Barack Obama, Number 44
So says the foreign editor of Der Spiegel after Obama’s speech to nearly a quarter-million Berliners today:
Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin’s Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious — he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.
It was a ton to absorb — and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America’s errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It’s amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes…
He also could have said: We are a world power, the only one that exists on this planet at the moment, and I am going to act as if that were the case. But you’re also allowed to participate in the attempt to try to save the world — at least a bit of it. In that sense I am different from George W. Bush — very different. Indeed, Barack Obama has his own sound — it’s more utopian, he speaks of the general human desire for better conditions for all of humanity; and he speaks of the longing for strong and dynamic presidents and chancellors who are capable of acting on a global scale. With this drive and this radiance, he managed to drive Hillary Clinton out of the campaign. It is also the way he is going to outpace John McCain on November 4. It is the way he took the hearts of Americans by storm and it is the way he is now taking Europe by storm.
Anyone who saw him make the short way from the Victory Column in Berlin on Thursday to the podium saw a man with the serious gait of a basketball player, a man who seemed young, decisive and focused. For those who witnessed his appearance in Berlin, it is hard to imagine that John McCain still has any chance. McCain is 25 years his senior, a man who because of the torture he endured in Vietnam is in constant pain — unable to comb his hair or lift his arm in celebration.
Europe is witnessing the 44th president of the United States during this trip.Â
A hat tip to Bill Bradley for this find. The analysis from Der Spiegel overlaps mine of earlier this week when I wrote that if there were a referee overseeing this election fight, this might just be the moment already to step in and stop the bloody pummeling. How a fumbling, bumbling McCain is gonna as much stay on his feet till November seems a mystery.
In that respect, My Brilliant Daughter offers some stern advice to Senator McCain.
July 24th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Some seem worried that Obama – looking good to a German crowd – will alienate Americans.
Nonsense.
And nonsense too over the sniping that the village people (Digny’s wonderful term for the Great and the Good in DC Media) were throwing in cautionary bits or giving McCain more props (yeah Mrs Greenspan is really believable!)
A story – in 1984 Leslie Stahl was covering Ronnie’s reelction campaign and one stop was at a national park where Reagan touted his environmental credentials. Lets just say that Stahl’s commentary asked “What Environmental credentials?” The next day she got a call from Mike Deaver and to her suprise he thanked her for the piece. “But I skewered your candidate!” she said. Deaver told her no one heard her words – all they say was the lovely pix of Reagan in the park!
Well all that voters have seen this week is Obama act more like the president than the real one. And that will stick.
Obama in a landslide!
July 24th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
A basketball player’s gait, talk of strength and chancellors. What Kurt Vonnegut book am I thinking of?
July 24th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
McCain throwing in the towel and Obama running unopposed is my recurrent fantasy, how did you know?
July 25th, 2008 at 1:55 am
One word:
Diebold.
The Democrats, and Obama is still a Democrat, need a 15-20 point lead on the night before the election to sleep soundly in the knowledge of victory.
Kerry lead Bush in almost every poll just before the election. There’s no reason to believe that the GOP election-day edge — be it by hook or by crook — will evaporate this year.
As it stands, Obama leads by only single digits in a lot of places.
I too expect him to expand that, especially once the two are formally nominated and they face each other in debates.
But don’t count McCain out yet. He has many friends in the press and is about 5,000 times better as a candidate than George W. Bush, who beat Kerry and Gore — men who are not really all that distant from Obama, once you get past the hyperventilating of Messiah-seeking, moral narcissist liberals.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:16 am
On MBD’s OTB, Hunter Thompson would be proud.
July 25th, 2008 at 7:14 am
“As it stands, Obama leads by only single digits in a lot of places.”
Where as it was double digits before. And the explanation is: “Some seem worried that Obama – looking good to a German crowd – will alienate Americans.” which as RLC says is nonsense… Obama is alienating Americans… except of course for the true believers. You folk are so gullible.
