Arizona Senator John McCain (official)

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

Service as an officer is no doubt impressive, but do you think his class rank is impressive enough for president, JO? (sheer curiosity) What if he was 894/899 at Harvard or from a law school? Would that disqualify him?



Hmm... is this widely known? I honestly didn't know that. Seems like bringing stats from the days of the Roman Empire is a little out of bounds - do you think he owned gladiators or regular slaves?

3-personally i dont give a damn. hell if he didnt have a college education i wouldnt care... ive hired people who didnt have the paper to match the job, those people though had the other to overcome that. my grades in college werent what they could have been, oh well. so no i dont have a cut off, or a school type/caliber requirement. some do probably, i dont.

4-ive heard it did a tad of research. it appears true. at this point i dont think obama can play that card himself... but someone else can/likely will. prorbably some sort of trump card/ace in the hole down the stretch, if things start to tail off bad for barack.


like i said, these two canidates are interesting people. just neither strikes a cord with me. neither hits home with me...

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

3-personally i dont give a damn. hell if he didnt have a college education i wouldnt care... ive hired people who didnt have the paper to match the job, those people though had the other to overcome that. my grades in college werent what they could have been, oh well. so no i dont have a cut off, or a school type/caliber requirement. some do probably, i dont.

4-ive heard it did a tad of research. it appears true. at this point i dont think obama can play that card himself... but someone else can/likely will. prorbably some sort of trump card/ace in the hole down the stretch, if things start to tail off bad for barack.


like i said, these two canidates are interesting people. just neither strikes a cord with me. neither hits home with me...

Thanks for your answer...

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

Thanks for your answer...

do you?

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

do you?

I think I always took for granted that our presidents had all been good students, so I never really thought about it until the juxtaposition of Bill Clinton's academic record versus Dubya's made me think about it for the first time. That being said, on one hand you would think that the highest position in our country would have the highest level of selectivity (after all, I've worked recruiting at financial institutions, and kids have been automatically rejected due to their GPA), but, at the same time, do grades from ~50 years ago and ~20 years ago for McCain and Obama, respectively, matter?

What gets me about McCain is that he is really pointing to his service as a reason to elect him, and it seems that not all of his service was exemplary. If he is presenting us with his service as a defining characteristic, I think it makes sense to examine his entire body of work and that c/should include his grades (and early record as a pilot, etc.), not just the heroic decision he made while a POW.

[CookyPuss]

McCain's Georgian Hyperbole: Exaggerating threats is a feature, not a bug, of McCainite neoconservatism, and reveals much about what kind of president he'd make. - Reason Magazine

Let's review what McCain is alleging here: Not only does Russia have malevolent designs on recently detached "Near Abroad" territories within nearby Georgia, Belarus, and Moldova?a critique, I hasten to add, that I share?McCain warns that the Bear is also working actively toward re-swallowing all or much of such Russian colonial holdings-turned sovereign states as, oh, Finland, Armenia, the Baltics, a pack of 'stans, and a big chunk of Poland.

It's one thing to look into Putin's eyes and (accurately) see three letters: K-G-B, quite another to base your foreign policy approach on the assumption that the second biggest nuclear arsenal in the world wants to go on the biggest nation-gobbling rampage the globe has seen in over 60 years, devouring a half-dozen NATO members in the process.

These aren't the exaggerations of a novice or a naif; quite the opposite, actually. McCain knows Georgia and the Near Abroad perhaps more intimately than any other senator. The taxpayer-financed International Republican Institute, which he has headed up for 15 years, has been deeply involved with democracy-building projects in the formerly Soviet republic. His chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has performed extensive lobbying for the country (including directly to John McCain), and like all the best lobbying efforts, it appears to be a case of genuine shared interests.

The case against neoconservative foreign policy has never been about an insufficient store of knowledge. You couldn't, for example, accuse Paul Wolfowitz of inexperience with the Middle East. Neoconservatism's problem, and electoral advantage, is one and the same: By escalating international problems into monumental crises and impending threats, interventionists such as John McCain have been able to appear knowledgeable, "serious," and presidentially tough, all at once. Any competitor preaching policy restraint and rhetorical prudence looks like a wuss in comparison.

Like Democrats ready to re-intervene in the economy at the first sign of crisis, the neocons' continuing state of red-alert readiness--whether directed at China, Russia, or the Middle East--provides a go-to set of policy prescriptions, expertise, and action items whenever the latest "holiday from history" comes crashing to a halt. George W. Bush's "humble" foreign policy approach, however sincere it might have been, was no substitute on Sept. 12 for an offensive strategy backed by a well-worn worldview. By 2002, Bush's foreign policy was little different than what a President McCain's might have looked like and, not uncoincidentally, McCainite National Greatness Conservatives went from being prime candidates for defecting from the Republican Party to the in-flight ideological officers of Air Force One.

