I’ve been gone for 11 days now, and I’m not having a happy re-entry. Trying to get out of Quito this morning was a nightmare — we were up at 3:30am to catch a 4:00am shuttle to the airport for a 6:30am flight, and in order to leave Ecuador they make you stand in line for over 2 hours. Do the math, and you’ll note that we barely made it. Then our destination was Miami. There’s some storm on the way here, the airport is packed with people trying to flee, and our flight is not until 8:30pm…so we’re just stuck in an airport concourse all day, hoping our flight will get us out of here tonight.
I made the mistake of actually looking at the news last night before going to sleep. What? John Edwards imploded over yet another peccadillo that is no business to the electorate? And worse, Obama pandered to the religious lunatics by groveling before the vapid and cheerfully toxic RIck Warren of the Saddleback Church? I saw a few clips of that sorry spectacle, and once again Obama is making me regret having to vote for him this year. Please, please, let’s not ever nominate a spineless quisling to run for the presidency, OK? At least Barry Lynn offers exactly the right criticism of this move, which cheered me a little bit.
Maybe Lynn should run in the next election…
Anyway, I’m ready to go back to the islands with virtually no internet connection and limited news access.
Rule number one: never trust a preacher-man.
Yeah the faith forum was disastrous for Obama.
Can’t wait to hear more about the trip PZ…
welcome weary traveler… see any evidence of transitional species?
Welcome to Florida! ;-)
Yeah I tried watching that panderfest but couldn’t stomach it.
“Thank God” turtles and cormorants don’t have a religion.
At least in one respect humanity didn’t really gain by acquiring speech and the powers of reason. It’s altogether too easy to reason through an entirely fake system of evidence-free beliefs.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I’ll have more to say about the Galapagos later, but right now I’m struggling with the appallingly bad wifi in the Miami airport. Whoever designed this nomadix software they use needs to be taken out and shot.
You’ll love this one:
Nancy Pelosi called Obama “a leader that God has blessed us with at this time.”
I keep telling you people the messiah effect is firing on all cylinders and anyone with a hint of skepticism should be hearing warning klaxons.
John Edwards imploded over yet another peccadillo that is no business to the electorate?
I agree. His years of junk science lawyering is much more telling of what a douchebag he is.
I was also pretty miffed that the first time our presidential candidates faced off this election was inside a church. And not just inside a church, but moderated by a wingnut Evangelical preacher.
I like Rev. Lynn’s response, as well as a number of posted comments. At least some Christians recognize that legislating against abortion and homosexuality on the basis of their religion is nothing more then oppression of the “lost”. Unbelievers don’t want to live by a Christian code.
While Obama does seem to suffer from religiosity, going to Rick Warren is a great tactic: by fighting McCain in Republican heartland he is, you might say, fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. He’ll win a few votes, persuade a few others to not vote. Taking the fight to the enemy. Finally.
#10:
Hardly taking the fight to the enemy. Obama came off as grovellingly apologetic and wimpish.
The news is true, and sad…
Let this be a lesson: No matter if it is a democrat or a republican, its shit still stinks. All politicians are full of shit.
America might just be better off if you stayed in the Galapagos, too. After all what’s one more turtle to them.
America might just be better off if you stayed in the Galapagos, too. After all what’s one more turtle to them.
There is some evidence that McCain knew the questions in advance.
“a leader that God has blessed us with at this time.”
Given the competition, the Democrats ought to be able to run a damp turnip and win this election. The fact that they are having trouble with a candidate who is 100 times more charismatic than McCain — a lukewarm compromise candidate if there ever was one — really concerns me.
Rev. BigDumbChimp wrote:
I actually got through a large chunk of it. It even motivated me to dig up the Rick Warren and Dan Dennett TED talks and give them a closer look.
When you consider that the voice of the evangelicals in politics used to be people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Rick Warren is a small step toward rationality. The religious right has been crippled by the Bush’s last 8 years.
While Warren isn’t endorsing any candidates yet (as far as I can tell) he is shaping the opinions of both in ways I don’t like. His questions were evangelically loaded, for sure, but he seemed very open to some mind changing arguments from Obama.
While I don’t like all Obama’s answers, he was sure closer to my position than McCain was and he may have won some converts among the evangelicals.
It really is a shame that Obama has turned to the faith heads.
