Political Punch

I don't understand how ANYONE can be be looking to vote for anything republican. The pig-headed stubbornness of the republican party has been the main ingredient that has made our country hated worldwide. There was a time that people loved Americans, that people respected Americans...nowadays...its safer when traveling overseas to say your a Canadian...lol...How about how much were paying for gas right now?? Do you know why this is happening?? Its because the people in our government are getting huge campaign contributions from these oil companies too allow the oil companies to make record profits each year while the middle class is getting more and more where we can't afford the gasoline to get us to our workplace. Bottom line, George Bush is a silver spoon in his mouth rich man's son who has never had to work for a living and is completely ignorant to the plight and concerns of middle class America, and mccain is just more of the same...at this point, I'd like to see ANYONE in office who isn't a stubborn pigheaded republican resolved to keep our troops in a war that is the most useless in the last 100 years.

Oh, digita, your logic is loosely knit to say the least... comparing Obama's wife with Geraldine Ferraro because they're both someone's wife? Ferraro clearly is a national political figure by direct choice... further Obama has never attempted to mudsling her the way the Republicans were trying to do with Michelle. Obama only defended Wright's service to the good of the community; he very strongly denounced his offensive statements from the very beginning. The conflicting emotions with respect to his deep love for his grandmother and her, yes, "typical" fear of young black men (which you apparently share) is a real and courageous recognition. So he learned from about the gas tax. Most politicians would never admit it.

digita,
Yes, Obama voted for a gas tax holiday in Illinois, and learned that it didn't work at all. He said so, and he said he has learned his lesson.

Many in Indiana see the gas tax holiday for exactly what it is: a gimmick that allows the oil companies to hike the price of gas to match the amount decreased by the tax; and then, during those 3 months, thousands of road construction workers are out of work AND no road construction gets gone! That's what the gas tax is for -- road construction.

For those who want to point out that Obama voted with Clinton on all the funding of the war issues, it could also be said that Clinton voted with Obama. Hmmm... So lets face it, if we like our candidates votes we must like the opponent's votes. Of course they keep criticizing each other. That's what happens in campaigns. What did you expect? They each want to win. I wouldn't want a president who didn't fight for a victory. Obama or Clinton--both great choices...especially considering the alternatives.

Is there anyone on this planet who cares what Joementum thinks about anything? Probably even fewer people than Obama supporters who care what Clinton thinks about anything.

Senator Obama will say and do anything to get the nomination even when he has no idea what he is talking about. He dances and prances and brags and talks and talks and promises things he knows he can not do. He made promises to his senate district and did very little. See the proverty, gangs, drugs and crime. It is so sad this politician can lie so much and get by with it. SHAME SHAME

Does Hagel mention the word "unconditionally" somewhere? Or is this something you're reading into the statement:
"I never understand how anyone in any realm of civilized discourse could sort through the big issues and challenges and threats and figure out how to deal with those without engaging in some way," Hagel said. "You take some risks in talking about this, especially in the Congress, because you can immediately be branded as an appeaser."

Where does this President get off on calling Dems appeasers, what did he give to N.Korea for the promise they would not keep developing missles? Where does this party, that traded arms to Iran and armed and trained alqueada in afghanistan and supported Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq, get off with that?

Hagel went on to praise Obama and say, "John is a man who reads a lot, he's been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things."

You mean, "Hagel went on to praise McCain"

Freudian slip?

I have been watching Hagel's criticisms of McCain for a few months now. I imagine they split over the Iraqi war. I think McCain ran for president as himself in 2000. I think this year he is running as a red state, red meat Conservative.

I don't know whether to be encouraged by McCain's move to the right or be more disturbed that Hagel is the only public official willing to go on the record about the difference.

As for Lieberman, what good could he do for Democrats once they supported a different candidate in CT last election? He continues to demonstrate why the DLC is not a good idea for Democrats. Every speech makes a good argument for why the party needs to go in a different direction.

