If John McCain Were President

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Have you ever even driven through Texas?

I HAVE!! ! I HAVE!! !

Both the lower portion (I-10 all the way through with a stop in Ft. Stockton) and upper portion (Dallas, Longview, etc etc).

I think I see where you are going with this, (texico?), but twenty or so years ago when Bush was Governor of Texas things weren't quite the same. However, his bilingual capabilities and ability to garner Republican Support from the Hispanic community, in itself, might have made the difference in the '00 election.

There are many ingredients associated with influence, that can be easily discounted, when someone says the wrong word in a speech. Bush might not have been the perfect intellect, but he was the perfect Republican canidate, with just the right amount and kind of Charisma and Personna, back in '00, along with other factors. He was the Republican answer to the Clinton Administration. One of his most valuable assets was his last name. .

Unfortunately, now, it doesn't look like an advantage for brother Jeb.

I'm from Dallas, or more specifically Irving and Carrollton are where I grew up when my father was alive, and Denton during my last years in Texas after my dad died of lung cancer and my stepfather showed up. So, are you willing to coincide with aghogday's assessment of the people of Texas on the basis of your, admittedly rather extensive, journey through Texas?

I lived in McKinney for a time and worked in Plano. I'm not so sure that they found his flaws endearing so much as they found it endearing to side with him and defend him against the mean people on the other side. i think they learned to see his flaws as endearing and humanizing but I think the focus on the flaws from the other side probably did as good of a job of alienating them.

The area that I was in was annoyingly chipper.

I seriously doubt Charisma and Personna have anything to do with winning people to vote for you. For people who bother to vote on issues, they select the lesser of two or more evils. If they're morons, they look for the R or D or I next to the name in order to select. I voted in favor of Pro-life, Pro-Israel, Pro-gun ownership, and Pro-tax cuts back in 2004, those issues not being ones that Kerry cared about but that Bush at least claimed to. I really don't listen to any politician's speeches, but only read up on the issues that they claim to support. Although not perfect, Bush did a better job of trying to maintain his stance on issues during his first term than could be expected from a lot of senators and congressman who just do whatever after they get their job.

However, with Obama I suppose his promise of nebulous "change" holds true enough. The value of a troy ounce of silver increased from $15 in 2009 to about $45 now, so that's some "change" at least. The guy certainly changed his mind about war, as now it doesn't bother him, so that's "change" too. Unemployment rates have changed too, it must be a political miracle. Oh, how wonderful all this 'change' is.

I've never faced that problem when I lived in Texas. Most people that I've known there were overly serious and highly opinionated no matter what political stances they took. Now that I live in the Midwest state of Minnesota I see more of the "annoyingly chipper" type of people anytime my wife and I eat out in a suburb full of yuppies, otherwise most of the conversations are usually people yelling into their cell phones about how offended they are about this or that.

Some people dig down into issues and some people are motivated by charisma and personna to raise money and go to the polls. I also am one to look at issues, but some people vote on as little information as the significance of the last name, as we recently saw in South Carolina.

Most vote party line regardless of who is running. The issue of Charisma and Personna, is more in play to energize people to raise funds and actually go to the polls and vote. This is the effect we saw with Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.

The big change with Obama has been healthcare reform, the cornerstone of his campaign; it is a change that will affect many Americans lives for the better into the distant future. And no one else has come close to achieving it. If the law lives through Supreme Court scrutiny, it will be his place in history, and he knows it. That in itself is nebulous change.

Not being able to achieve campaign promises is not unusual. The problem with Obama is people were initially convinced that he was magic.

I've studied the numbers, and they are not bogus. Yes, they adjusted population estimates between December and January, but they adjusted the numbers of the employed as well as the unemployed. It didn't affect the unemployment percentages.

There was no adjustment between November and December, when just as big a drop occurred, and there was no adjustment between January and March, when unemployment continued to decline, albeit at a slower pace.

The fact is, as soon as the Bush tax rates got renewed, there was a big hiring wave. If the Ryan budget got passed as is, with the riders, we'd be back to normal unemployment numbers within a year.

I respect your opinion but why would the Heritage foundation report job growth was weak in December and half of unemployment was due to people no longer looking for work and why would Boehner comment that job growth was weak in January as evidenced by data; unemployment was down in January with no explanation other than bad weather and a fall in population.

Hiring was expected to increase in February and March, as reported by economists in January. It wasn't until hiring actually increased in February and March until Boehner gave credit to the extension of the tax cuts. In December and January conservatives were blaming weak job creation on Obama.

I provided evidence for this in the other topic where you presented the graph for unemployment; you might not have noticed that post.