But on the Edwards side, I have to respectfully disagree. Edwards campaigned with family values as a major topic. If he had campaigned with with the slogan “Families and personal lives are exactly that, personal. The government should stay out” Then I would give him a pass. But if you want to hold up your ‘family values’ when you run for an election, then you deserve to get hung out to dry when your shown to be a hypocrite.
I love to bash Larry Craig and his in the closet ilk. If they want to run for public office on an anti gay platform, then go toe tapping in mens toilets, they need to be exposed. I can’t give politicians a pass on this type of hipocracy just because I support their politics.
If we want this kind of news out of our political theater, we need to get the ‘family values’ platform out. As long as Americans vote for politicians that will continue passing ‘blue laws’ enforcing morality, we will have these problems.
“I saw a few clips of that sorry spectacle, and once again Obama is making me regret having to vote for him this year.”
That irked me. A lot.
Why do you feel like you “have to vote” for Obama at all? This is exactly the problem with our two-party system — as long as one guy is less-shitty than the other guy, people vote for him by default. But this provides no mandate for the less-shitty guy to be any good at all!
Why don’t you look at third-party candidates? I personally like Nader, but maybe Bob Barr is more your style. Or LaDuke — or any of the others.
You wouldn’t be throwing your vote away by casting it in protest of a Democratic candidate who continuously acts in a fashion that you don’t agree with.
What will it take for you to NOT vote for Obama? And if that’s the case — why NOT vote 3rd party? Serious questions — not just spouting rhetoric here.
Yikes, the discombobulation you can get by trying to speedread:
– had me wondering if some scheming airline passenger-handler had replaced the Trophy Spouse™ with an evil clone…
@#19: Because a vote for a third party is truly throwing your vote away (at least until we get Instant Runoff Voting)!
why NOT vote 3rd party?
Oh, that’s easy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000
@ #20: Sorry Aaron, the 2000 election completely destroyed that line of reasoning for me. I thought then that the difference between Bush and Gore was minimal. The last eight years have proven that I was very very wrong.
If people hadn’t voted voted for Nader, Gore would have won. That’s just the way it is. (I’d probably support something like instant runoff voting, but we don’t have that. In our system, it is important to vote for the lesser of the evils.)
make that #19 (Aaron)
That sucks PZ. Well I guess you can look at it as only “8 more hours of crap and then I am home”….right? Good luck and can’t wait to hear all about your trip, but probably won’t till tomorrow I expect…looking forward to rest and all I am assuming.
PZ! Welcome to Miami! Can we visit you at the airport?
If people hadn’t voted for Nader, Gore would have won. That’s just the way it is.
No, if people hadn’t voted for Nader, the Republicans would have had to work just that much harder to steal the election. After all the voting irregularities, phone jamming case, Diebold machine malfunctions (and a Republican-affiliated Diebold exec promising to “deliver the election for Bush”), lack of voting machines in strongly Democratic districts, the “Brooks Brothers riot” and the general malfeasance of Republicans in general, you still think that vote-splitting had anything to do with the results of the 2000 election?!
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but on the other hand, I do recognise that sometimes there really are conspirators, and sometimes conspiracies actually exist. In this case, I’d have to say that particular conspiracy was wearing safety orange and had a big flashing sign over its head that said “HI! I AM A CONSPIRACY! HAVE A NICE DAY!” The 2000 election was so dirty, the UN should have sent observers…
…and the observers should have brought buckets, Dettol, and mops.
PZ! Welcome to Miami! Can we visit you at the airport? I’ll drive through a hurricane to shake your hand!
As a voter who is unregistered with a party(the designation for independent in Massachusetts), I’m going for a third party candidate again this time. I hate voting for either Republicans or Democrats. I agree with each of them on a point or two, but in general I find the bipartisan system to be completely unsatisfying.
Because a vote for a third party is truly throwing your vote away (at least until we get Instant Runoff Voting)!
Never understood that (trite (tired (boring))) cliche. How is voting for someone I don’t like *not* throwing my vote away?
And then there’s a punchline about the wrong lizard getting in or something.
The fact that they are having trouble with a candidate who is 100 times more charismatic than McCain — a lukewarm compromise candidate if there ever was one — really concerns me.
