Anyone watching the forum on faith?

[Cairber]

Here's a brief article on it:

link

Not too much out there in terms of links yet since it is still going on.

Obama took questions in the first hour and now McCain is taking questions. I'm conflicted in how I feel about this.

On one hand, Obama did very well. He spoke more personally than McCain has about his faith (McCain, on the hand, has been mostly telling stories about his time as a POW in response to questions about faith in his personal life). I feel this distinction between the two candidates will draw more nonevangelicals to Obama. We already saw this week that he is leading amongst all Christian groups except those who identify as evangelical.

On the other hand, McCain has been given a huge stage to throw out his one liners on how he is prolife, pro homeschooling, going to get 4 conservative justices....people get treated to him getting huge rounds of applause (much louder than Obama).

The pastor presiding over this is also letting McCain get into a "stump speech" mode which he specifically said would not happen.

I feel Obama may have been really duped into coming to this. Can it actually help him?

[Cairber]

Also, when asked when he voted against the interests of his party, McCain listed "torture" amongst the votes....and he was not corrected or confronted about allowing waterboarding to continue.

[SirNitram]

(McCain, on the hand, has been mostly telling stories about his time as a POW in response to questions about faith in his personal life)

Well, of course. On why it's OK for him to have offered his wife to dance naked for biker's:

Link

“My personal opinion, and based on my opinion of the Christian faith, that’s not the type of expression a presidential candidate or anyone following the Christian faith ought to make,” Caldwell said,

..

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers .. went on to say that Americans “know that John McCain’s faith and character were tested and forged in ways few can fathom.”

On loving ABBA:

Link

“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”

And my all time favorite, on why he's qualified to be President.

Link

Schieffer noted that Obama did not have any of those experiences, nor had he "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down."

"Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark said.

In a statement released by the McCain campaign Sunday afternoon, retired Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith criticized Clark's comment.

"If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service to his country, he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates," Smith said.

McCain's universal answer: I WAS A POW!

But remember, he hates to discuss he's a POW.

[Cairber]

Warren: “World view. You say you follow Christ, what does that mean to you.”

McCain: “It means I am saved and forgiven. Can I tell you another story real quick. Tells of torture by Vietnamese - A Guard came in while I was bing tortured and loosened the ropes, then came back four hours later and tightened them. The next Christmas I was standing out side my cell and the guard made a cross in the dirt with his boot, then he rubbed it away.”

[Cairber]

typical. All the pundits think McCain was more connected with the people. Translation: he talked like a 5 year old and told cool war stories. One guy even said Obama demonstrated he knew nothing about theology, yet he was the only one to talk about scripture, Christ, etc.

[FSTargetDrone]

I can't, on principle, watch such an event (frankly I am annoyed that faith is being discussed at all, but this is America), but I am curious, did anyone bring up McCain's cheating on his first wife?

[Cairber]

The question was their greatest moral failure:

Obama talked about drugs and McCain said "The failure of my first marriage"

[Darth Wong]

I can't see any reason to watch such a thing. In America, "Faith" means "The Christian Right". It does not include Buddhists, Hindus, liberal Christians, or anyone else that doesn't fit their anti-abortion homophobe right-wing crypto-racist politics.

[Guardsman Bass]

McCain was less informative (and he overused his POW experiences, again), but his answers did tend to be clearer in most cases; Obama usually took longer to answer, and some of his answers weren't really answers.

[Meest]

McCain was less informative (and he overused his POW experiences, again), but his answers did tend to be clearer in most cases; Obama usually took longer to answer, and some of his answers weren't really answers.

What I got out of it was Obama went for compromised/neutral answers to appease that crowd, and McCain flat out ignored questions to tell stories and fear monger. I liked that Obama explained his views and used a lot of preventative measure plans to explain his answers. More of a I don't care where the problem started or how it conflicts with your views, let's just get it fixed type attitude. Where McCain would just state something and then claim it's correct because he just stated it. "My friends it works" was the only justification he gave anything. The MSNBC commentary by Pat Buchanan made me laugh after it, he said Obama was too intellectual and McCain was more clear. How is being intellectual bad after the Bush terms?

[FSTargetDrone]

It shouldn't be any surprise at all that having and demonstrating intellect is unappealing. Look at that audience, a room full of evangelicals who formate their worldview largely based on the bible. Black and white, right and wrong, with no thought required. i saw video of some of those people outside the building before the "discussion" began and more than a few were swaying back and forth, arms raised to the sky, praying and singing quite vocally. It looked like a mob of mental patients.

[Elfdart]

Does anyone have a copy of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago handy? One of the Kossacks claims that Dungeon Master McCain's story last night about the Vietnamese guard making a cross in the dirt out of sympathy is ripped off from the late author's book.

