Can we move this thread to the s***can? If I want to read about stinkin' politicians there are lots of places I can go, but after weeks and weeks of this, can we take it elsewhere? It's kind of like the story about guests and fish.....and I think this thread is the fish.

RiceDad Wrote:Can we move this thread to the s***can? If I want to read about stinkin' politicians there are lots of places I can go, but after weeks and weeks of this, can we take it elsewhere? It's kind of like the story about guests and fish.....and I think this thread is the fish.

:iagree:

Actually, I've enjoyed this thread. It's good to read political commentary with less of the extremist rhetoric than is found on most political blogs. And appearing on the Rice board, the level of intellectual sophistication is obviously far above what's found most places.

I've just read what I found to be a very interesting book by Morris Fiorina (any relation to Carly? I don't know, but he's at Hoover Institute, so it makes sense that he could be) entitled Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. His premise, with which I agree, is that Americans have not become more polarized as a whole, but the two parties have become increasingly so, leaving a large number of Americans in the center, further and further removed from either party's hard-core position. The opening for a centrist candidate from either party (like Bill Clinton) is obvious. I'm not sure which, if either, of these candidates is a credible centrist.

McCain had a chance to be, until he pandered to the right to get the nomination. I think McCain's best chance is to differentiate himself as far as possible from W (who IMO has been a disaster of Carter-esque proportions, albeit in a different ideological direction). In 2000 W told me that he was going to reduce the size of the federal government and get us out of the nation-building business. I didn't vote for him, but I was okay with him based on those promises, except that both of them turned out to be lies. I don't really call what he told us about Saddam's nuc/bio/chem weapons "lies," because I know that intelligence is always full of guesstimates, and at some level of probability that's way below 100%, a president still needs to act.

Obama's stump speeches seem intended to portray him as being a centrist who can bring people together, but his resume definitely does not put him anywhere close to there. I still don't know where he really stands, and to those who have said that it's clear from what he says and does, my question is which one--what he says or what he does?--because the two are very different, or at least have been. What really troubles me is that I don't think Obama wants us to know where he truly stands until he's standing in front of the capitol being inaugurated, and a big hunk of the media seems so ready to elect a democrat that they don't seem interested in pinning him down. I would feel more comfortable if he could identify some epiphany which he has experienced, that moved him from the left edge of the spectrum to somewhere near the center. I could accept it if he said that the person he is now portraying is the real himself, and that he previously took certain positions on issues because that's what he needed to do to get elected from the constituencies where he has stood for election. But so far, he's done neither of those, and until he does--or does something similar that's believable--I'm going to remain very skeptical as to who is the real Obama. Too skeptical to vote for him. Interestingly, I've talked with several friends in the last few days who were very avid Obama fans a month or two ago, and now they are starting to have the same skepticisim.

I think there's a huge opportunity for a candidate who can truly capture the center. If neither of the major party candidates does, it would be interesting to see how far a third party candidate can go. I was very interested in the Unity08 movement, but that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I've voted libertarian many times before, and could very well end up voting for Barr this time. If Barr got 10% of the vote, and cost McCain the election, would that be enough to move the republicans (sorry, can't really bring myself to capitalize either major party name any more, because neither of them speaks to me) away from the religious right stranglehold and back toward a more libertarian Goldwater-type conservatism? If so, right now that's reason enough for me to vote for Barr.

I don't want the democrats in my bank account, and I don't want the republicans in my bedroom. I've tended to favor republicans in the past, because I thought I could defend my bedroom more easily than I could defend my bank account (not to mention, there's probably more in my bank account to defend from democrats than there is in my bedroom to defend from republicans). But after the PATRIOT ACT, I'm no longer so sure of this.

Of all the politicians who've written anything that I've read, the one I find myself agreeing with most is Jesse Ventura. I've read several (maybe all) of his political books, and I really haven't found much that we disagree on.

Geez, when I resurrected this thread today, it was over an interesting editorial on the LDS/El Dorado issue, something we covered at length in this thread.

It wasn't really 'political'.

(Not that I object to people taking it back to Hilobama, but the reaction . . )

Just for the record, I don't particularly want to spend tons of time in the SPIN Room. I think having a single OT thread on the Rice board shoulda been OK.

A. Yeah, it's OT but by keeping a thread like this on the Rice board, you keep the conversation civil and intelligent for the most part. People were a lot ruder about the basketball coach (at least one or two posters) than anything on this thread.

B. By keeping it on the Rice board you keep the conversation to a more manageable number of posters. I have nothing against posters from other schools, but once it gets to be a crowd, the discussion either takes a lot more effort, or it can lose the interest of at least some of the people talking.

Bad move on moving this, IMHO. Again, my post wasn't about the presidential race (please see above), but even with the posts that were, I think some people are being way too thin skinned. (I saw more unfair and offensive stuff posted about Huckabee on the Rice board (just a couple actually) than anything Owl69/70/75 has posted about Obama, and I didn't get bent out of shape).

Rick Gerlach Wrote:Bad move on moving this, IMHO. Again, my post wasn't about the presidential race (please see above), but even with the posts that were, I think some people are being way too thin skinned. (I saw more unfair and offensive stuff posted about Huckabee on the Rice board (just a couple actually) than anything Owl69/70/75 has posted about Obama, and I didn't get bent out of shape).

I didn't think I'd really been that hard on Obama. I have some legitimate questions and I am not bashful about expressing them. He could still win me over, and I've kinda laid out how he could do it, but so far that doesn't seem to be the direction he is moving. I don't think he's being pressed nearly enough by the media on the issues I've raised, and it's starting to concern me that he may get all the way to the White House before we find out who he is. Of course, that may be precisely the result he intends.

FDub Owl Wrote:While I don't agree with your characterization of Obama,

So, how would you characterize him?
Serious question, because I really don't know who he is. And that's not from a lack of trying to find out, or from a lack of intelligence. It's just that I don't find what he says in his speeches to be consistent with what he has done in the past, and I don't know which one is right (though all else failing, I usually put deeds ahead of words).
I like (or at least I'm okay with) the words, don't like the deeds, in case I've not made that clear.

Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:I don't think he's being pressed nearly enough by the media on the issues I've raised, and it's starting to concern me that he may get all the way to the White House before we find out who he is. Of course, that may be precisely the result he intends.

He hasn't sponsored any real legislation, he's a newbie to national politics, he never ran anythng, his pastor is an anti-american racist, he wants to raise taxes, yet the press loves him.

Somebody please tell me; who is Obama and what has he achieved? If he's running on his record then he should have been eliminated a long time ago because he ain't got one.