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tychobear

Listed below are comments made by tychobear between Thursday, 14th August 2008 and Monday, 27th October 2008.

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Love and untogetherness 09:51am on 27 Oct 2008 Hi Justin,

Is this the political memorabilia shop on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue just down from the White House? It looks like it and they had Obama and Hilary cut-outs there last time.

I bought my Obama mug there ...

Cheers!
Debate expectations 07:47am on 01 Oct 2008 There's lots of suggestion that :
a) Palin will somehow rise to the occasion and challenge Biden seriously in debating terms, or
b) Biden will hit her too hard and alienate voters by making them feel sorry for Pail, or
c) Palin will do a repeat of her woeful performance in her interview with Katie Couric.

But a serious question - what if she doesn't rise to the occasion and Biden does, as an experienced debater, simply obliterate her. Will the American voters really be so foolish as to allow sexism (yes, sexism, because it wouldn't be nice to do that to a woman! What about Hillary?) to sway their judgement and profit an ill-prepared candidate?

Can the McCain/Palin camp so lower expectations that merely losing badly is seen as a draw? or losing terribly seen as a win?

If so, then the debate process is worthless.
Nailing a sneezing maverick 11:13am on 25 Sep 2008 That McCain's advisers would allow him to do something so foolish as play chicken in the last six weeks of a Presidential campaign is stunning. Did they not think to wonder what might happen if Obama chose to call his bluff?

As Justin noted, McCain now loses whether he goes to the debate or not, with going the lesser of two evils that were either created or magnified by his own actions.

One thing for sure, it's irrelevant that Obama argued to ahve the first debate on foreign policy. Any debate now, short of a major terror attack in the US between now and Nov 4, will be squarely on the economy. As will debates 2 and 3, and the VP one too - although Biden may well chose to go after Palin on foreign affairs anyway.

Why would McCain do such a thing? Was he that spooked by the movement in the polls? Was he that scared of a debate on the economy that he has managed to bring about the exact thing he was so fearful of? Was his judgement so poor and his maverick tendencies so strong that he felt bluffing Obama was wise at this point? Or was he so naive to assume politics could or would be put aside in a time of coincident campaign and crisis that was not, actually, 9/11-ish in immediacy to the average citizen?

Whatever the reason, it has made him look spooked, scared, foolish, naive or some combination of the above. His favourable numbers will surely suffer considerably, the first polls to come out will doubtless be eye-watering, and it seems highly likely that he may have just conceded the Presidency to Obama.

I wonder who will play McCain in the movie ... ?
Eagleton? 11:25am on 03 Sep 2008 The situation is simple really.

Five days after announcing the Republican propoective nominee for Vice President, the political news discussions are solidly about the character and suitability of Sarah Palin. Not Gustav, or national security, or the economy, or education. Palin.

Consider this : how much debate was there about the character and suitability of Joe Biden to be on the Democratic ticket?

None.

McCain has picked a running mate that seems to be nothing but a liability for him with the very voters that are the key to electoral success - the small number of swing voters that decide any election.

Palin brings him affirmation with the "religious right" of the GOP - voters that would either vote for McCain or not vote at all - but will do nothing to bring over the swing voters that are still weighing up the McCain/Obama balance. A few will vote for her because she is a woman, from Alaska, an utterly pro-life mother of five, a member of the NRA.

But how many more will look at her and see the NRA, pro-life no matter what, religious right tags on her and decide to vote for Obama/Biden?

Swing voters tend to dislike extremes. McCain is not extreme, neither are Obama or Biden.

Palin is extreme, both in her politics and in her selection as a running mate. Combine that with the consideration of how likely it is that she might become President as a result of McCain's age, and she becomes more of a liability and less of an asset.

The only substantive decisions a candidate has during an election is to choose their policies, their campaigning style, and the people who accompany them on the campaign. These are the decisions that the prospective voters see and use to make their selections.

Picking Palin as a running mate was a mistake, and changing the Republican ticket either before or after nomination will only compound the error for McCain.

It might be that McCain is to fall at the first hurdle.
A clever performance 07:25am on 29 Aug 2008 Hi Justin,

I remember waaaay back in the early days of Iowa and New Hampshire there was a get-together on BBC News 24 (when it was still called that!) where all the BBC's North America correspondents and experts discussed the upcoming election and were asked to state who they thought would be ultimately elected.

As I recall, you chose John McCain.

Based on this and the previous few weeks, do you still think he'll win or will it be Obama ... ?
Openness and staying power 07:56am on 19 Aug 2008 "Fixing" Georgia will require more than just Europe or just America. It will require a pan-global approach where everyone makes it abundantly clear to the Russian government that trying to repeat the militaristic adventures of the Cold war will result in nothing more than a bloody nose for them in a place where it hurts - international trade and influence.

Putin - nobody believes Medvedev is actually in charge in Moscow - is a throwback to the Russian nationalism brute force of the last century. He might well reflect the character of Russia more accurately than Yeltsin and the economic and political modernisers of the 1990s, but that changes little when considering the potential cost of allowing Russia to repeat Hungary, Czeckoslovakia and Afghanistan mentality.

A united economic and political front might give them a moment of pause to question whether they want to go down this road again. anything less than unity will allow the Russians to bully individual countries at the economic and/or political level and blunt the effect of any effort.

I want to see a Russia that is an active participant in global affairs, with a pragmatic approach to cooperative development. Not one that sneaks into an invasion of a sovereign neighbour while the world watches the Olympics.
Openness and staying power 11:53am on 14 Aug 2008 Hi Justin,

I haven't been to the US as often or for as long as you (naturally) but I have lived there for a short period and visited often, and have many American friends (and even my daughter in the local US school here in Germany for 5 years).

However, I don't share your somewhat gushing view of America's welcoming attitiude toward new arrivals. The principles that established the US enshrined the welcome extended to others, but the reality is somewhat different.

American was built, essentially, from refugees. They fled Europe and Asia to seek religious, economic or political freedom, or just explore a new frontier.

But try turning up in Kennedy, Dulles or LAX now as an economic refugee, seeking a chance to start a new life away from poverty. Unless you already have the tools you need to escape from your previous situation (education, sporting ability, money or an established entrepreneurial reputation) you're not going to get far.

This was coming long before Ellis Island shut it's doors, but the effects of 9/11 have made this at least an order of magnitude worse.

I'm an Ameriphile by nature, it's a country that fascinates me due to its potential and unique place in the world. But at the moment they are on a destructive path of seeing the rest of the world as something to be kept apart from and protected from. That will only hurt them in the future.

Consider this : if Barack Obama had a British mother, rather than an American one, would he have been allowed into the US as a child? Son of a foreign father and, in this scenario, a foreign mother. Who could have seen his potential 47 years ago?

That is the potential that the USA is missing out on by failing to welcome the world as it once did.

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