their armies of advisors. She's a little bit more ready to govern, but Obama has a bigger army.

I would argue that he "couches his answers" precisely because he learned his lessons in the Pakistan and Israeli gaffes. But suppose I am wrong and you are right: he meant to say what he did in the debate, because he thought it was important to take a public stand on it. That tells me that his mantra of 'changing the image of America abroad' really means only his fans in Western Europe. He doesn't care if the Mid-East and South Asia thinks he will take a Bush policy of ignoring national sovergnty and going after people he deems terrorists unilaterally when he sees fit.

Keep in mind what all five have in common: they were Secretaries of State, the nations chief Diplomats. It is no suprise that the would argue for a greater role for the Department of State. If you lined up the last five DCI's, you would find a unanimous agreement that greater intelligence support is crucial. And if you lined up the last fice heads of the Department of Commerce, they would agree unanimously that trade with Iran is the key to bringing them into the Western fold.

Agreed. But don't read too much into a politician putting technology to good use. You can no more say that a politician understands the internet because he makes best use of it than you can say that the first politician to hire banks of telemarketers for push polling understands telecommunications. Opportunistic innovation doesn't neccessarily mean understanding. As far campaigns utilizing the internet goes, the Ron Paul phenomona has exceeded that of Obama and Dean. Yet his description of his own familiarity with the internet is even more limited than McCain. I can't remember the quote, but the day he set an online fund-raising record he said something to suggest that he knew nothing of how his online campaign worked other than what staffers told him, and didn't really 'get' the internet, but appreciated all those young volunteers working the internet lines.

The content of the answer is not the issue, it is the act of answering. Of needlessly inflamming the Pakistani public now, and effecting US-Pakistani relations now, when - as President - it will be more appropriate and more effective to pass the message privatley. How would you feel if, when asked, he said the US definately would/would not come to the military defense of Taiwan if attacked by China? If he gave the answer that you as a voter wanted to hear, would that negate the fact that - by virtue of his celebrity status as a legitimate candidate - he is undermining the State Departments long-standing policy of stratigic ambiguity? Sometimes its not just about the candidate and his thoughts.

Actually, I think it was because the topics ran their course. Both plans are pretty well understood - they are what they are. There are a few areas of uncertaintity, like what Obama's penalty will be for businesses who can not offer coverage, but the core of the plans seem clear.

The fact is, I think our entire politician class is fundimentally impaired. The route to politics is through law school. Their view is that technology simply is, like magic. Contrast this with the dynamic Asian countries, where politicians more commonly start out as scientists and engineers. Not that they bring any great technical insight into the office, but they maintain a healthier respect for science and there is a correspondingly greater respect for technical careers among their populations. Leaving our country entirely in the hands of non-technical people, particularly lawyers, is not a healthy situation as we try to map out our economic future for the 21st century. It's no accident that we wind up with our students choosing business and law school and having to import students for the technical disciplines.