Good luck to him. I'm just glad he is making his statements outside of the DNC.

It is interesting that Sen. Obama wants to use President Kennedy as an example for direct talks. Worse yet, Sen. Obama is quoted as having stated the following: "When Kennedy met with Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear War." Actually, the truth is that the meeting took place more than a year before the Cuban missile crisis. In fact, the Russians came away from that meeting believing that President Kennedy was a weak president. That emboldened Khrushchev to conceive his plan to place intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. At least President Kennedy was able to fall back on his military training and experience to eventually diffuse the situation -- a situation that could have been avoided had President Kennedy shown his strength from the beginning.

Jon, I am not scared! I am a realist, just stating the facts. Or have you forgotten the following attacks:
2002 Tunisia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Yemen and Kenya;
2003 Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia and Turkey;
2004 Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Jakarta;
2005 England, Indonesia and Jordan;
2006 Egypt and Pakistan (foiled);
2007 Algeria and England/Scotland (foiled).

I never said this was the end of Western Civilization, but rather we are in the fight for our survival. We can still win this jihad against us. But we must be determined to defeat the enemy wherever they are. Regardless of the original circumstances, we ARE fighting al Qaeda in Iraq right now. To pull out before al Qaeda has been defeated will be seen throughout the Islamic world as a tremendous victory by al Qaeda over the mighty American military.

the following comment from below typifies my biggest gripe in contemporary american politics, "Lieberman is a traitor to the Democratic party despite his generally progressive voting record over the years."

my fellow americans, can't we be something better than an entity divided among two absolute political parties? dare to be an individual and own your own personal opinions. common sense would suggest that the odds of these opinions aligning 100% with one particular party's rigid platform w/b extremely small.

i applaud the few politicians that still remain in our system that are courageous enough to go against the grain and exhibit views that go beyond our frustrating cookie-cutter politics. you don't necessarily have to agree with the views of mccain or lieberman, but i'd at least suggest that their individualism is deserving of respect. i for one, completely agree with lieberman's critical remarks of obama.

who is barak obama? i don't believe any of us really know bc all he's done is sell out to some strategically formulated platform designed for the sole purpose of winning an election.

"Hagel went on to praise Obama and say, "John is a man who reads a lot, he's been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things.""

What? Read that again.

I think the best thing Obama can do is to advertise heavily that Joe Lieberman is against him and backs McCain. That fact alone should get him elected. Joe "Israel is the 51st state" Lieberman will bankrupt the country and sacrifice thousands of American lives for his wars in Iraq and Iran (if he had his way).

someone needs to look at this "committee for Liberation of Iraq."
Organized in 2002

Chaired by George Schultz (of the Bechtel corporation... who was awarded the first contracts in Iraq after the fall of Saddam for an initial 680 million)
and honorarily co-chaired by Leiberman and McCain.

They have had many of their articles now pulled off the internet that they wrote pushing for us to remove Saddam with military action.

This was in 2002 and 2003! The management of this committee were the ones in bed with Chalibi.

McCain and Lieberman were the nonorary co-chairs and strong members.

Please please someone do a story on this.

The heads of which make up a substantial part of McCain's foreign policy team.

Obama is may not be the divider, he's the deceiver. Everything he said thus far has an opposite feel to them. "Layoff my wife"? But he's attacking Ferraro, who is somebody else's wife, for her views. He defended Wright mightily until Wright comes out and called Obama a typical politician. He wrote that his "typical white grandmother" feared for her safety when she comes upon a group of young men. But it feels like a fist punching into his utmost gut when he found out those young men are blacks. But what about his grandmother's safety? It seems everything and anything that can hurt him politically, he would state that it's dividing America, it's the wrong thing to do. But when it's the other way, he never states let's get beyond and play nice until it comes to his corner.

This may be because Lieberman and McCain chaired (honorary) the Committee to Liberate Iraq...

this is the committee of conservatives that pushed/lobbied for this situation we are in. The man who officially ran the committee with them is also McCain's lead foreign policy advisor.

