Free Republic

During that radio visit in May, Meg stated that she was inviting Insurance Commissioner Poizner and Tom Campbell, for that matter, to participate in three fall debates. Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner’s guber-campaign was clear in stating that they never received an invitation from Whitman. As fall wore on the Poizner Camp began to air audio from Whitman’s comments stating that Meg had never inquired of the commissioner’s availability for fall debates. And that it was actually Meg Whitman who was performing as the “debate dodger” in this case. During Tuesday’s interview, I played the audio from that May 18th appearance...

Former EBay CEO Meg Whitman -- who's been under fire for skipping political debates and reporters' questions -- won't be attending a September Silicon Valley Leadership Group forum billed as the first major gathering of California's 2010 gubernatorial candidates. The SVLG event, titled "Leadership California: Solutions from the Innovation Economy,"' will include the two Democratic candidates, former two term governor and current State Attorney General Jerry Brown, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. And there will be just two Republicans -- State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell at Projections 2010, which will be held Sept. 16...

It was John McCain's best performance of the three presidential debates. He kept attacking, kept his opponent on the defensive and kept the initiative, booming at one point: "I am not President Bush." But it was not enough. The more Mr McCain laboured on Wednesday night to paint Barack Obama in lurid colours - he accused him of extremism on abortion and class warfare on taxes - the more he appeared to make his opponent's case for him. The epithets may seem hysterical to European ears, although to large swathes of the US television audience, they are probably less so.

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---"...Perhaps the best news for McCain is the rating he received from independent voters. Among respondents not identified with either major political party, McCain was judged tonight’s winner, 51-42 percent...."---

I apologize in advance for the vanity, but.... I watched the debates last night. I thought that McCain did extremely well. Then, I turned on the after-debate spin, and the general opinion (even from FOX) was that the debate was, at best, a "tie". CNN, surprisingly enough, was a little more "fair and balanced"....but still, the prevailing opinion was that McCain lost. About the only thing that I wish McCain did better was to focus. He tends to get sidetracked. But - just mentioning things like Ayers and ACORN, will force them to be addressed by the MSM, I think....

Hannity was spot on in his pre-debate analysis: Expect BO to play prevent defense and run out the clock. Spit out the same lines and platitudes Mac's job was to create a shadow of doubt on BO's character and decision making - rhetoric vs. record. The reason Mac was so effective was he did draw those lines explicitly especially with Joe the Plumber and taxes. Now Mac just has to hit the narrative of spreading the wealth, Joe the Plumber, and bringing up the Gang of 3 like Romney did last night. What are your thoughts....

In the campaign's final two weeks, voters will take a last serious look at both presidential candidates. The outcome of the race isn't cast in stone yet. Barack Obama holds a 7.3% lead in the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, but the latest Gallup tracking poll reveals that there are nearly twice as many undecided voters this year than there were in the last presidential election. APThis week also brought a reminder that Sen. Obama hasn't closed the sale. The Washington Post/ABC poll found 45% of voters still don't think he's qualified to be president, about the same...

My husband and I own a plumbing company. My husband's name happens to be Art, but when I heard what Obama was saying to Joe, he was saying it to us. We consistently make between $250K-300K per year and I have recently had to take on a second job to make ends meet. We have two plumbers on the payroll and I do the books. I quit taking a paycheck from the company because we have to keep our expenses down. We are among the smallest of small businesses, and any additional tax burden on us would be devastating. We...

We need to list out Obama's lies. There were a bunch of them. Two to start the list;1.)Obama immediately critisized John Lewis for his racism charge 2). Obama never supported denying health care to babies that survived abortions

So the question remained: would McCain go for a knockout blow? Would he finally ask Obama what he was doing all those years with unrepentant terrorist Ayers, or find some other means finally to knock Obama off balance? (Conservative columnist Quin Hillyer, no McCain cheerleader, postulated before the debate that “McCain is just the cussed, unconventional, willful, irritable, Odd Man to pull it off.”) Well, voters expecting some fireworks didn’t get a full display, but there were some sparks...

Here are the facts: Barack Obama will raise your taxes. He will attempt to legislate the sort of economic “fairness” that will punish the folks who actually do the hiring in this country. This tinkering with the foundation of capitalism will take us to, and beyond, a recession. Not only will today’s economic woes look like a golden age, but people will long for the prosperity of the Carter years. Finally, Barack’s open door policy toward our nation’s enemies, especially Iran, will result in a large scale war somewhere down the line. Those who can’t stomach our actions in Iraq...

(DOVER, DEL.) - Joe Biden loves a crowd of Democrats as much as a crowd of Democrats loves him, and he had no trouble flexing his wit and his political weight tonight in Delaware. Biden had a suggestion for his fellow Democrats when they watch the final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain – kill the volume. “For this debate, for part of this next debate, do what I did for part of the last two debates. Literally, turn the sound off. I’m not being…I’m not joking now. Literally, turn the sound off. And just watch. Watch the body...

