Preconditions and preparations are two different things. Obama’s position is that he supports talking to our enemies without preconditions. He has never said he does not believe in preparing for such meetings.

I don’t agree with your assertion though that McCain’s voting record somehow implies that he agrees with Bush’s asterisks on the legislation.

I didn’t say that McCain’s voting record implies that he agrees with the signing statements (assuming that’s what you mean by “asterisks on the legislation”). I said that what McCain says on a particular issue is less important than what he does. There wasn’t any legislation on signing statements. I’m saying that regardless of what McCain says he opposes or supports that’s different from Bush, in the overwhelming majority of instances where he voted on legislation, he voted the way Bush wanted Congress to vote.

So, are Pelosi and Reid more likely to have backbone against a President Obama or a President McCain? If your honest with yourself, I think you’ll see that the answer would be the latter but you still prefer the former because you don’t think they will need to show backbone against Obama. Which gets back to the original point I made- that as far as I can tell, Obama supporters like yourself put your faith in the man, not the system of checks and balances.

Honestly? I don’t even know what you’re asking here. Are you saying it’s better to elect McCain because Pelosi and Reid will oppose everything he does?

I certainly put a lot of faith in Obama because I think he has earned it, but it’s not blind faith. And I don’t get why you think that my belief in Obama as a candidate, and my belief in the system of checks and balance that we used to have before Bush, are mutually exclusive. It’s not making any sense to me. Sorry.

We’ve only had divided govt for two years- but I agree with the second statement. So, are Pelosi and Reid more likely to have backbone against a President Obama or a President McCain? If your honest with yourself, I think you’ll see that the answer would be the latter but you still prefer the former because you don’t think they will need to show backbone against Obama. Which gets back to the original point I made- that as far as I can tell, Obama supporters like yourself put your faith in the man, not the system of checks and balances.

And actually, when you examine how the 110th congress has behaved, I think a large measure of their impotence was because they didn’t necessarily WANT to roll back the power of the executive branch, knowing that their party would probably assume control of that branch in ‘09.

I think both candidates should be asked about signing statements. I don’t agree with your assertion though that McCain’s voting record somehow implies that he agrees with Bush’s asterisks on the legislation. Again, keep in mind that many of Bush’s signing statements were added to legislation that was passed by a GOP majority Congress. You know, the stuff that McCain did agree with a good portion of the time- but then Bush added his own layers of interpretation after the fact.

Has anyone ever asked him about it? It’s not an issue that’s up for voting. I think what he says about a particular issue is, in any event, less important than what he does, or has done. And his voting record shows that on most issues, he has sided with Bush.

Same with torture. McCain has, in the past, condemned torture and, to his credit, has tried to stop it as it goes on under the administration. When push came to shove, though, he voted to allow Pres. Bush to continue doing what he’s been doing. He deserves credit and praise for what he’s done in the past, but he has been a far less forceful advocate for ending the torture of detainees than one would expect him to be given his own personal experience.

That interpretation depends on whether or not foriegn combatants are actually entitled to habeus corpus, since our Constitution only guarantees such right to citizens.

That is not true. Nowhere in the Constitution are the rights it guarantees stated as being only for citizens. That concept didn’t even exist at the time the Constitution was written in the sense it does now. And in fact, when detainees in U.S. custody are denied habeus corpus and other basic legal rights, the illegality derives not just from what the Constitution guarantees to Americans, but also from what the Constitution requires from Americans. If the Constitution says that the right of habeus corpus cannot be repealed except under very particular circumstances that do not apply here, that doesn’t just protect the detained; it also binds those doing the detaining, since they are American. They are violating the Constitution in their official positions as U.S. officials.

I see that being far more likely with divided government, and with a president who isn’t being deified by the press.

I don’t see that divided government has helped much in that regard in the past four years, though. Republican or Democrat, you have to have a Congress with a backbone for divided government to work. It’s like the Constitution itself. It’s only a piece of paper. It doesn’t enforce itself. It’s only as good as the willingness of the government and the American people to observe it.