They pushed for us to militarily overthrow Hussein and leave us with this crap...and now they are pushing to go further.

Digtia...No it had nothing to do with HIS state but OUR country. Everyone knows this is May and no one, I don't care how many people they have in their pocke, can get a gas relief bill through this year. So again Hillary is promising something that won't happen this summer. Giving everyone false hope.
Plus, this would only add up to about $60 a home. That is about 1 fill up.
I like Obama's suggestion. The Bush admin. should release some fuel reserves for the summer at least.

Lieberman is a traitor to the Democratic party despite his generally progressive voting record over the years. His support for the war, the administration's approach to combating terrorism, and his appearing to put Israeli interests over our own is, however, beyond the pale, as is his defection to the McCain camp.
Is is simply juvenile petulance to insist that deplomacy at the level of the head of state is capitulation or appeasment. And it is truly insane to have one tool - violence, in your options bag. The old saying that everything looks like a nail when the only tool you have is a hammer.

geevill,

losing 1/4 Dem seat that's 75% of running out neo Repubs...is not bad....

Please...here's what McCain record:

1. Voted FOR War
2. Voted AGAINST GI Bill
3. Voted AGAINST Women's Equal Pay
4. Voted AGAINST Katrina Relief (Yes he did)
5. His CAMPAIGN MANGER just stepped down.
6. 75% of his campaign are lobbyists
7. Voted FOR TORTURE
8. PROLIFE
9. Voted AGAINST MLK Holiday 5x!
10. Voted for Bush Tax Cut's
11. Voted for Corporate Tax Cut's

I'm sorry GEEVILL, McCain has alienated:

1. Women 60% vote
2. African-American 10%
3. Veteran's 10%
4. Active Duty Soldiers & Spouses 7%
5. Rural America 30%

I believe this is all the demographics that make up at least 75% of the voting pool.

AND former dem....WE WON THE COLD WAR DUE TO DIPLOMACY....we Won Agreement with USSR by Economic Prowess

You do your Financial HISTORY....Building weapons and STILL DIDN"T USE THEM is the ANSWER. They were not used!

SO DIPLOMACY WORKED!

geevill,

losing 1/4 Dem seat that's 75% of running out neo Repubs...is not bad....

Please...here's what McCain record:

1. Voted FOR War
2. Voted AGAINST GI Bill
3. Voted AGAINST Women's Equal Pay
4. Voted AGAINST Katrina Relief (Yes he did)
5. His CAMPAIGN MANGER just stepped down.
6. 75% of his campaign are lobbyists
7. Voted FOR TORTURE
8. PROLIFE
9. Voted AGAINST MLK Holiday 5x!
10. Voted for Bush Tax Cut's
11. Voted for Corporate Tax Cut's

I'm sorry GEEVILL, McCain has alienated:

1. Women 60% vote
2. African-American 10%
3. Veteran's 10%
4. Active Duty Soldiers & Spouses 7%
5. Rural America 30%

I believe this is all the demographics that make up at least 75% of the voting pool.

AND former dem....WE WON THE COLD WAR DUE TO DIPLOMACY....we Won Agreement with USSR by Economic Prowess

You do your Financial HISTORY....Building weapons and STILL DIDN"T USE THEM is the ANSWER. They were not used!

SO DIPLOMACY WORKED!

Joe 'Turncoat' Lieberman should be ashamed to show his face to the world. This little traitor's loyalties are not with the United States, but with the state of Israel.
He is the only one outside the Bush cabinet who feels that our invasion of Iraq was right. that is because it fits in neatly with Israel's agenda.

@James Danley - - A *fight for the survival of Western Civilization...* are you kidding?
It must be tough, being so scared of everything.
It's very sad that you've bought the whole fear garbage, of the GOP. Because several planes were hijacked, and hit 3 buildings, this is the end of Western Civilization?
The problem is, that those that attacked us, are still hanging out, because your ruler decided to ignore them, and attack an unarmed country instead.
And if your party wins the Presidency again, this crazy policy will continue... as the perps of 9/11 keep strengthening, in Afghanistan & Pakistan.