The problems with their approach should be evident by now, but are worth repeating. Perpetually exaggerating threats leads to, well, perpetual exaggerations, whether about a bad guy's wickedness or a good guy's virtue. On such faulty edifices are constructed unnecessary wars, those most murderous of foreign policy mistakes. In October 2001, McCain, a longtime Iraq hawk, told David Letterman that "some of this anthrax may--and I emphasize may--have come from Iraq." And the senator has long been a supporter of disgraced Iraqi National Congress schemer Ahmad Chalabi.

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

I think I always took for granted that our presidents had all been good students, so I never really thought about it until the juxtaposition of Bill Clinton's academic record versus Dubya's made me think about it for the first time. That being said, on one hand you would think that the highest position in our country would have the highest level of selectivity (after all, I've worked recruiting at financial institutions, and kids have been automatically rejected due to their GPA), but, at the same time, do grades from ~50 years ago and ~20 years ago for McCain and Obama, respectively, matter?

What gets me about McCain is that he is really pointing to his service as a reason to elect him, and it seems that not all of his service was exemplary. If he is presenting us with his service as a defining characteristic, I think it makes sense to examine his entire body of work and that c/should include his grades (and early record as a pilot, etc.), not just the heroic decision he made while a POW.

i think you eliminate a lot of good people doing that. personally. not every person is a great scholar. truman, lincoln, johnson, jackson. heck jfk dropped out of grad school and "transferred" as an ungrad for certain reasons, more than once. george washington never had a true college degree, heck he only had a surveryors license. teddy r dropped from law school...

ill toss out dave thomas, bill gates, mike dell, etc and what they did for our country, oh yeah toss out john deere too...

agreed, but i think you need to also look at yourself. i mean digging up your 3rd grade math grad isnt exactly relevant either. i know you work for a financial institution and how much certain things are valued and thats how you look at the world. if you really think george w bush, mccain, dan q, obama, clinton, hillary, anyone on that level is "stupid" likely you yourself are lacking. anyone who says i dont like george bush hes stupid, well lets be serious is off. that statement is as ignorant as i wont vote for obama hes black, or hillary shes a woman or mccain since hes like george bush (or whatever the simplified answer is)

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

i think you eliminate a lot of good people doing that. personally. not every person is a great scholar. truman, lincoln, johnson, jackson. heck jfk dropped out of grad school and "transferred" as an ungrad for certain reasons, more than once. george washington never had a true college degree, heck he only had a surveryors license. teddy r dropped from law school...

ill toss out dave thomas, bill gates, mike dell, etc and what they did for our country, oh yeah toss out john deere too...

Yeah, I hear ya. I knew there would be examples...

agreed, but i think you need to also look at yourself. i mean digging up your 3rd grade math grad isnt exactly relevant either.

My third grade math scores are just fine. I dare you to check

i know you work for a financial institution and how much certain things are valued and thats how you look at the world. if you really think george w bush, mccain, dan q, obama, clinton, hillary, anyone on that level is "stupid" likely you yourself are lacking. anyone who says i dont like george bush hes stupid, well lets be serious is off.

Well, I don't know. Without being specific, it is entirely possible to be well-educated or well-situated without being very smart. That being said, I understand your point. In this case, it's all relative, right? When we're down to two choices, wouldn't we want to see who might be the smarter of the two?

That statement is as ignorant as i wont vote for obama hes black, or hillary shes a woman or mccain since hes like george bush (or whatever the simplified answer is)

Or I'm voting for McCain because he's a veteran, no matter what else? I'm just trying to make sure that my vote is thoughtfully and completely vetted.

Any specific response to the paragraph about McCain's service from my earlier post?

['BusNative]

This campaign gets weirder and weirder...

Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden : NPR

Election 2008
Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden

by Ted Robbins
Listen Now [4 min 16 sec] add to playlist


All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 ? Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother

"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.
His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.
The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.

She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC.
McCain herself routinely uses the phrase "only child," as she did on CNN last month. "I grew up with my dad," she said then. "I'm an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally."

McCain's father was also a businessman ? and twice a father.
"I'm upset," Kathleen Portalski says. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of...

...Sole Inheritor To Hensley's Estate
When Hensley died in 2000, his will named not only Portalski but also a daughter of his wife Marguerite from her earlier marriage. So, Cindy McCain may be the only product of Jim and Marguerite's marriage, but she is not the only child of either.