Well, I know a lot of people who don’t like his talk of more programs and more government and wealth redistribution in an age where our government is getting more and more disturbing. They do *NOT* think that trend will magically reverse itself under Obama, who voted for the FISA bill.
All this election has done is convince me even more to retire overseas.
Yeah it sucks that he stood up there and pandered to them, but is the U.S. really ready for a potential leader to stand up there and state “god does not exist and anyone who thinks it does is delusional” Not yet I think.
I told you yesterday that Fay had big plans for Miami. Did you listen? Nope.
I’m not sure where I am at the airport. We found a quiet corner on one of the concourses and are taking turns napping and watching the rain pour down.
Are you crazy? There’s a storm out there!
I’m not a conspiracy theorist…
I’m afraid you are after that outburst. :-)
For example, the quote from the Diebold executive happened after the 2000 election, and the exact quote was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Sane people just see a biased douche, not the tip of some conspiracy. And the Diebold election machines division at the time was run by a registered Democrat.
However, I do *not* like electronic voting machines. Personally, I think the old paper ballot works fine and would stay with us for the foreseeable future if I had any say in it. Shiny and new isn’t always better.
But, don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a black helicopter out there for you somewhere. :-)
The political reality is that you have to keep your pants zipped to get elected in this country unless it happened long enough ago that the public doesn’t remember.
I did feel insulted when Clinton said, “I did not have sex with that woman.” If he had just kept his mouth shut, but no, he has to confess to not doing something which makes everyone think he did do something. For me, that ranked right up there with his “I didn’t inhale” remark about marijuana.
Since Edwards is out of the race, it also seems a moot point that he had an extramarital affair.
Because, as you mention, you poor Americans have a two-party system, where a vote against one of the big parties is automatically a vote for the other one. The only thing that could be done to stop that would be to separate president and government (so that coalition governments become possible) — in other words, a major reform of the Big-C Constitution.
This, however, is not correct. Gore won in Florida under any legal way to count the ballots. The Supreme Court stopped the counting and made a coup. In the end, only nine people had the right to vote in the presidential election of 2000, and none of them was an elector.
As it appears they did in 2002 and 2004. They also seem to have tried in 2006.
No, peacekeeping troops. Heavily armed peacekeeping troops to physically protect the vote.
That just doesn’t make it go away.
Perhaps fortunately, however, the stupid institution called the electoral college means you can’t vote at all without wasting your vote. You’re in Massachusetts, which will go to the Democrat (in this case Obama), no matter what happens. I don’t understand why so many people are so surprised that so few Americans vote — voting for POTUS only makes sense in swing states in the first place!
Interrobang @ # 27:
The irregularities, or election rigging, or whatever you want to call it, only happened in a few states. Nader, on the other hand, was on the ballot in every state. One can argue that Gore would have won the election if the Republicans weren’t screwing around. But one can also plausibly argue that Gore would have won if Nader had not been on the ballot.
You act as if this quote had been the only piece of evidence. You have a lot to learn, young padawan.
Dagger wrote,
It’s not that atheists and other secular types want an atheist in the White House; we just want the entire topic taken off the playing field. Candidates should not ever have to espouse one faith, all faiths, or no faith. But yeah, that’s probably just as unlikely an event as an atheist president.
Untrue. Literally thousands of irregularities were reported from the whole USA in both 2000 and 2004, and on average they strongly favored the Republicans…
In 2000, this didn’t matter in the end: Gore won Florida (and then the SCOTUS usurped it). In 2004, it’s less clear…
With exactly the same results as if he had only been on the ballot in Florida, or for that matter if he hadn’t been on the ballot anywhere.
“I saw a few clips of that sorry spectacle, and once again Obama is making me regret having to vote for him this year.”
Make you??? Having to?? Oh, you are a Party Leadership wet dream! In fact, on behalf of the DNC, I salute you! Keep the two-party system alive, Pavlovian Voter!!
Re: Rick Warren (from Wonkette: Obama, McCain To Be Interrogated By Goateed Evangelist In Megachurch Isolation Booths):
(As the good reverends Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Henry Lyons, Jim Jones and Ted Haggard can attest, being the Top Evangelical Leader in America usually doesn’t last that long, so we hope Pastor Warren will make the best of his big day.)
He’s on the cover of TIME last week. Count down to implosion begins now …
“Don’t blame me, I voted for Kronos!” — Homer Simpson.