Joe 'Turncoat' Lieberman should be ashamed to show his face to the world. This little traitor's loyalties are not with the United States, but with the state of Israel.
He is the only one outside the Bush cabinet who feels that our invasion of Iraq was right. that is because it fits in neatly with Israel's agenda.

1st off digita is just wrong. I would guess the uneducated blue collar?

McCain is an out and out liar! He's a maverick and a reformer ... he's so toast, he will lose all the indies because he can't stay in the middle and appease Rush and the other blowholes. He plays like he's John Wayne, when in fact he's more like the "Ugly", which would make Obama the "Good" and Hillary the "Bad"

Obama is the most hyprocrytical candidate in American history. Not even touching on about Wright and Iraq and so on, let's just look at the Gas relief. Obama said that it's a ploy by politician. Why? Because he had already tried in in State Senate for Illinois.

From the National security Archive:
In the sphere of U.S.-Soviet relations, the first year of perestroika was one of building trust and of intense learning for both Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Although public rhetoric did not change to any significant degree, the unprecedented exchange of letters between the two leaders gave them an opportunity to engage in a serious dialog about the issues each saw as the most important ones, and prepared the ground for their face-to-face meeting in Geneva. One of the most important issues that came up repeatedly in the letters was the need to prevent nuclear war by way of reducing the level of armaments to reasonable sufficiency, where each side would enjoy equal security without striving for superiority. Both leaders came out of the summit with a new appreciation of each other as a partner. They succeeded in building trust and opening a dialog, which in very short order made possible such breakthroughs as Gorbachev's Program on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

No guns were ever fired.

Q1: If McCain had all this time to get his campaign in line, why did it take himself until now to figure out the conflicts of interest w all the lobbyist influence on his staff?

A1: Better questions is, what if Hillary would be the nominee? He wouldn’t have fired a soul. He did this purely because just as Obama out-Democrat’d HRC, Obama will out-reform McCain. As soon as it became clear that Obama was in, Mr. Integrity started purging lobbyists.

Q2: Beside the besmirch on McCain’s credibility and integrity, what does this mean long term?

A2: If he were to be Pres, he would hire all those lobbyists back.

Straight talk, my ash.

In 2002 Obama attended an anti-war rally and gave an anti-war speech to a group of anti-war protestors. This is the hook he hangs his "superior judgment" hat on. From his subsequent behavior, we now see it for what it was - telling the group he was speaking to what they wanted to hear.

In 2003 when he began campaigning for the U.S. Senate - and patriotism for Iraq was high - he was pro-Iraq. He deleted the anti-war speech transcript from his website since it might interfere with his getting elected.

Since he's been in the Senate, he's voted repeatedly to fund the War. In fact, he's voted with Senator Clinton in all but one instance (the Casey confirmation) on Iraq. He's also admitted that he didn't have access to intelligence which the Senate had at the time of the Resolution vote, and that he really isn't sure how he would have voted.

Great candidate the Dems are putting forward. The Reps will make mincemeat out of him.

"Reagan sat successfully with Gorbechev that resluted in oh yeah.. THE COLD WAR." Power2thepeople, Reagan forced the USSR into financial insolvency in the COLD WAR arms race. Reagan had the U.S. manufacture more weapons and missiles than the USSR could keep up with! READ your history! Reagan won by brute force of weapons as the threat, not by diplomacy.

sorry... The END of the cold war! My typo!

Nixon sat successfully with Mao Tse Tung resulting in the end to a bitter hatred between the two countries (not to mentiona giftof tow adorable pandas from the Chinese government). Reagan sat successfully with Gorbechev that resluted in oh yeah.. THE COLD WAR.

Diplomacy works.

Who cares what Hagel thinks. Hello, he's not a conservative. Joe Lieberman's a statesman.

