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Presidental Debate to be Held at Mega-Church
Is this against separation of church and state?
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| At Church, a Public Meeting for Obama and McCain LAKE FOREST, Calif. � It will be the handshake shown around the world. Saturday night at about 9 p.m. Eastern time (6 p.m. Pacific), Senators Barack Obama and John McCain will briefly cross paths for the first time in the presidential campaign (the Senate floor doesn�t count, and besides, neither one has been there much lately). The encounter, at the Saddleback Valley Community Church, an evangelical megachurch here in Orange County, will mark the unofficial opening of the general election and serve as a prequel to the fall debates as the two candidates discuss, although not simultaneously, a range of faith-related, character, leadership and humanitarian issues. The two-hour session will be produced by the church itself and carried live on CNN, CSPAN, FOX, MSNBC and Daystar, a Christian television network, and live-streamed on the Internet by, among others, the church (saddlebackcivilforum.com) and Readers Digest (readersdigest.com). Watching from inside the church will be 550 members of the news media. The event reflects the importance of religion in American life and, increasingly, in politics. It also marks the coming of age of a broader brand of evangelicalism that is more socially minded and diverse than the orthodox religious movement of the Christian right. At center stage will be the Rev. Rick Warren, a Southern Baptist pastor and author of �The Purpose-Driven Life,� who embodies the changing of the guard from such traditionalist figures as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Mr. Warren will first interview Mr. Obama for an hour (with commercial breaks). Afterward, Mr. McCain is to come on stage. The two candidates are to shake hands. Then Mr. Obama leaves while Mr. McCain has his own hour with Mr. Warren. During Mr. Obama�s session, Mr. McCain will not be able to hear the questions or answers and will be asked more or less the same ones. The body language of the two candidates when they meet will be closely monitored. They have been lobbing insults at each other long distance for weeks now, but any encounter in person here that is less than cordial would come as a surprise. This is not a debate with partisans cheering from the sidelines; it is a sanctuary. Game face is not only not required, it is discouraged. Mr. Warren, who personally arranged the meeting through cellphone calls to the candidates, both of whom he knows, said in a statement that his conversations would focus on how they make decisions and what kind of leaders they would be. �Leadership involves far more than promoting programs and making speeches, and since no one can predict what crises will happen over the next four years, it is vital to know the decision capacity and process of each man,� he said. He also said he wanted to avoid �partisan �gotcha� questions that typically produce heat instead of light.� Reflecting the broad nature of his church beyond traditional religious issues, Mr. Warren said he plans to raise questions about poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights. Mr. Obama has demonstrated a comfort level in religious spheres, while Mr. McCain rarely expresses his religious views in public. Mr. Obama also has an extensive religious outreach program, and polls show that he leads Mr. McCain among most religious denominations, with the notable exception of evangelicals. For them, abortion remains a crucial question, and Mr. Warren has indicated that he would raise it. Both candidates have some explaining to do to their political bases � Mr. Obama favors abortion rights but has made statements recently that have worried purists; Mr. McCain, who has long opposed abortion rights, indicated in an interview with the Weekly Standard that he would consider picking a vice president who favors abortion rights, reviving doubts about him among social conservatives. Mr. Warren, who consulted with several others about the kinds of questions he might ask, has also received lots of unsolicited advice from the blogosphere, much of it about abortion. But Mr. Warren�s ministry has made a name for itself by broadening its concerns beyond such issues, to the displeasure of some traditional evangelicals who say he is diluting the movement. How much he dwells on abortion tonight could signal the degree to which the movement is changing. The event is being produced by the church in part because the candidates did not want it to be sponsored by a television network or moderated by a journalist, according to Whitney Kelley, a spokeswoman for the church. Their other criteria, she said, included that Mr. Warren be the sole questioner, without a panel and without questions from the audience. The church, the fourth-largest in the country with a membership of 22,000, seats 3,000 people. But it had to remove 1,000 seats to accommodate the media and its production crew and to provide a security buffer between the audience and the stage, Ms. Kelley said. The church polled its members to determine whether to charge for the remaining seats to help recoup its costs, expected to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars (just like a presidential debate). The members agreed, and the ticket price was set at $100 each. Ticket preferences were given to charter members of the church, which held its first service in 1980, and to its volunteers; each campaign will also have a block of seats. But even the $200,000 from ticket sales will �fall short� of the final price tag, said Mark Affleck, executive director of Saddleback�s Peace Plan, a program to help position the Christian church as a leader in relief and developmental work around the world. The church takes in about $27 million a year in tithes and offerings. Mr. Affleck said that Saddleback�s goal in staging this event is �to restore the church�s primacy in society and not be off on the sidelines, to be a part of the world and all the issues.� He added: �It�s a way to use the platform that God has given Rick and the church to be a leader and bring everyone together, not have the church be over there and separate.� Reflecting the mainstream quality of the event, there will be commercial breaks. Each candidate is to speak for three segments of 11 minutes each and one segment of 12 minutes. One of those commercials will be from a Christian group, the Matthew 25 Network, which has endorsed Mr. Obama. And in a taste of things to come, Bob Barr, who is running for president as a libertarian, has protested his exclusion from the event. A federal district court has ruled that the church did not have to let him participate. Mr. Barr is likely to raise the same issue with the commission on presidential debates. |
i'm watching it right now and i'm afraid to say that John McCain will be the next President of the United States. sorry.