“[...]If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

You: “Said Iran was a tiny country that posed no military threat to us.”

I think I actually gave him more credit than he deserved with my paraphrase- because I remembered that he was talking about military budgets and such so I attributed his statement about lack of threat to that- but the way he said it was even worse because he denied ANY serious threat rather than just emphasizing the relative size of the military threat.

No, that’s not accurate. I do agree that redistribution is not the same thing as socialism- but it is social democrat policy, which is something which has never been acceptable on any great level to the American electorate, until now when it’s being ushered in inside a Trojan horse.

But none of that has anything to do with progressive tax structure. The redistribution part comes after the taxes are collected and then how the money is used (whether for the legitimate functions of government or to distribute money earned by some taxpayers into the pockets of other taxpayers.) Progressive taxation is disproportionate, but most modern conservatives have no problem with it as long as the taxes being collected are for the normal, Constitutionally derived functions of government and as long as the distribution shift isn’t so far to the ‘wealthy’ that there’s a disincentive to invest or earn more.

And you missed my point about percentages- I’m not talking about the percent of one’s income that is payed in the various brackets. What I mean is that when you evaluate how progressive a tax structure is, you have to compare what the top earners provide to the public funding vs. what the middle and bottom earners provide. So, let me try asking again- do you think in order to be progressive or fair enough, the top 5% of wage earners should pay, say 25% of the total federal revenue from income taxes, or 30%, or 35%? (all of those are above their neutral share of the communal expenses, since a flat tax would have them paying 5% in to they kitty to match their 5% of total earnings.)

Obama: “I mean, think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny, compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us. We shouldn’t be afraid to– you know, Iran may spend one-one hundredth of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

You: “Said Iran was a tiny country that posed no military threat to us.”

Your statement was a snippet from a video of a speech that itself was just a snippet of the entire portion of the speech on this topic. The context, which of course if included completely invalidates your spin, is about talking directly to Iran’s leaders. He was clearly starting to say that in the sentence where he interrupted himself. He was talking about Iran’s military power, and the threat it poses to the U.S., in the context of the former Soviet Union’s military power and the threat that IT posed to us then. We talked directly to Soviet leaders many times. Is Iran a more militarily powerful adversary or more of a threat to us than the Soviet Union was? (I’m not necessarily asking you this; I’m conveying what Obama was saying.)

All of this was crystal clear before the context was removed.

So does your statement sound like a fair or accurate representation of what Obama said?

On talking to Ahmadinejad w/o preconditions. The video clip you link to is even less unlike the spin you give it. He’s saying we should get over this idea we have that if we refuse to talk to our enemies, we are somehow punishing them, or that it’s rewarding bad behavior to try to find areas of common ground we can use to move forward. If you’re going to disagree with Obama on this point, at least disagree with what he’s saying.

Also, I have no idea what you mean by that additional stuff about not mentioning Ahmadinejad and then claiming he was talking about the mullahs, etc., etc. He did not mention Ahmadinejad or the mullahs at all, period. Although if the U.S. were to enter into direct talks with Iran, it most certainly would have to be with the mullahs and not Ahmadinejad, since Ahmadinejad has absolutely no authority over Iran’s foreign policy or nuclear program.

Do you or do you not think that sometimes expert analysis is superior to one’s intuitive sense of a problem from one’s limited perspective (seeing forest for the trees, that sort of thing?)

I think that when millions of Americans are losing their jobs, can’t find work, are drowning in debt caused largely by having to use borrowed money to pay essential bills, are having to file for bankruptcy, are losing their homes and being evicted from their apartments, are straining the resources of food pantries and other social services to the breaking point, are flooding the Unemployment system with applications and phone calls to the extent that you can’t even get through to unemployment on the phone anymore no matter how often or when you try and when you go down there in person and you take a number, you see there are a hundred people ahead of you, even though you get there soon after they open, and when the so-called “experts” — who are totally insulated from any and all of this suffering — say there is no problem, they are talking out of deep within their asses. That’s what I think.