Anyone who has been involved in a school yard fight knows the old rule, 2 against 1 will win every time. At tonight's debate Norm Coleman sat literally in the middle of Independent candidate Dean Barkley and Democrat Al Franken. He was eviscerated by both men. The most devastating moment came when one of the moderators asked, "What do you think is the greatest threat to our country"? The moderator went on to say it could be any threat, not just of the military kind. Al Franken went first and said the biggest threat was Al Qaeda, and that the...

Because the New York Times and LA Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR and the entire American news industry is infested with left-wing radicals pushing an agenda today, the rest of the nation is just now learning what conservative Americans have known for years. The “mainstream media” is run by left-wing news rooms, film makers, book and magazine publishers and college campus crackpots, and none of them are telling the American people the truth about their “messiah” Barack Hussein Obama. Because the “mainstream news media” – augmented by left-wing Hollywood film makers and New York magazine publishers have...

During Tuesday night's presidential debate, Sen. Barack Obama was talking about health care, and most of 25 undecided voters in Columbus, Ohio, liked what they heard. They turned knobs on small, wireless dials in their hands -- and a graph representing their immediate reaction was aired live to about 9.2 million people watching CNN. CNN has aired these squiggly lines live on the bottom of the screen for all of the debates held since September. Some have called the readout addictive, others find it distracting. But live feedback graphics may have another effect. Recent psychological experiments suggest they can influence...

by Gina L. Diorio Perhaps the most telling question of last night’s debate dealt not with foreign policy or even the economic crisis but rather health care. Posed by Tom Brokaw, the seemingly simply question was, “Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?� The candidates’ answers display not merely a divergence in policy but a fundamental ideological difference in their understandings of our system of government, our constitutional law, and, in reality, what it means to be an American. Senator McCain responded: I think it’s a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have...

Record numbers of American voters tuned in to the three debates, proving only two things. Americans are very concerned about the future of their nation and they want to know more about the two tickets running for the highest office in the land. What we have learned so far... 1) Modern debates are designed to hide facts, not provide facts. 2) It’s a mistake to allow only left-wing Democrats like Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill and Tom Brokaw, to control the most important debates of our generation. 3) Style trumps substance for too many Americans. 4) We need an electric hot...

Roger Hedgecock Show's debate schedule - CA NOVEMBER 4TH BALLOT Starting Thurs, Oct 9, Roger hosts debates on state props. Th Oct 9 - Prop 1 (high speed rail bonds) F Oct 10 - Prop 2 (farm animals) M Oct 13 - Prop 4 (parental notification) T Oct 14 - Prop 5 (non-violent offenders, rehab) W Oct 15 - Prop 6 (gangs, illegals) Th Oct 16 - Prop 7 (energy mandates) F Oct 17 - Prop 8 (marriage) M Oct 20 - Prop 10 (alt fuel bonds) T Oct 21 - Prop 11 (redistricting) Local (San Diego County area): W...

All this hilarity is strung up on a plot at once too complicated and too silly to have any independent meaning. Duck Soup can be read as an indictment of the insanity of war and a critique of the relationship between wealth and political power, but to do so is to miss much of the fun. The movie was banned in fascist Italy because it seemed to be a statement against dictatorship. But it makes fun of the entire range of political arrangements and patriotic icons. Mussolini just didn't get it.

ABC’s coverage of Tuesday night’s second of three debates between presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama led the four broadcast networks’ coverage of the 90-minute event, according to overnight data reported by Nielsen Media Research from 55 of the 56 metered markets in the country.

Neither presidential candidate was selling "morning in America." At times it seemed more like a competition to see who could paint the gloaming in the least unsettling hues. Tuesday night's presidential debate was remarkable for the dourness of its mood...the frequently subdued demeanors of the candidates even as they tore into each other, which they did with somewhat less vigor and venom than expected, given how little time remains until Election Day, given how nasty the campaign had turned in recent days. The debate — the second of three, and the only one to be conducted in a town-hall style...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is proposing a $300 billion program for the federal government to buy up bad home mortgages and allow homeowners to keep their houses.

The Honorable Barack Obama United States Senate SH-713 Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Obama: I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern...

I'll be glad when these media events dopey journalists call "debates" are over. A real debate involves an extended discussion of issues, such as was done during the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. The media events of today only give the participants sufficient time to repeat political cliches and other sound bites. This approach favors politicians like Sen. Joe Biden who lack the intelligence to understand the complexity of the real world. For example, Biden seems incapable of understanding that wars cannot be conducted according to strict timetables because the enemy and the weather only...