conceptually i suppose it's against someone's interpretation of separation of church and state but if youre asking a legal question then no, it's not.ama couldn't hold Clarence
oh and another thing. Barack Obama couldn't hold Justice Clarence Thomas' jock sweat
I watched it... imo both candidates did well. What I liked about Mccain is that his answers were always backed by an anecdote. Clearly, Mccain is going to be a challege for Obama in the debates.
It is going to be incredibly entertaining to read the posts in this forum if and when McCain pulls off the win
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| Originally posted by LatinLover I watched it... imo both candidates did well. What I liked about Mccain is that his answers were always backed by an anecdote. Clearly, Mccain is going to be a challege for Obama in the debates. |
Re: Presidental Debate to be Held at Mega-Church
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| Originally posted by Krypton Is this against separation of church and state? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/u...saddleback.html |
It's not against church and state - it's a private town forum that isn't sanctioned by the government...
And in any case, Rev. Rick Warren is a baller.
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| Originally posted by Q5echo i'm watching it right now and i'm afraid to say that John McCain will be the next President of the United States. sorry. conceptually i suppose it's against someone's interpretation of separation of church and state but if youre asking a legal question then no, it's not.ama couldn't hold Clarence oh and another thing. Barack Obama couldn't hold Justice Clarence Thomas' jock sweat |
I watched a few hi-lights and Obama isn't as impressive without the teleprompter...
I haven't seen McCain speak too much (probably due to the MSM love affair with Obama) and he seemed pretty impressive...
Cant wait to see McCain as president. He looks like a type of guy that could get the job done with diplomacy and negotiations. 
It is sad to say this but it looks like America is about to fuck themselves yet again.
I just cant wait till the debates.
Here are my points of victory for John Mccain:
- He needs to project to the American people that he has sacrificed a lot for this country by his service in Vietnam. He must also project that till this day he carries the wounds of his service for this country.
- He needs to connect with the American people through anecdotes. Not only stories serve as a testimony of ones life experience but also can reflect with many americans own stories. Note: this is something that Bill Clinton did so successfully during his campaign, and defenetly was a boost for his presidential nomination.
- He needs to open up more to the American people.. he is a very private person.
This is what he should do in the personal side. Note that many of this things were seen in last night debate. This is the evolution of John Mccain, something that in my opinion has Obamas campaign very worried, because after all it is not going to be easy as they thought.
In the domestic side. He has been a big advocate of Drill here, drill now. What Mccain should do is go around the country and visit small businesses that depend on affordale energy that have been hit hard by fuel prices. Small businesses are the back bone of our economy and are the ones and employ the majority of the American people. He needs to describe the consequences of Obamas domestic policy positions.
Finally all Obama has to do to win is reassure that hes up for the job. Mccain must educate the American people of Obamas weaknesses and lay out his vision for America.
These numbers have been very encouraging: They are both tied at 45%
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| Originally posted by LatinLover |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN words cannot express how stunned i am. |
I think that Mccain has been soft on Obama. He needs to go out and attack his lack of judgement. It really bothered when Obamas was questioned about abortion and responded that one way to prevent less abortions was to assist young teenagers by afforing them free health care, day care etc.. when that child was born.
I really hope that Mccain can use his response to attack him. I mean if you are old enoough to get pregnant and bring a child to this world, you should be old enough to work and provide that child with healthcare, day care, shelter, clothing and food. The notion that if you bring a child to this world and that the federal government is going to provide all the needs for a child from irresponsible people under tax payer expense in just redicolous. That is like saying "ok make babies and dont worry because the federal govt is going to take care of it". If you really want to prevent pregnancies among teenagers, they should be aware that they are going to be responsible in providing them all the needs of the child and that they are not going to get no assistant what so ever from the govt. Let their ass lose their social life so they can work day and night to provide for that child.
I mean, its disturbing that most people decide to bring a child to this world without being accountable for the needs of that child. Again, if you dont want americans to have personal accountability you have Obama that is going to take care of you.
