Verifex:
-Speaking of Cthulhu, I prefer this license plate.
I like Obama, he's a thoughtful guy with some good ideas. I even have a feeling that if some of his ideas don't work, he'll be humble enough to admit it, and try something new.
-He still won't admit he was wrong about the Surge/COIN plan for Iraq, for instance, even though he apparently wants to use the same plan in Afghanistan.
BobRoor
When did we have an election last where there was someone noble to vote for?
-I'm not sure I'd refer to a product of the Chicago machine as "noble."
Lord Bob
He is -- John McCain has supported Bush administration policies ~95% of the time. Obama is running against four more years of the same. A John McCain presidency would effective be Bush III.
-That 95% claim certainly sounds damning, unless you actually look at the underlying numbers as the people at Annenberg Political Fact Check have. Here is an excerpt from their website, accessed today:
The claim is true. According to Congressional Quarterly's Voting Studies, in 2007 McCain voted in line with the president's position 95 percent of the time ﾖ the highest percentage rate for McCain since Bush took office ﾖ and voted in line with his party 90 percent of the time. However, McCain's support of President Bush's position has been as low as 77 percent (in 2005), and his support for his party's position has been as low as 67 percent (2001).
Now, seeing as you don't want to vote for someone who's voted with the President, would you vote for someone who voted with the President an average of roughly 40% of the time? If not, you may need to rethink your support for Obama:
When doing so, they may wish to consider that Obama's votes were in line with the president's position 40 percent of the time in 2007. That shouldn't be terribly surprising. Even the Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, voted with Bush 39 percent of the time last year, according to the way Congressional Quarterly rates the votes.
The McCain campaign points out that Obama told a local TV interviewer recently that "the only bills that I voted for, for the most part, since I've been in the Senate were introduced by Republicans with George Bush." Obama was actually wrong about that. In 2006 he voted alongside the president 49 percent of the time, and in 2005, the year before Democrats took control of the Senate, Obama voted with the president only 33 percent of the time.
Using only one year's worth of voting records to claim that McCain "has supported Bush administration policies ~95% of the time" is intellectually dishonest at best. As to the idea that McCain is simply Bush's ideological twin, I can name a number of significant policy disagreements between the two men, so I would refrain from that claim as well.