While Biden is the "old pro" some of the facts he gave last night were made up on the spot. The Delaware Senator blatantly lied about almost everything. Even the restaurant that he mentioned that he frequents has been closed for about 25 years. Below is a list of 22 lies that Biden made last night (courtesy of the McCain camp via Jim Geraghty). ...2. IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN SPENDING: Biden said that the U.S. spends more in Iraq in one month than it has in Afghanistan in six or seven years. That figure is off by only 2000 percent. 3. ‘KICKED HEZBOLLAH...

Having Slept on it, State of Washington Drifts Slightly to Biden in Scoring the VP Debate … The day after Thursday night’s debate between Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden, SurveyUSA again polled the state of Washington. This follows a poll conducted by SurveyUSA Thursday night, seconds after the debate. The first poll was conducted before pundits could have influenced what debate watchers thought. This, the 2nd poll, conducted Friday, was completed after some national polls showed that Biden had performed well in the debate, and after both campaigns had time to ’spin’ the results. Of debate watchers: 36%...

Joe Biden's Twenty-five Greatest Verbal Hits 25 Joe Biden Quotes: What He said Then Only one way to go for Joe Biden...Twenty-five Joe Biden quotes to compare and contrast with what the Delaware senator told the nation last night in the vice-presidential debate. Check back often for updates. Did we miss any reader's favorite Joe Biden verbal moment? If we did, readers can leave their favorites in the comments at the end of this article. “John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the...

Palin knows how to (field) dress for success - Philadelphia Inquirer Palin defies critics and delivers punchy performance in debate against Biden - Guardian Unlimited Feisty Palin stands her ground in Biden debate - MSNBC Palin unharmed in polite debate - Nine MSN Associated Press Palin holds her own in debate - SignOn San Diego Palin stands up well against Biden - Daily Telegraph Australia Biden waving white flag of surrender in Iraq: Palin - The West Online Palin stands her ground in VP debate with Biden AP via Yahoo! Palin plays to American middle class in debate International Herald...

WASHINGTON - Joe Biden's task was to attack. Sarah Palin's was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script. While both vice presidential candidates succeeded in their only debate of the campaign Thursday night, the stakes were much higher and the bar was much lower for Palin. So, in the contest of low expectations, Palin won. If nothing else, the first-term Alaska governor got past the raft of nonsensical and meandering answers in evening news interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, the spoofs by Saturday Night Live and the mockery of late-night comics. From her first words, a...

Okay, folks. Let's keep an eye on this debate and see if Sarah can beat down hairplug.

When the curtain goes up tonight on the most highly anticipated vice-presidential debate in American political history, Alaska governor Sarah Palin will have a golden opportunity to regain the momentum for the McCain campaign. To do that, she must focus on the issue that resuscitated the GOP presidential effort earlier this summer, and that indirectly led to John McCain picking her as his running mate: energy. As Larry Kudlow pointed out last month, 2008 is the energy election. The past two weeks have seen the imbroglio in the financial markets emerge as a legitimate crisis as well as a potent campaign issue....

Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery. Joe Biden would never get up in front of a crowd and suggest that the citizens of Manhattan are morally superior to the residents of Possum Gulch, Ark. But Sarah Palin was happy to tell the Republican National Convention that the very best people come from the country. "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity," she declared, quoting the late journalist Westbrook Pegler. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food,...

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Wednesday, October 1, 2008: Joy calls Sarah Palin a few names, inclusing "DUMB" and more, MUCH MORE!!! Barbara Walters confronts Elisabeth Hasselbeck and asks her why she keeps defending Palin all of the time. These broads are totally losing it in this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_GjgZseFRc

Vice-Presidential Debate Moderator Gwen Ifill questioned whether Sarah Palin could balance being Vice-President with being a Mom only a few days after Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate. Ifill asked her guest if Palin had been "fully vetted," as if there was no way she could have been since she was chosen. It is beyond belief that this person will moderate the debate, given her clear bias against Palin and her vested financial interest in seeing Barack Obama win the election since she has a pro-Obama book slated for release on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009. . . ....

Should Gwen Ifill recuse herself from the VP debate given that her Obama book is coming out Jan. 20, 2009? For those who think she ought to, they might make their feelings known to PBS CEO Paula Kerger. Her phone is 703-739-8619. They might also wish to address their concerns with Sharon Rockefeller, CEO of WETA/Washington from where Ifill broadcasts and does her show. Ms. Rockefeller’s phone is 703-998-2089.

The urgency of the times have caused a thousand vanities to bloom, here is mine and oh if only the McCain camp will listen. Do you think they take pointers from FR? A good friend who became a great prosecutor told me about his first day of courtroom training. He was instructed that in every trial you MUST point directly at the defendant, state his name, and emphatically accuse the defendant, to his face, of exactly what he has done. The reason for this rule is crucial. They were told "If you are not willing to directly confront the defendant...