“Oh sure, throw your vote away!” – Kang
Yes, the people rose up and voted all those Democrats in in 2006….and we’re still in Iraq, and then FISA and…
screw the Democrats, I’m voting Green.
@ David M., OM (#36):
It is not correct to say that I am incorrect when I say “If people hadn’t voted voted for Nader, Gore would have won.”
Nader got 97,000 votes in Florida. Wikipedia tells us that polling data indicates that Gore would have picked up 24,000 more of these votes than Bush would have.
This would have been enough of a margin to secure a victory for Gore even with the shenanigins of Harris and the USSC. (I will say that I was very surprised that the US court overturned a state supreme court on such questionable grounds. It really lowered my opinion of the USSC.)
A vote for Nader really is a vote for Bush (in 2008 as well, I’ll opine).
Hmm… trapped in an airport during a storm? Watch out for Republican senators, dear PZ!
Any ex-evangelicals here to suss out any “dog whistle” quotes? As a recovering Papist, I don’t speak the lingo…
Decent commentary on the debacle last night:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/08/what_rick_warren_could_have_as.html
Will there be a video documentary of the trip?
Actually, the airport experience sounds mild compared to every experience I’ve had returning to the US from south of the TexMex border. I had assumed that was normal.
I wonder why Pelosi didn’t just say, “Got Mit Uns”.
I’m not American so I don’t get to vote in your election but, of course, the outcome affects all of us around the world. I just talked myself into liking Obama then he allows himself to be manipulated by the religious right. Darn!!! I know he probably didn’t have much choice but I wish somebody would stand up to that crowd and say a resounding NO. He wouldn’t get elected but it would make me feel better. As it is we have to wish him a good, fair election because the alternative……
hje quoted?:
Want to start taking bets on when Rick Warren implodes?
I’ll take somewhere no sooner than 2012 and no later than 2018.
Cheer up. At least we’re not in Iran, where the mullahs have power over the elected officials.
Erm… scratch that thought.
Well, it was worth a try. Make sure you have some pastelitos (Cuban Pastry) and a colada(Cuban espresso) at La Carreta before you go. Hope you visit Miami soon again!
John Edwards imploded over yet another peccadillo that is no business to the electorate?
John Edward’s inability to honor a contract he made of his own free will and, presumably, out of human love, makes a difference to me. I would have thought that most basic level of integrity was within his grasp.
I mean, if he will lie about this, he would lie about science.
And if we can’t examine his soul, and Divine redemption is out of the question, all we can judge a person by, insofar as his fitness to take a leading role, is his actions.
We can presume he knew the ramifications of the marriage contract, and we can presume he had enough human compassion to understand the pain he would be causing. And the damage to his self-respect. YMMV
I would like to have the choice of my two favorite governmental nerds running together– the paleo-conservative Ron Paul with the uber-liberal Dennis Kucinich on the same ticket.
Revenge of The Nerds ’08…
Yeah…
I’d vote twice for those two…
Ways to find live storm information, if the wifi’s not overloaded.
The good news is that it’s still just a tropical storm and the possibility of hurricane-force winds is down around 5% and up along both coasts, away from Miami and the interior.
Getting some sleep is wise, especially with something over your eyes so it’s dark: your body repairs itself better, adrenalin falls, etc. Also try to keep a small bottle of water and a snack with you – they make lineups much more tolerable. Earplugs, too, if you have or can fashion them – good for on the plane and in crowds. You can feel yourself relaxing as the quiet seeps in.
You act as if this quote had been the only piece of evidence.
Well, gee, sorry, I’ll write a 90 page rebuttal for a blog message board next time, OK? (rolls eyes)
The point was that the outburst was that of a conspiracy theorist. One symptom of CTism is a loss of temporal cognizance.
(I wonder if anyone is buying this. Oh! Did I type that out loud? Crap!)
You have a lot to learn, young padawan.
*snort* I’m 43, and I joined the Sith a *long* time ago. ;-)
Come to the dark size. We have pizza and hookers.
the paleo-conservative Ron Paul with the uber-liberal Dennis Kucinich on the same ticket.
Isn’t that like bringing matter and antimatter together? Someone call 911-CERN.
The political reality is that you have to keep your pants zipped to get elected in this country unless it happened long enough ago that the public doesn’t remember.