There’s a difference between being anti-intellectual and being anti-reality. Being anti-intellectual is being unable to name a single man-made cause of climate change and saying it doesn’t matter what the causes are anyway because the important thing is to solve the problem.

Fine, so you are in favor of a progressive income tax structure- so am I. Now we have to discuss how much the distribution of taxation should be shifted onto the wealthier taxpayers. What percentage do you feel would be fair for the top 5% of wage earners to contribute to the general fund?

I’d have to think about it, but I do know that the percentage difference between what Obama is proposing and what McCain is proposing in terms of raising taxes on the wealthy is only 3%.

More to the point, though, I assume that if you favor a progressive tax structure, and the only point of debate is how progressive, then you would agree that redistributing taxes is not socialism.

But your statements about Bush ARE relevant because whichever candidate becomes our next president will step into the situation as it currently exists. By your own words, you describe the power imbalance of the ‘unitary executive’ as far worse than I believe it is anyway, so that’s why I said earlier that the burden is on you. Although I still feel that’s true, I’ve agreed to engage on an equal discussion of which candidate is less likely to run an executive branch which is overly authoritative, as long as you stick to specific discussions of which policies and actions of Bush you are critical of.

So now that you’ve listed some, here are my responses:
1. Has McCain ever expressed support for Bush’s use of signing statements? McCain was part of that Congress which was being thwarted, just as Obama was for the last couple of years. I would assume that they both sometimes disagreed with this practice, and I haven’t heard either one of them questioned on it.

2. And torture would be part of the 10% of disagreement between McCain and Bush, now, wouldn’t it? Even Barack Obama continues to praise McCain for this.

3. McCain also agrees with you about closing Guantanamo.

4. MCA is a pretty complex issue- the stated purpose of the legislation was to do what SCOTUS advised in Hamdan, but yes, SCOTUS also found part of MCA unconstitutional. That interpretation depends on whether or not foriegn combatants are actually entitled to habeus corpus, since our Constitution only guarantees such right to citizens. People can certainly disagree over what rights the detainees should have, but this issue isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be. A lot of the problem stems from the conflicts we’re currently involved in being much different than conventional wars of the past. We simply have to keep wading through all of the new territory that comes from having detainees who weren’t necessarily captured on a battlefield as in past wars.

As for your last question- it’s not a matter of ‘restoring constitutional protections’, it’s about whether or not the executive branch will once again be subject to oversight by Congress and by the people informed by an impartial free press. I see that being far more likely with divided government, and with a president who isn’t being deified by the press.

LOL, Christine. That doesn’t even begin to make sense. You didn’t make up what *I* wrote. You made up the terrifying scenario of Obama being a power-mad autocrat who would hijack the Constitution and turn the presidency into one-man rule. Or rather, to be fair, *you* didn’t make it up. Right-wing bloggers and media pundits made it up, and you believe it.

Kathy, on your last comment, I’d be glad to engage your question about why I don’t see similar concerns from a McCain presidency if you’ll stop spouting talking points and address any specific area where you feel that Bush has usurped power. Since you repeatedly state this in such over the top terms (I don’t think you’ve used the phrase ’shredded the Constitution” yet, but it’s been pretty close), and since you quote the talking point about agreeing with Bush 90% of the time, I can’t debate the points with you if we don’t even agree to certain basic truths to begin with.

The phrase “shredded the Constitution” is fully applicable. And I’ll be happy to address specific areas where Bush has usurped power:

1. His misuse of signing statements to bypass hundreds of laws. Signing statements have been used by other presidents, but Bush has issued more of them in his one administration than all other presidents in U.S. history combined. And he has used them specifically to thwart the will of Congress, in order to advance the Bushian idea of the all-powerful president.