I can provide the links here if you didn't see them in the other topic. I would like to see other data supported by economists, if you have it, to support your opinion on a hiring wave in December and January. I've done research to see if economists are saying there was a hiring wave in December and January, but haven't seen any evidence to support it; only evidence to the contrary.

@Inuyasha, do you have the same sources on this that I found.

When the December numbers first came in, a lot of people were skeptical because even most Republicans didn't realize that the beneficial effect from extending the Bush tax rates would be so large and immediate. People were looking for other explanations because they thought it might be a temporary blip. And it's true that there were two effects going on between November and December: a rise in the percentage of population employed, and also a decrease in labor force participation, all on a seasonally adjusted basis, of course.

That's to be expected, because in addition to the Bush tax cut extension, the bill also refrained from extending unemployment benefits beyond 2 years. The labor force decrease was probably the result of people at the end of their 2 years on unemployment who had only been nominally been looking for work deciding to retire or rely on their spouse for work rather than accepting a job that was available. And that's a beneficial effect too, because the taxpayers shouldn't be indefinitely supporting people who aren't willing to take the jobs actually available.


Maybe Boehner wanted to see several months of improvement before he believed it was going to be sustained. Or maybe he was expecting the tax cuts to provide even more benefit, though that seems to me overly optimistic. As for blaming the other side, that's what politicians always do. Boehner's relatively honest for a politician, but he's still a politician.


I provided a graph in the other thread. The numbers are readily available on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site.

Okay, the attached link from the labor statistics site provides a graph from 2010 on seasonally adjusted non-farm labor increases through December. Job recovery started in February 2010 at a significant rate as shown by the graph. More jobs were created in April and October of 2010 than November or December. The biggest increases in Job growth were in March and April of 2010, right after the healthcare reform act went into effect. I could easily speculate that this was the reason; but it would be correlation not causation.

The fact of the matter as evidenced by the graph on job growth from the labor statistics site is that job growth was much stronger in October, at the height of uncertainty over whether or not the whole tax package would expire, than it was in December.

The labor department doesn't back your argument up over December and January; it refutes it.
Jobs have increased strongly in February and March like they did earlier in 2010 in March and April. But, those gains in March and April of last year were much more significant compared to the preceding months.

Anyone can claim correlation between two events, but causation is more difficult to prove. The statistics bare no proof of your claim in December and January, or Boehners claim in February and March over a wave of job increases over jubiliation that the tax cuts were extended.

If we judge it from the labor department job statistics, the election in November had a negative impact on jobs, since so many more were created in October. But, that would be correlation, not causation.

Here is the link to the research from the Department of Labor. The graph is on page 24.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/03/art2full.pdf

Partially correct.

The main reason John McCain picked Sarah Palin was because it was a high-risk (with a chance to yield a high reward) campaign tactic. Obama was ahead in the polls, so he was trying to get through by playing it safe and taking no risks, while the McCain campaign was in danger if it did not do something bold.

The choice of Sarah Palin was effective, during the first two weeks. It shut down most of the media focus on Obama and directed it toward her. Of course, after she made numerous gaffes and her folksy attitude was poorly received, she was caricatured by comedy television programs.

More accurately, the media did a hatchet job on her.

Simple fact is that Palin had more executive experience and responsibility than Obama, who was nothing more than a community organizer with a budget to spend handed to him and didn't even serve one full term in office (most of which he was absent) before running for president.

To see people be critical of Palin's "experience" to be VP (which is a non-job unless the president dies) when they were supporting Obama for the presidency was hypocritical at the very least.

On TV what you see is what you get. In the public arena, the media is not normally kind when people in high positions make mistakes. She was criticized more for what she said and did, than her limited political experience as the Governor of Alaska. She was also criticized more for resigning her position than for her experience.

If Obama had made the gaffes that she did, during his campaign, it is not likely that he would have had a chance of winning. He ran, almost a perfect campaign and presented himself in a exemplary manner, regardless of his experience. That is what the public saw and that is why he won. One can argue it was a carefully constructed act; but it was a successful one, never the less.

It is a credit to her charisma and influence that she still has a strong base of unwavering support. Bush made those kind of gaffes during his campaign and still won. They both deserve alot of credit for staying afloat, and failing forward.

If they had gone after Obama with the same fanatism that they went after Palin, it would be a President John S. McCain in the White House, not Barack Obama.

Further the left used junk lawsuits to make it so Palin was over half a million dollars in debt when she finally resigned (and the resignation had to do with a new law in Alaska where people can be held liable for junk lawsuits). She resigned so there wouldn't be a corruption issue with the new law's implimentation.

Also Journ'O'list proved the mainstream media was doing whatever it could to cover up any potential scandal involving Barack Obama, so no this was a hatchet job not legitimate reporting.