I don’t care about the affairs so much as how they react when caught, and Edwards was the Little Kid archetype to a T. Oh, he “made a mistake.” No, when you forget to carry a two while balancing your checkbook, *that’s* a “mistake.” Carrying on an affair when your wife is dealing with cancer, remission or not, is a bit more than that. The emotions don’t go into remission so easily. As they said back in the old neighborhood, “whadda dooosh!”
But, still, his junk science past should be enough for any skeptics not infected with an ideological meme to give him a pass.
“Please, please, let’s not ever nominate a spineless quisling to run for the presidency, OK?”
Good idea, but I’m glad you Dems did it this time. With the disaster of nominating McCain, your spineless quisling is about the only thing that can save the GOP from itself. Maybe next time around we can field some real candidates. Or, at least, I hope the GOP does — you Dims can nominate another spineless quisling if you like.
And now the rumours are starting to take wing that McCain’s heartwarming story about the cross in the dirt is an Alexander Solzhenitsyn rip-off.
Strange times.
Obama rejected his Chordata heritage immediately after Clinton folded. Previously he was not-Bush, then he promised to out-Bush Bush on the FBI (Faith Based Initiative, obviously). After the Rick Warren affair, it is possible his HOX genes are regressing beyond the jellyfish stage. I figured when he was elected to the Senate that he better run for President in 2008, before he caught monoKerryosis, but apparently the disease develops rapidly. He even wastes all those small contributions on expensive ads that depict him as aloof. Perhaps the only thing that can save him is a Clinton vertebrae transfusion — and maybe some other parts from Bill would help.
McCain reminds me of the creature from the Aliens movies, so it might help to choose Sigourney Weaver for Veep.
NO. You are flat wrong.
Look at the exit polls, first of all. The late Russert predicted your sort of reaction during his commentary on election night in 2000 — that the Dems would blame Nader. The exit polls consistently showed that the people who voted for Nader would not have voted for EITHER party if Nader hadn’t been running. He didn’t STEAL votes, he PRODUCED more voters.
Furthermore, the margin by which Bush stole Florida was ~500 — there were SIX OTHER third-party candidates that all had over 500 votes EACH. Why not blame them?
Heck — Gore didn’t even win Tennessee, his home state! That should have been a shoe-in.
The bottom line here is that it is EXTREMELY presumptuous for the Dems to just presume that Nader voters would have otherwise voted Democrat; No candidate is going to get my vote by default — they have to EARN it. If you are voting for a candidate with whom you don’t agree with, just because you agree with the other guy less, then you are throwing your vote away.
Guess what — Matt Gonzalez, Nader’s running-mate — is a HUGE supporter of Instant Run-off voting. In fact, he was the major force behind the implementation of Instant Run-off (aka “Rank Choice”) voting in San Francisco.
So rather than bitch about us not having Instant Runoff voting, why not do something about it and cast your vote for someone that DOES support it? How do you expect change to happen when you keep voting for politicians with the same agenda?
Bollocks to that.
If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you still end up with evil. And more importantly — there’s no mandate for the candidate you voted for to actually step up to the plate proper.
Think about it.
If Obama wins because everyone hates McCain — what does he owe ANYONE? He won simply by being less of an idiot — not because he has good policies, or because people really believed in his vision (whatever that may be — it keeps changing), or because he would be a good leader. You have NO reason to believe that Obama would make good on any of his ever-changing campaign promises if he wins with his secret “I’m not the other guy” tech. (A distinction which has become more and more blurry).
If you want to throw your vote away by voting for the “lesser of two evils”, go ahead — but quit bitching about how nothing changes, how the government is corrupt, and how corporations run everything. You LOSE your right to complain about those things when you vote in a manner that perpetuates them.
There are plenty of third party candidates, and if you really want to see change happen, vote for the one whose values align the best with yours. It may not be Nader — but I bet it’s not Obama. The only way to drive that message home that we demand better candidates is by voting for the candidates that we actually believe in.
Blake Stacey wrote:
I think, if you do some extensive research, that you’ll find that some versions of the cross in the dirt story are far older than Solzhenitsyn, it just gets attributed to Solzhenitsyn.
Back to the original source ; )
“Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger in the dirt.”
McSame is plagiarizing Jesus! The audacity!