2. Torture is another example. The Bush admin — most notably Cheney, Addington, and Bush, with the help of John Yoo and others in the Office of Legal Counsel — designed a system of what they called “enhanced interrogation” — really torture but not called that to avoid the legal repercussions. These top-level Bush admin officials violated, and indeed declared null and void, the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the proscription against cruel and unusual punishment in the Constitution, and other domestic law prohibiting torture. Their defense for so doing was that the president is constitutionally authorized to break laws and issue orders as he pleases, without interference from any other branch of government. Lawyers like John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales were there to create legal justification for whatever it was Bush wanted to do. Yoo has even famously suggested that the president could legally order the torture of a child in front of the child’s parents if he felt he had to do so in the name of national security.

3. The establishment of Guantanamo and other law-free zones for holding detainees in perpetuity without charges or trials or even the most basic legal rights required by international law and common decency. Addington in particular responded to criticisms about continuing to hold detainees who it became clear had not committed or planned any acts of terrorism against the U.S. by asserting that the president had decided these individuals were enemy combatants and no one had the right to question his decision.

4. The Military Commissions Act, which was the Bush admin’s attempt to, in effect, overrule the Supreme Court via legislation that permitted the president to do what several prior SCOTUS decisions had said he could not do: deny habeus corpus rights to suspected terrorists at Guantanamo. Earlier this year, as you probably recall, the Supreme Court threw out Section 7 of the MCA, which is the section referring to habeus corpus.

So, getting back to the point that triggered my involvement in this discussion, is it your contention that if Obama wins the election, he will abuse his power by attempting to defy the Supreme Court in the way Bush did, or that he will sign bills into law and then declare his intention to violate them, or that he will abrogate centuries of legal precedent by fiat without involving or informing Congress?

Is it your belief that John McCain will restore all the constitutional protections and provisions that Pres. Bush and his cronies have shredded?

You don’t understand because you’re mixing up ideology with other things here. A chief executive’s use of authority isn’t based on ideology. The votes where McCain was on the same side as Bush often did have to do with conservative ideology (there are significant differences in their ideology as well, which is why McCain has at times had a greater degree of dissonance from Bush.)

You’re acting as though Bush pushed legislation which declared him the king and McCain championed the bills to do so.

That’s why I asked you to enumerate WHICH Bush policies you feel were incorrectly supported by McCain, and what these have to do with power grabbing (if anything.)

Obama’s own words on meeting with Ahmadinejad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSFSUbMWenU&feature=related Note that although the question didn’t specifically name Ahmadinejad, a picture of him was shown on the screen as the country of Iran was named- and Obama didn’t start claiming that he wasn’t referring to him until way after this blew up in his face- he was challenged about this answer by Hillary Clinton and others in the days after this debate and he initially used Ahmedinejhad in his answer- it wasn’t until later that his team seemed to settle on a new explanation, that he was actually talking about meeting with the mullahs, not Iran’s president.

Sorry, but he has to own these comments. I realize when he spoke about Iran’s size and military budget, he wasn’t incorrect- but why did he stress those things and downplay the real threat they pose? And then back off of that completely after getting hammered for it, and go out on the stump the next day saying how grave the threat is?

Ha! Perhaps middle-class Americans are less persuaded by theoretical, ideological, Friedmanesque “understandings of the labor + capital equation” than they are by their actual experience trying to survive in Bush’s America for the past eight years.
Wait, I thought conservatives were the ‘anti-intellectual’ ones? Do you or do you not think that sometimes expert analysis is superior to one’s intuitive sense of a problem from one’s limited perspective (seeing forest for the trees, that sort of thing?)
And requiring that the wealthy assume more of the tax burden than the middle class is common sense and basic fairness, not “punishing” the wealthy. Making the middle class assume more of the tax burden than the wealthy more accurately defines the word “punishing.”
Fine, so you are in favor of a progressive income tax structure- so am I. Now we have to discuss how much the distribution of taxation should be shifted onto the wealthier taxpayers. What percentage do you feel would be fair for the top 5% of wage earners to contribute to the general fund?