July 25th, 2008 at 7:15 am
I didn’t see it when it aired last night, but Jon Stewart and Colbert were laugh out loud hilarious regarding Obama and McCain.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I guess liberals should be extra proud of a Democratic U.S. presidential candidate who is campaigning in Europe, canceled a visit to a military hospital, criticized the U.S. on foreign soil, and proclaimed himself a citizen of the world. Yeah, just what we need.
July 25th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I’m praying that The Guardian will launch another letter-writing campaign, this time on behalf of The Messiah.
Look, Honey! We done got us a letter from John L’Carre!
July 25th, 2008 at 9:06 am
He ventured forth to bring light to the world
The anointed one’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action – and a blessing to all his faithful followers
July 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Can I get an amen?
July 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
“You folk are so gullible.”
This from a “fucking idiot” who thought the Iraq invasion was a wonderful adventure, absolutely essential to preserve U.S. national security.
ROFL
July 25th, 2008 at 9:22 am
So, GM, the post-Obama overseas trip polls are already in ?
I guess I’m a fucking idiot because I can’t figure out how they did that and you already got the results.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:35 am
From Kyra Phillips of CNN, after Obama’s Berlin speech:
“It’s interesting, Christianne pointed out, that the Senator did talk about his mother, born in the heartland of America, but ‘my father grew up herding goats in Kenya’, and that’s where you even heard a large part of that crowd giving a Kenyan cry, which made Barack Obama smile, bringing him back to his home country.â€
Why doesn’t he run for President in his “home country” instead of the U.S., unless he wants the entire world?
July 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Woody, will you settle for an `oh, man…”?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
and proclaimed himself a citizen of the world
From Ronald Reagan’s fifth state of the union address:
IOKIYAR
July 25th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“Obama in a landslide!”
He’s up by a few points according to Pollster.com, though their electoral college breakdown gives him a bit more of an advantage that that. Because of the intensity of the Dem primary and the fact that he’s the first Black Prez nominee, voters do know who he is by now. They’ve been introduced already, seen his strengths and his skills. They know he can orate and drain the three-pointer.
I suppose he could win big, but if all those skills haven’t put him ahead by more at this point, what makes everyone(Woody, Bob and GM excluded) so sure of a landslide . I see him winning a pretty close race.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Thanks, Marc.
Very nice column by Meadow — translation: Marc’s very smart daughter Natasha — by the way.
Incidentally, a fair amount of mis/disinformation in a number of these posts.
Re polls, cancelled hospital visits, etc.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Yeah, here’s what happened with that cancelled hospital visit. But folks like Woody and the Republicans will make a deal of it because, well, that’s all they got.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5isvibn267XWA1SF5OE9kK-nQIKkw
July 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
My wife brought this article home from the hair dresser asking isn’t that the Mark York always getting bashed on Cooper’s blog. Sheepishly, I had to admit it was.
My story hit the AP wire today.
CORWIN SPRINGS –The Church Universal and Triumphant has
completed a $2.2 million chapel and an 18,000 square-foot office
complex on its Corwin Springs property north of Gardiner, in time for
its 50th anniversary celebration held early in July.
After years of controversy and preparation for a nuclear
apocalypse that never materialized, weapons charges and environmental
lawsuits, the New Age organization has been out of the news in recent
years.
Former leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet has been in a Bozeman assisted care arrangement with Alzheimer’s disease since 2000, but her message
lives on.
“We’ve had some sensationalist press coverage over the
years,” said church Co-President Rev. Lois Drake. “We want to be
treated fairly.”
Mark L. Prophet founded the organization as The Summit
Lighthouse in 1958. His wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a New Jersey
native and Boston University graduate in political science,
established The Church Universal and Triumphant in 1974. She
permanently moved its headquarters from Southern California to
Paradise Valley in 1987 to a property purchased in 1981 from the late
Malcom Forbes. Today, the property is known as the Royal Teton Ranch.
“We have local chapters in over 250 communities worldwide,” Drake said.
The New Age organization is seeking to change its image from
a bunker-dwelling doomsday cult to a mainstream religious
organization, CUT observers have said.