Bah – real Christians(tm) used the ΙΧΘΥΣ. Doesn’t anyone read Quo Vadis? anymore? If you gotta steal, steal from the classics.
You started off discussing the “faith forum” and then wandered off into political waters so here is my take on the issue of mixing religion with politics.
I’m against it!
This was a feat of verbal legerdemain. DailyKos has the proof that the questions were not the same. Even I was fooled and I thought I was watching/listening carefully. The pastor said he would ask the same questions and because I heard them the first time, I thought I heard them the second time, but I didn’t.
“Two days after the fact, questions continue to surround John McCain’s surprisingly strong performance Saturday at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. The mainstream media and blogosphere alike are abuzz with rumors that McCain pierced Warren’s so-called “cone of silence” and, more serious still, may have purloined his legendary POW “cross in the dirt” story from the late Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
But on one point, there is no dispute. Despite CNN’s assurances to the contrary, Rick Warren simply asked Barack Obama and John McCain different questions.
From the very first question, Warren treated McCain with biblical kid gloves, editing out scriptural references that might have proven uncomfortable for the religiously reticent Republican:
QUESTION TO OBAMA: These first set of questions deal with your personal life as a leader and I’m not going to do this with any other segment, but as pastor I’ve got some verses that have to do with leadership. The first issue is the area of listening. There is a verse in Proverbs that says fools think they need no advice but the wise listen to other people. Who are the wisest three people you know in your life and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?
QUESTION TO MCCAIN: This first question deals with leadership and the personal life of leadership. First question, who were the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?
Chuck Todd of MSNBC was quick to note the strikingly different answers Obama and McCain offered, but not the clearly different questions they were asked:
“Take the VERY first question Warren posed to both candidates: who are three people you’ll depend on for wisdom in the presidency. Obama seemed to answer this in a very personal way, talking about his wife and grandmother. McCain went right to this message, checking boxes on Iraq (Patraeus) and the economy (Whitman) for instance. Now, I’m betting Obama’s answer came across as more authentic but McCain’s was probably more effective with undecided swing voters.”
Given the very different framing of the question Warren posed, it’s no surprise that Barack Obama and John McCain produced strikingly different responses in both substance and style. Obama took Warren’s personal question personally, and cited his wife and grandmother as both “wise and honest” before moving on to a litany of political figures on both sides of the aisle. (Obama’s mention of the radical social conservative Tom Coburn (R-OK) was transparent pandering to his audience.) For his part, McCain responded to Warren’s political question and pointed to General David Petraeus, Obama supporter Congressman John Lewis and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. (McCain was quick to return to his stump speech and extol the glories of eBay as America’s economic future.)
But Warren’s divergent paths for Obama and McCain split further with the very next question on leadership and moral weakness. Again, Warren turned to the Bible for Barack Obama, but to Dr. Phil for John McCain:
QUESTION TO OBAMA: Let’s talk about personal life. The Bible says that integrity and love are the basis for leadership. This is a tough question. What would be looking over your life, everybody’s got wings [sic], would be the greatest moral failure in your life and what would be the greatest moral failure in America?
QUESTION TO MCCAIN: We had a lot leaders because of their weaknesses, character flaws, stumbled, become ineffective [and] are not serving anymore, serving our country. What’s been your greatest moral failure and what has been the – what do you think is the greatest moral failure of America?
Again, the different framing of the question put Obama at a distinct disadvantage. After admitting his own troubled, selfish youth as his personal failing, Obama turned to scripture to highlight America’s failure to live up to its own ideals:
“I think America’s greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we still don’t live by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you for the least of my brothers, you do for me.”
In contrast, McCain killed two birds with one stone. He dispensed with his own marital infidelity in a single sentence, “my greatest moral failing, and I have been an imperfect person, is the failure of my first marriage.” (The issue never surfaced again, and Warren’s admission Friday that he “absolutely” would have compunctions about voting for an adulterer never became an issue for McCain.) More important, McCain highlighted America’s greatest shortcoming as a failure to “serve cause greater than yourself.” That theme – “country first” – is the rhetorical cornerstone of the McCain campaign. And the contrast of his response with Obama’s discussion of his own battle with what Warren termed “fundamental selfishness” couldn’t have been more strategic for McCain.