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| Originally posted by LatinLover I think that Mccain has been soft on Obama. He needs to go out and attack his lack of judgement. It really bothered when Obamas was questioned about abortion and responded that one way to prevent less abortions was to assist young teenagers by afforing them free health care, day care etc.. when that child was born. I really hope that Mccain can use his response to attack him. I mean if you are old enoough to get pregnant and bring a child to this world, you should be old enough to work and provide that child with healthcare, day care, shelter, clothing and food. The notion that if you bring a child to this world and that the federal government is going to provide all the needs for a child from irresponsible people under tax payer expense in just redicolous. That is like saying "ok make babies and dont worry because the federal govt is going to take care of it". If you really want to prevent pregnancies among teenagers, they should be aware that they are going to be responsible in providing them all the needs of the child and that they are not going to get no assistant what so ever from the govt. Let their ass lose their social life so they can work day and night to provide for that child. I mean, its disturbing that most people decide to bring a child to this world without being accountable for the needs of that child. Again, if you dont want americans to have personal accountability you have Obama that is going to take care of you. |
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| Originally posted by jerZ07002 i like the argument. although i don't know why obama is shying away from his position on abortion. i find it hard to believe that is going to be a dealbreaker this term. if people really vote on those issues this term then the country is far more fucked up than i initially thought. |
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| Originally posted by Krypton There are millions who vote only for the pro-life, anti-gay candidates. |
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| Originally posted by jerZ07002 It's a shame that a nonissue like abortion is so important to many people. |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN i would never vote for a pro-life candidate, so i cant really blame the morons on the other side... ...or can i! |
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| Originally posted by jerZ07002 i'm not really happy either, but mccain is still an improvement over bush. |
Agreed, Lebez. The polls are interesting to follow, but making immediate conclusions about a snapshot in one particular poll or another is erroneous at best. Some other things to note about polls as depicted by Frank Rich's column today:
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| It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama�s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry�s and Al Gore�s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter�s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election. |
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| Yet surely, we keep hearing, Obama should be running away with the thing. Even Michael Dukakis was beating the first George Bush by 17 percentage points in the summer of 1988. Of course, were Obama ahead by 17 points today, the same prognosticators now fussing over his narrow lead would be predicting that the arrogant and presumptuous Obama was destined to squander that landslide on vacation and tank just like his hapless predecessor. The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let�s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party�s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men�s Room at the Twin Cities airport. So why isn�t Obama romping? The obvious answer � and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it � is that the public doesn�t know who on earth John McCain is. |
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| The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they�re �hearing too much� about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It�s past time for that pressing educational need to be met. |
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| What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president�s response to Katrina; he fought the �agents of intolerance� of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers. With the exception of McCain�s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct. McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn�t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after �Mission Accomplished.� By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn�t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn�t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras. McCain long ago embraced the right�s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain�s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying. Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post�s February report that lobbyists were �essentially running� the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain�s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party. While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default clich� is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his �independence,� his �maverick image� and his �renegade reputation� � as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is �graded on a curve.� Most Americans still don�t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail �McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries� names wrong, forgets things he�s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.� Most Americans still don�t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press�s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express. To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama�s Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being �proud� of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about �whitey.� But we still haven�t been inside Cindy McCain�s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, �lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,� in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain�s future role in her beer empire won�t be revealed before the election. Some of those who know McCain best � Republicans � are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration�s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama � temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others � are missing in McCain. �He doesn�t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,� Hauser told me. �If John says �I�m going with so and so,� you can�t count on that the next morning,� she complained, adding, �That�s not the man we want for president.� McCain has even prompted alarms from the right�s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of �Unfit to Command� in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, �The Obama Nation.� Corsi�s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi�s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author�s �scholarship.� If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi�s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi�s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received �strong� financial support from a �group tied to Al Qaeda� and that �McCain�s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.� As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there�s one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/o...gin&oref=slogin |
MisterOpus,
Pollster has it Mccain: 169, Obama: 264, Toss up: 105.
If you are going to post any information about polls, which you love too, go directly to the source and dont quote a fucking loser.
Look people, these election are not going to be decided over pro-life or pro-choice. I mean among the christian base I do think that Mccain has there vote locked up, but its not something that Mccain is going to base his campaigh on. I mean Mccain is not as unconfortable as Bush was talking about these issues. Both Obama and Mccain as we know dont really want to touch this subject. As we know it was touched in the forum they participated on because the atmosphere for the topic was there.
You know people need to start using more common sense so they dont complicate themselves so much. Yes is nice to look at polls at the moment, but in my opinion the most relevent polls are going to be the ones after labor day, were this race gets really heated up. Also, in my opinion a convention can make or break a candidate. So its going to be really interesting about how both candidates are able to connect with the american people at the convention.
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| Originally posted by MisterOpus1 It appears that the media is slowly starting to wake up to the "Straight Talk" bullshit of McCain. I don't know if their love fest will end and reality kicks in prior to the election, but as stated previously, I'm completely all for letting McCain show his true colors........ |
I always wonder about the polls because it seems to me they are calling people up on landlines during primetime to poll them about their choice for president. Seems only a bunch of older conservative types would be inclined to even have a landline (I haven't had a landline in years) and to actually answer a number they don't recognize and then take the polling seriously enough to answer the question. So it seems to me the polls should be skewed highly in favor of McCain. But then again who even votes in this country? Old conservatives for the most part.
Looks like he is going all out...
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Overturning Roe v. Wade John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat. However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. SOURCE |
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