U.S. Presidential Election 2008

People from the Bush administration are damaged goods, Condi doesn't bring much to the table strategically.

The importance of race has been completely overstated in this campaign blah blah blah

Who the hell cares?

What's your point with this constant posting of meaningless crap? You don't like Obama. We get it.

What's your stake in all this, anyway?

It's like a non-stop Sean Hannity RSS feed. I miss cendaf. He at least spoke his mind.

BB's a bit more rabid and obtuse and lacks any real finesse.

If that's it, fine, but I haven't seen him say he supports McCain. I haven't seen him say anything, actually, that resembles an expression of an idea or thought. Just constant posting of bullshit videos and irrelevant "news" blurbs. It's like a non-stop Sean Hannity RSS feed.

It is little remembered today that the political career of John Sidney McCain III, a career now thoroughly laundered in mythology, began with the help of several fortuities. In 1973 he returned from his five and a half years of captivity in North Vietnam [...] He was one of 591 prisoners of war repatriated early that year as a result of Operation Homecoming, and was selected by the editors of US News & World Report as the one returning POW who would be given a thirteen-page spread in the magazine to describe his ordeal (having a famous father never hurts), which brought him the same kind of attention and acclaim that had earlier, for different purposes, been showered upon the young Hillary Diane Rodham and the young John Forbes Kerry.
McCain's career is undeniably built also upon skill and shrewdness unusual among contemporary American politicians. It's not that he's been an especially accomplished legislator, [...] McCain "is infamous throughout his home state as someone who studiously avoids mixing with the little people." It was by suffering in a cell, serving as a kind of metaphor for American suffering in a war most Americans gave up on early in his confinement, but at the same time holding fast to principle under the most unimaginable circumstances, thereby redeeming some notion of American honor in a dishonorable situation, that McCain became an American hero. Liberal opponents of the war, who seldom acknowledged the repressive brutality of the North Vietnamese regime, were put on the defensive by the story of how he was tortured.
Even so, attaining icon status took a while. He first made national headlines as a senator in the late 1980s, as part of the Keating Five, a group of senators who had lobbied in defense of a failing savings-and-loan company, owned by Charles Keating, that was under investigation during the S&L scandals.

Obama stops the DNC from collecting money from lobbyists and PACs.

In Obama's eight years in the Illinois Senate, from 1996 to 2004, almost two-thirds of the money he raised for his campaigns -- $296,000 of $461,000 -- came from PACs, corporate contributions, or unions, according to Illinois Board of Elections records. He tapped financial services firms, real estate developers, healthcare providers, oil companies, and many other corporate interests, the records show.

Obama's US Senate campaign committee, starting with his successful run in 2004, has collected $128,000 from lobbyists and $1.3 million from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. His $1.3 million from PACs represents 8 percent of what he has raised overall. Clinton's Senate committee, by comparison, has raised $3 million from PACs, 4 percent of her total amount raised, the group said.

In addition, Obama's own federal PAC, Hopefund, took in $115,000 from 56 PACs in the 2005-2006 election cycle out of $4.4 million the PAC raised, according to CQ MoneyLine, which collects Federal Election Commission data.

Neither Obama nor McCain is offering anything new and neither is likely to fix any festering problems. The choice of voting for one or the other is a matter of risk management rather than choosing a silver bullet.

Neither Obama nor McCain is offering anything new and neither is likely to fix any festering problems.

The bursting of the housing bubble and the associated credit crunch has so far wiped out about $3 trillion of wealth—nobody knows the exact amount—caused havoc in the financial markets [...]
John McCain, for all his protestations that economics is not his strong point, has put forward a coherent, if somewhat heartless, case for doing nothing, or very little, anyway. Echoing the arguments that Andrew Mellon, Friedrich Hayek, and other enthusiasts of the free market espoused [...]
Hillary Clinton, after initially equivocating, has emerged as the would-be heir to FDR and John Maynard Keynes. In addition to imposing a ninety-day moratorium on foreclosures and a five-year freeze on certain adjustable mortgage rates, she would have the federal government buy up an undetermined number of troubled home loans, enabling lenders to convert them to more affordable deals and putting a floor under the housing market. [...]
Should Obama win the nomination, political considerations may well force upon him a more interventionist position, but his first inclination is to seek a path between big government and laissez-faire, a trait that reflects his age—he was born in 1961—and the intellectual milieu he emerged from.