Warren’s different framing of the inquiries he posed and the tailored, selective follow-ups continued in his discussion of marriage. Warren asked Obama and McCain alike to “define marriage.” But while Obama was then asked, “Would you support a constitutional amendment with that definition,” Warren instead offered John McCain an opportunity to weigh in on a hotly contested ballot measure being pushed by the religious right in California:
“Let me just ask a related question to that. We got a bill right here in California, Proposition 8, that’s going on because the Court overturned this definition of marriage. Was the Supreme Court of California wrong?”
It’s no secret that the foes of same-sex marriage see Proposition 8 as essential to fueling Republican turn-out in November.
And so it went all night. And so it went all night. Thanks in no small part to Pastor Warren’s biblical guidance, Barack Obama spoke in a personal, conversational style, making a point throughout to refer to the principles of his Christian faith in the misguided attempt to please an audience indifferent to him at best, downright hostile at worst. So while Barack Obama talked of “trying to do God’s work,” John McCain did the work of his campaign advisers. Despite Warren’s feeble requests not to do so, McCain just repackaged his stump speech and made purely political appeals. In so doing, John McCain probably had the best night of the campaign. ”
snip
It could be argued that pastor Warren was trying to give Obama the chance to change the perception of about 8-12% of Christians that have been told via viral e-mails and believe that Obama is a Muslim: this may not be a big distinction to some of you blogging here, but it’s a problem in the general election.
And speaking of viral e-mails, do some research on viral memes; Richard Dawkins coined the phrase and it’s very pertinent to this election. This whole faith forum issue is a viral meme and no one outside the evangelical/fundamentalist community likes it or thinks it’s a good idea. Whether one is an atheist or a follower of any other religion or just an ordinary mainstream Democratic party member, injecting religion into matters that ought to be purely secular is a bad thing.
Remember people, we have a 6th. amendment to the constitution; look it up. Please keep in mind that we have the system we have – 2 parties. You can cop out and throw away your vote because of one issue, religion; that makes you no better than the religious person who won’t vote for a Democrat because of the abortion issue. Or you can throw your vote away on a third party candidate because of “the principle”. Either way you throw the election to McCain. Is that fair? No. But it’s a fact and scientists should be dealing with facts.
If you don’t like the system then use your influence to change it; pressure the democratic party to resist FISA or any other proposed law with which you disagree. That’s how the other team does it. Remember it is the lowly school boards who are introducing “intelligent design” into science classes and bibles into the schools. Go link to this if you don’t believe me;
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/07b/texas_bible_elective.html
And with that kind of defeatist attitude, how do you expect it to change?
Again — more defeatist attitude.
How do you expect there to be better political candidates if you adopt a “lesser of two evils” approach to voting? It just perpetuates this downward spiral of quality.
The only people that throw their vote away are the ones that either (a) don’t vote at all (and thus abdicate their civil responsibility) or (b) vote for someone they don’t really care about, simply because they think he’ll win.
If you are voting for someone with whom you do not agree with, how can you consider that a worthwhile use of your only vote?
Voting third party is not wasting a vote because it sends a clear message to the existing candidates: If you want to receive my vote, you need to be BETTER. It isn’t an “elitism” issue any more than declaring yourself an Atheist is an elitist issue.
Our political process isn’t about voting for the winner — you’re not buying lottery tickets, people. Whether you vote for Nader, or Barr, or LaDuke, or any of the other candidates (including Dems/`Pubs) you should be voting because you agree with their issues, not because you’re trying to game the system. If you vote Obama, and he turns out to be a shitty president that caves to Corporate pressures, the religious right, etc. — then you have no one to blame but yourself.
If you vote third party, and McCain wins — oh well! Perhaps Obama should have been a stronger candidate and he would have won more votes!
I voted Obama in the primaries — I would vote for him in the generals as well except he completely changed during the General Campaign. Whose fault is that? I’m not going to be like the co-dependent in an alcoholic relationship and enable the democratic party to produce shitty candidates and continue to vote for them.
The only way things improve is if you quit being a pussy and vote for what you believe in. If you tow the line because you don’t want to rock the boat, then quit bitching about getting seasick as America circles the drain.
Sondra wrote”
I was fooled too. But even being fooled by the subtle difference in questions I still noted that the way the questions were framed favored republican sound bite answers.
My blog post, “When is a question a lie?”, goes into a bit of detail.