She was, however, the sole inheritor of his considerable estate.

Kathleen Portalski was left $10,000, and her children were left nothing. It's a fact Nicholas Portalski says his sister discovered the hard way.
"What she found in town ? on the day of or the day before or the day after his funeral ? was that the credit card didn't work anymore," Nick says...

[Oh8ch]

He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.

One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite.

I wish I had the time to really get involved in this forum instead of cruise occasionally, but...

I watched McCain on Fox. He followed his 5 million answer - given at gun point after stating several times that you really can't define it with a number - by stating that his answer would be distorted. It was.

As for short answers. They were answers. That was refreshing.

McCain has to do a lot wrong to lose my vote, but after watching him in that forum it was the first time I have actually been excited about him. That format BTW was wonderful. By not knowing what the other guy was saying you had to put your best answer out there.

As for holding slaves or having the middle name of Hussein....

We have a crumbling infrastructure. A group of Boomers ready to bankrupt Social Security. An unmanageable debt. A rampant drug problem. A failing education system. A morass in Iraq. A serious threat from fundamentalist Islam. An energy problem. Pollution problems. An epidemic of obesity. An immigration crisis. A housing crisis. Rising unemployment. Rising inflation. And we may be on the brink of something akin to WWIII.

Let's focus on hiding a half sister or how many "uhs" a candidate can string together.

[Gatorubet]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

As for short answers. They were answers. That was refreshing.

In the same way Bush's short answers were refreshing, or in a different way?

[Gatorubet]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

Let's focus on hiding a half sister or how many "uhs" a candidate can string together.

Absolutely agree about a candidate's wife's ignoring a relative not being anything that is in the mix of my choice. I don't care if McCain's sleeping with the half sister. I want my President to be good at being President, not so-so at being President and really good at marital fidelity.

For example, if I was hiring a physicist, and the choice was a philandering Einstein or a church going, faithful to wife type, I'd go with the German p***y hound first. Don't get me wrong, a perfect world would give us both, but I'd rather have the brakes on my car worked on by the guy who knows brakes but cheats on his wife than by the straight arrow boy scout who doesn't know enough to close the bleed valves.

Competency first. Guessing who has it is the bitch.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

Let's focus on hiding a half sister or how many "uhs" a candidate can string together.

Originally Posted by Gatorubet

Absolutely agree about a candidate's wife's ignoring a relative not being anything that is in the mix of my choice.

Absolutely - I definitely, definitely, definitely wasn't trying to suggest that the sister thing was important.

Just such a weird thing to come out of left field. If there is any practical point this, it would only be the on-again/off-again mismanagement of the McCain campaign.

[CookyPuss]

Originally Posted by Oh8ch

I wish I had the time to really get involved in this forum instead of cruise occasionally, but...

I watched McCain on Fox. He followed his 5 million answer - given at gun point after stating several times that you really can't define it with a number - by stating that his answer would be distorted. It was.

As for short answers. They were answers. That was refreshing.

McCain has to do a lot wrong to lose my vote, but after watching him in that forum it was the first time I have actually been excited about him. That format BTW was wonderful. By not knowing what the other guy was saying you had to put your best answer out there.

Having followed this thing closely, McCain gave bits of his stump speech. Obama actually tried to engage the questions and follow the moderator's warning to "not give your stump speech." Funny how Warren didn't ask McCain not to give his stump speech. McCain was clearly the more "rehearsed" candidate that night. I think part of that was influenced by Obama having been off the trail for a week also, he wasn't as crisp. Watching it as a graduate of theology school, I saw a clear contrast in theological world view. For McCain, religion is a moral code (not surprising for a military guy). For Obama, religion is faith (a relationship with God). For McCain, it is the 10 Commandments. For Obama, it is the love commandment. It's the classic Old Testament vs. New Testament clash. I did find it quite telling that McCain never used the words "God" or "Jesus." (Edit: I don't mean this as a slight on McCain. I believe both are valid theological perspectives, I just happen to agree more with Obama's).

I thought this was an interesting reaction to the forum:
McCain's world is preferable, but Obama's world is reality | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/19/2008

McCain did a great job of making me feel confident. He was clearly in his element at Saddleback, among supportive evangelical Christians, and he went a long way toward alleviating their fears about his inability to communicate with them in their own language.