[Buddha]

I can't see any reason to watch such a thing. In America, "Faith" means "The Christian Right". It does not include Buddhists, Hindus, liberal Christians, or anyone else that doesn't fit their anti-abortion homophobe right-wing crypto-racist politics.

It all goes back to the myth of the Founding Fathers being Bible believing, Conservative, and the builders of the city on a hill called America. No other religion has freedom unless it's Christian and Zionist to the hilt.

[Guardsman Bass]

I should clarify; I was basing my assessment off of the 20 minutes of McCain's side that I saw, and out of the maybe 40 minutes of Obama's turn that I saw.

Not surprisingly, McCain brought up the "cross in the dirt" story; he never changes anecdotes, apparently. Did he bring up the "$3 million to study the DNA of bears - I don't know whether that is a paternity issue or a criminal one"?

[Darth Wong]

Basically, all you have to do in order to win over an evangelical crowd is to say "I am one of you", over and over. Any argument with greater complexity than that will just confuse and annoy them. Bush was actually quite good at doing this; you don't actually say it in so many words, but you keep saying things that only an evangelist would say. They can be thoroughly meaningless and have nothing to do with questions posed, but evangelists smile and say "Yeah, he's one of us".

[Darth Fanboy]

I live down the street from the church where this was held. Those people scare me quite frankly, and from what i've heard from residents who have lived in this area longer than I have, to call Saddleback church Rick Warren's own Personality Cult is not far fetched.

Unfortunate that I still have to live in a country where if a candidate wants to be taken seriously then he would have to attend such an event.

[Guardsman Bass]

I live down the street from the church where this was held. Those people scare me quite frankly, and from what i've heard from residents who have lived in this area longer than I have, to call Saddleback church Rick Warren's own Personality Cult is not far fetched.

Unfortunate that I still have to live in a country where if a candidate wants to be taken seriously then he would have to attend such an event.

Rick Warren is supposed to be the "centrist" new evangelical, too, as opposed to people like James Dobson, who are pretty much culture warriors (read homophobic bigots) in undiluted form. Go figure.

[Guardsman Bass]

Now here's a twist on the faith forum:

ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.

Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Before an audience of more than 2,000 people at the church, the candidates answered questions about policy and social issues.

Mr. Warren, the pastor of Saddleback, had assured the audience while he was interviewing Mr. Obama that “we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence” and that he could not hear the questions.

After Mr. Obama’s interview, he was joined briefly by Mr. McCain, and the candidates shook hands and embraced.

Mr. Warren started by asking Mr. McCain, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”

Mr. McCain deadpanned, “I was trying to hear through the wall.”

Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview.

That's quite an oversight on Rich Warren's part. Shouldn't he have bothered to actually check to make sure that McCain was in the "Cone of Silence" for real before starting up the event, or at least mentioned that McCain was running late?

Or at least I hope it was an oversight on his part. Assuming he did check, then he was being dishonest to both Obama's campaign and his audience.

[Elfdart]

It says quite a lot about Dungeon Master McCain that in a forum rigged in his favor, he has to cheat and lie in order to "win" one for his media fluffers.

[Glocksman]

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

All bullshit aside, I'm getting Goddamned tired of seeing McCain's fluffers throw up the 'POW defense' WRT subjects that have absolutely nothing to do with his service in Vietnam.

Though it was funny to see Sean 'Parrot' Hannity literally start choking when Colmes pointed out the hypocrisy in saying Edwards' adultery made him unfit for office while not saying the same about McCain's.

But, but..he was a POW!

[Buddha]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "Cone of Silence"? It sounds like a bad joke from an even worse joke. Really, what does the phrase mean?

[Glocksman]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "Cone of Silence"? It sounds like a bad joke from an even worse joke. Really, what does the phrase mean?

It's just a clever way of saying that McCain would have been in a room isolated from any way of hearing what was asked of Obama.

[Bounty]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "Cone of Silence"? It sounds like a bad joke from an even worse joke. Really, what does the phrase mean?

It's just a clever way of saying that McCain would have been in a room isolated from any way of hearing what was asked of Obama.

It was also a running gag on Get Smart.

[Glocksman]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "Cone of Silence"? It sounds like a bad joke from an even worse joke. Really, what does the phrase mean?

It's just a clever way of saying that McCain would have been in a room isolated from any way of hearing what was asked of Obama.

It was also a running gag on Get Smart.

Oh yeah..'don't scream in the Cone of Silence'.

[Darth Fanboy]

But, but..he was a POW!

That almost deserves its own thread, seriously somebody forgot to give Colmes his Neuterol before he went on stage that was an asskicking.