I cannot believe Joe Libermann, whom I used to respect immensely, could say that Obama hasn't been strong!! He stood up for what he believed was the right way to vote on the war, plus this gas tax rebate farce...Is he in the same Twilight Zone as McCain?

Hagel is one of the few credible republican politicians. An Obama-Hagel ticket would be very interesting!!!
Obama 2008!

To answer Leiberman, Democrats did not embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our NOT own. Bush's war in Iraq has done NOTHING to protect the USA. It has cost us $12B-15B per MONTH that would be better spent in America, not in Iraq. Lieberman is wrong and he is a traitor to the Democratic party. The Republicans can have him. Better yet, he should just go away.

Geevill,

I'm sorry, Lieberman is the laughing cow in CT......believe me, he will be voted out.

Hagel is great, smart, experience, and knows his foreign policy. He will be a great "shortlister" as VP for Obama.

McCain is such a DISSAPOINTMENT TO ME. As a disabled veteran he INSULTS me everyday by speaking about war and then turn HIS BACK on the GI BILL...

TERRIBLE

"PATRIOTIC ACTIONS SPEAKS VOLUME THAN SYMBOLIC WORDS"

Sivan, you can deny it all you want! But that won't change the fact that we ARE in a fight for the survival of Western Civilization. There are just two outcomes: We defeat the terrorists or we die. It is that simple. I just pray that when the next series of attacks come all you deniers are just close enough to witness one, but far enough away that you will have to live the rest of your life knowing you were wrong.

Obama is a fool. It's one thing for the Secretary of State or other emissary to talk with Ahmadinejad; it's entirely another for the President to personally do so - especially without pre-conditions or negotiations. In Obama's words, this gives Ahmadinejad "street cred" that only serves to promote him to undue status, particularly in his own mind.

Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "stinking corpse" doomed to disappear and denies that the Holocaust happened. We also know that Iran is providing training, arms, and funding for terrorists in Iraq that are killing American troops and the Iraqi Army and Police (the people we need to be in control so we can bring our troops home).

I'd like to know exactly how Obama's discussion would go with Ahmadinejad. More importantly, I'd like to know who in the Obama cabinet would then be sent to clarify for Ahmadinejad exactly what it was that Obama meant to say upon the inevitable "mangling" of his words or "boneheaded" mistake he'd made during the discussion!

Lieberman sounds so knowledgeable until you actually listen to what he's saying. I guess he's lonely as an independant and is trying to have the republicans accept him back.
He further contends that we should embrace the war as our own. It wasn't our own. It was for Bush. Even Bush's daddy told him not to go there.
Lieberman is dead wrong on this issue!

I'm Jewish and I couldn't care less what Lieberman thinks about anything. I suspect that most voters -- regardless of whom they support -- don't care what Lieberman thinks and don't buy into this administration's "appeasement" BS.

A clip of former Secretary of State James Baker has been making the rounds recently, as a result of the current ''appeasement'' debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Unfortunately for McCain, Baker agrees with Obama. And even though the interview is from this past October, Baker addresses head-on the issue of appeasement, saying:

"Diplomacy involves talking to your enemies. You don''t reward your enemies necessarily by talking to them if you are tough and you know what you are doing. You don''t appease them. Talking to an enemy is not in my view appeasement."

John McCain & his Lobbyist express is a fraud.
Obama 08

John McCain’s chief media adviser said Tuesday he is stepping down rather than campaign against Barack Obama.

Mark McKinnon said last year that he would leave McCain’s campaign after the primary season if the Arizona senator were to run against Obama.

The Illinois senator is not the Democratic nominee, but he has accumulated a significant lead in the number of delegates required to claim the nomination.

In a 2007 interview with Cox News, McKinnon said he would vote for McCain, but "I just don''t want to work against an Obama candidacy." He added that if Obama were to reach the White House, it "would send a great message to the country and the world."

Obama 08

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------