Obama came first, and he handled himself well in front of an audience that clearly disagreed with him on many issues. He also managed to put to rest the notion that he is a Muslim, which 12 percent of Americans still believe. He talked directly to Rick Warren as if they were having a real conversation, whereas McCain played to the audience, rarely looking at Warren. He was low-key, thoughtful and nuanced.

That kind of nuance is hard to understand sometimes - it's unclear, complicated. Obama's world can be scarier. It's multicultural. It's realistic. (Yes, there is evil on the streets of this country as well as in other places, and a lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of good.) It's honest. When does life begin? Only the antiabortionists are clear on that.

For the majority of Americans (who are pro-choice), it is "above my pay grade," in Obama's words, where there is no hard and fast line to draw on what's worth dying for, and where people of all faiths have to be respected.

I would rather live in McCain's world than Obama's. But I believe that we live in Obama's world.

As for holding slaves or having the middle name of Hussein....

We have a crumbling infrastructure. A group of Boomers ready to bankrupt Social Security. An unmanageable debt. A rampant drug problem. A failing education system. A morass in Iraq. A serious threat from fundamentalist Islam. An energy problem. Pollution problems. An epidemic of obesity. An immigration crisis. A housing crisis. Rising unemployment. Rising inflation. And we may be on the brink of something akin to WWIII.

Let's focus on hiding a half sister or how many "uhs" a candidate can string together.

Here is where I see one of the greatest differenced between the 2 candidates. McCain doesn't really care about at least half of those issues. He has his interests and the economy is not one of them. He'll probably kill most infrastructure initiatives with his vow to veto any bill with "pork" and "earmarks" which is how most of those things get done (like replacing bridges such as the one that collapsed in MN). Overall, he's vowed to pretty much follow the blueprint that got us into this mess.

Look, McCain is a good guy and tells some great stories. I'd love to have a beer with him. He has guts. I'll give him that. What concerns me is that he doesn't have a deep understanding/passion for many issues and has a really bad habit of relying on (former) lobbyists and party hacks to fill in the blanks.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by sepia5

Seriously. Can we get past this McCain would make the better commander in chief nonsense. This is a part of a long pattern of screw ups over the past several months that, independently, aren't that big a deal, but should be cause for concern when considered together.

Hmmm...sure you wanna use that criteria?

YouTube - Obama Gaffes

YouTube - Obama gaffe

The second looks like an actor forgetting his lines. Go figure.

[Wingate1217]

Given the focus on the candidate's education I thought it would be fun to look at some hypothetical candidates. All these people ran for President within the last 100 years......
Would you vote for any of them just based on the educational synopisis of each?????


Candidate #1-He attended Georgia Tech and Georgia Southwestern State University before receiving an appointment to the United States Naval Academy where he received a Bachelor of Science degree and is the only graduate of the Naval Academy to become President.[6] He finished a high 59th out of his Academy class of 820.


Candidate #2-He was the only president who served the last 100 years not to earn a college degree: poor eyesight prevented him from applying to West Point, his childhood dream, and financial constraints prevented him from securing a degree elsewhere. He did, however, study for two years toward a law degree at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law).


Candidate #3-He attended Abilene High School in Abilene, Kansas and then took a job as a night foreman at the Belle Springs Creamery.
After Dwight worked for two years to support his brother's college education, a friend urged him to apply to the Naval Academy. Though Eisenhower passed the entrance exam, he was beyond the age of eligibility for admission to the Naval Academy.
A US Senator recommended him for an appointment to the Military Academy which he received and he graduated in the upper half of his class.


Candidate #4-He went to Groton School, an Episcopal boarding school in Massachusetts. He was heavily influenced by its headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who preached the duty of Christians to help the less fortunate and urged his students to enter public service. He then went to Harvard, where he lived in luxurious quarters and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
He entered Columbia Law School but dropped out (never to graduate).


Candidate #5-He spent a year at Davidson College in North Carolina, then transferred to Princeton as a freshman, graduating in and becoming a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. Beginning in his second year, he read widely in political philosophy and history.
He attended law school at University of Virginia for one year. Although he never graduated, during his time at the University he was heavily involved in the Virginia Glee Club, as well as the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society.[10] His frail health dictated withdrawal, and he went home to Wilmington, North Carolina where he continued his studies.
He entered graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University and in three years later received a Ph.D. in political science. His doctoral dissertation, Congressional Government, brought immediate fame and academic appointments at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University.


Answers:
Candidate #1 Jimmy Carter
Candidate #2 Harry S. Truman
Candidate #3 Dwight D. Eisenhower
Candidate #4 FDR (He dropped out of Law school because he already had passed the bar).....
Candidate #5 Woodrow Wilson