Eurovol has the amazing knack for insulting any person who might possibly be willing to do business with him- it's unbelievable.

I do not perceive Eurovol's comments as insults...I am not Conq!

I have friends in DC who work as lobbyists, so I see nothing really new here. It is easy to rail against "lobbyists" when you have no idea how the system works. Sure, they can try to rein in the influence of big corporations, but lobbys and PAC are essential to any free market democracy, otherwise lawmakers would be unable to propose new legislation. What? They should just talk to the man on the street?

TOPEKA, Kansas - There is increasing chatter surrounding two rising Democratic stars - both of them female, both of them governors, neither of them Hillary Rodham Clinton.

They are Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, two potential running mates who could help Barack Obama woo female voters

Obama and Clinton met privately yesterday. Let us hope he doesn't take her as his running mate.

As Spiegel noted, Obama offers on foreign policy what Europe has been crying out for years for while McCain just offers continuation of the failed imperial policies of Bush. And most of the UK press that I have been reading comes to the same conclusion. Lets hope the US public see it the same way.

look there is a very big difference between lobbyists talking to politicians and lobbyists channeling large campaign contributions to candidates to ensure special favours once in office. Obama's decision to end lobby-generated campaign funding brings the US into line with regulations most reasonable democracies adhere to already.

But as a piece of political manoevering it is a masterstroke on Obama's part as it paints MCain into a very uncomfortable corner as he cannot afford to follow suit and will therefore be portrayed (rightly or wrongly) as a lobby group puppet from now on.

Events have a way of shaping presidents' foreign policy that cannot be foreseen during a presidential campaign.

Also, as I have pointed out before, trade issues are a major irritant in US/EU relations, and Obama's protectionism cannot be music to European ears.

Obama's flip-flopping on direct meetings with anti-US dictators and thugs is an indication his foreign-policy judgement is not so wondrous and may be re-calibrated a few times.

Once they reach the Oval Office, US Presidents don't want to have to ask the rest of the world for permission to do everything- even ostensibly UN-loving Bill Clinton didn't have a problem with bombing Serbs in 1995

Obama by contrasts makes no promises on foreign action other than opening dialog on all fronts and taking Israel and the ME mess seriously at long last - something that the EU has been pushing for for years.

Great. More dialog, that's the EU euphemism for leadership. Just what we need more meetings.

by persuading the US to stop funding the IRA through Noraid, it was one part of bringing them to the table to find a viable solution.

However, Israel is a different case. Money from the USA does not just allow Israel to buy weapons, it is also fundamental to the very existance of Israel. Without it, the state would implode.

Rather than starve Israel of funds, the Middle East needs the kind of proactive negotiating from the USA that, uniquely among recent US presidencies, the Bush regime has completely neglected. McCain shows no inclination to change that but Obama has emphatically indicated that under him the US will re-engage in the region and I for one think that would be a bloody good thing.

look there is a very big difference between lobbyists talking to politicians and lobbyists channeling large campaign contributions to candidates to ensure special favours once in office. Obama's decision to end lobby-generated campaign funding brings the US into line with regulations most reasonable democracies adhere to already.

I think you're close, but I'd say Dialog is the EU euphamism for ACTION. It allows them to sleep well thinking they're doing something, without actually doing anything.

And how did the Cold War end, if not through Dialog?

the Kyoto accords being a glaring example.

China's thirst for oil that feed's their industry that has the main function of supplying goods to the USA.

The hoopla over Kyoto is another example of typically short-sighted EU diplomacy: bash the US because it's easy, it's what the people want and they really aren't going anywhere, while ignoring juggernauts like the Chinese government, because they really are hard-nosed assholes who don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.