Other than Obama’s rude childish habit of shouting over top of McCain and making pompous faces anytime he wasn’t talking, he didn’t say much. But he did manage to do more than his fair share of talking without ever uttering a single truth, not that truth matters much in this country anymore. • Obama talked about the need for holding those responsible for the current financial crisis accountable. But he didn’t include himself, his leftist friends who turned the mortgage industry into another failed welfare program, his campaign advisors who stole tens of millions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

After watching the debate live and now having had a couple days to fully absorb what was all too obvious that night: McCain won--oh, my mistake--John. It's hard to not be partisan when saying who won--especially since each candidate did express their positions rather clearly, but I'll give it a shot. I try to imagine what it would have been like if I'd just woken up from a coma, or had never heard of either candidate before. What would I admire in each of them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Are they smokers or non-smokers? The most important answers...

For most of the debate Friday night, Sen. Barack Obama was the one who presented himself as presidential and strong. And Sen. John McCain appeared to be the guy who was wavering. Then came Iran. That's when Obama's mouth dried up, and he appeared to be standing alone at that terrible border between presenting yourself as presidential and dealing with that knock on the door in the middle of the night, with the aide outside saying, "Mr. President, the planes are in the air." I'm not saying Obama failed, or that McCain won. If you're an Obama supporter, your guy...

The first McCain-Obama debate will probably do little to shift momentum in a close presidential race. Both men performed reasonably well with no conspicuous gaffes or blunders. Partisans on both sides claim elation with the result and, predictably, suggest that their guy slaughtered his opposite number. Yes, I’m a McCain partisan but after watching the entire broadcast twice, I can’t proclaim a clear-cut victory. Each candidate rallied his committed troops and, no doubt, impressed the key but dwindling congregation of the undecided. (How could any thinking person remain undecided at this point in this election? But that’s another question). I...

Family Told Obama NOT To Wear Soldier Son's Bracelet... Where is Media? By Warner Todd Huston (Bio | Archive) September 28, 2008 - 03:53 ET Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David...

Minutes before airtime Friday night, the two co-founders of the Commission on Presidential Debates, former Democratic chairman Paul Kirk and former Republican chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, made their move. The two men appeared without warning on center stage of the Gertrude Ford Center, and, as Kirk began to speak - declaiming such phrases as "The stakes could not be higher" and "the complexities that lie before us" and "serious choices that face the nation" and "it is in our power to decide," he might have been taken (and was, by this observer) to be someone out there to check the mikes...

IN an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election. Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the...

Every single pundit and political analyst in America today is spinning the result of yesterday’s debate towards his own personal ideological preference. Generally though, most do agree that John McCain did a lot better than Barack Obama, because he was able to continually (and effectively) get his main talking point through, “Mr. Obama doesn’t understand”, without appearing condescending or angry. McCain was able to constantly tell the audience that the problem with Obama was not his “bad faith” or lack of motivation, but simple naivete and inexperience. Barack Obama, on his part, was simply unable to get his talking point...

To a critical sliver of voters gathered at Muhlenberg College, Friday's debate provided a slight boost for Republican John McCain but left him and Democrat Barack Obama with much to do to sway fence-sitters in the next five weeks. More than a dozen undecided voters gathered in a lecture hall, where they recorded their immediate reactions to the presidential candidates' responses using number keypads. Six of the 14 voters said they were more likely to vote for McCain after the 90-minute session, with four saying the same of Obama. Four said they remained unswayed. Bruce Glazier, a registered Republican from...

The first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama is on track to pull a surprisingly average viewership number, drawing fewer households in the preliminary ratings than George W. Bush's face off against John Kerry four years ago. In the meter-market overnights, Friday night's 90-minute debate in Mississippi received a preliminary household rating of 33.2. That's 16% lower than the national number from the 2004 debate, which aired on a Thursday -- generally TV's most-watched night of the week. Friday's number is roughly on par with George W. Bush and Al Gore's first debate in 2000 and the Clinton-Dole debate...

MCCAIN: I've been involved, as I mentioned to you before, in virtually every major national security challenge we've faced in the last 20-some years. There are some advantages to experience, and knowledge, and judgment. MCCAIN: Well -- well, let me give you an example of what Senator Obama finds objectionable, the business tax. Right now, the United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent. MCCAIN: Senator Obama is the chairperson of a committee that oversights NATO that's in Afghanistan. To this day, he has never had a hearing. MCCAIN:...

Far be it from me to differ with the punditocracy's mainstream, but I happen to feel that last night's debate was a pretty big win for John McCain. I'm aware that most observers have called it a draw, agreeing that both men performed rather ably. I'm also aware that the polls show a majority of watchers thought Obama "won." But still, it was a big night for McCain. Or more precisely, it was a bad night for Obama. Judging these things like a high school debate is a fool's (or CNN's) errand. Who cares who "won" the debate? We're not...