The new chapel is serving as inspiration for that
worldwide membership, Drake said.
King Arthur’s Court
According to CUT’s Web site, the new complex, called “King
Arthur’s Court,” will “beautify this place prepared by the Ascended
Masters for millions of seekers – the place where the messenger
Elizabeth Clare Prophet stood and delivered the Word for the Aquarian
Age.”
“We completed the main office building in 2006,” said Drake,
a pleasant, tall, Southern California native during a visit last
week. It houses the offices of the presidents, Summit University and
The Summit University Press, which produces and distributes materials
worldwide.
The reception foyer is in the center of the room, accoutered
with fine furniture. On one wall, a portrait of Mark Prophet faces
another of his wife across the room.
“This is the great room,” Drake said of the two-story wall of
windows that open to a grassy courtyard facing the new chapel topped
with a golden-peaked lighthouse tower.
“It’s important to have a beautiful environment and to blend
with Montana,” Drake said, “and for visitors to have a nice place to
gather when they come here from all over the world.”
The whole property was lined with large tent structures
currently being torn down by crews of teens.
“The young people like to help set up and take down the tents
for the conference,” she said of the event held July 1-8. “We had
2,000 people here at the anniversary conference.”
Inside the chapel foyer, another portrait of Elizabeth Clare
Prophet, smiling, watches over the entrance.
“We haven’t got the door handles installed yet,” Drake said
of the brown, double-arched doors. Inside, was an arched, tiled
ceiling and rows of seats leading to an altar framed with a portrait
of Christ on one side and Ascended Master St. Germain.
The new chapel, formerly a barn, cost 2.2 million dollars, Drake said.
“It’s paid for, but we’re collecting funds through donations
to recover that amount,” she said. “Construction began in May 2007.”
The chapel project includes: Lighthouse Tower; two rooms for
classrooms and fellowship; a small chapel for weddings, non-English
services and other events; and a room for families with viewing
window. In the family room, Drake pointed to a purple glass light
fixture.
“This chandelier was in our Malibu, California headquarters,
so there’s history here as well as the new,” she said.
The bookstore in the complex sells numerous copies of the
organization’s publications, which are translated into several
foreign languages. There were many Buddha’s and Shiva statues for
sale, reflecting the church’s embrace of Far Eastern religions.
“We sold out of many items during the conference,” Drake said.
There were bins of buttons with likenesses on them, including
that of Mark and Elizabeth Prophet, for sale.
Faith and taxes
According to the doctrine of the church, Ascended Masters
“are enlightened spiritual beings who once lived on the Earth, and
over the course of many lifetimes of devotion and striving, they
fulfilled their mission for being – their divine plan – and ascended
back to their divine source, reuniting with Spirit.”
Followers believe these beings are the spiritual guides and
the teachers of mankind, who instruct spiritual evolution of all
those who desire to unite with divine consciousness, or God,
according to the church’s website.
“The essence is unity with God,” Drake said.
The church recently retained a partial tax-exempt status from
the Montana Department of Revenue for its main bomb shelter, built to
house hundreds, because it is used it for religious purposes as
storage facilities for religious material, according to state records.
“The underground structure is being assessed at 50 percent of
the value,” said Mark J. Olson, area manager for Park, Meagher,
Broadwater and Madison counties for the Montana Department of
Revenue, in a recent e-mail. “All remaining structures are being
assessed at 100 percent of their value. However the Chapel, Old
Montessori School, and three log cabins are exempt.”
Drake commented on the controversial shelter phase of CUT’s
history of 1989-1990, when Prophet predicted a nuclear holocaust
commanded members into the underground shelter in March 1990.
“It was a long time ago,” she said. “We’re moving forward
based on universal and time-tested tenants, helping our congregants
achieve their spiritual path.”
Sean Prophet comments
Mark and Elizabeth Prophet’s son Sean, 36, sees the CUT and
its new chapel in a different light.
Sean Prophet, 36, now a film editor in Los Angeles who left
the church in 1993, was present and helped build the 756-person
underground structure during the shelter phase.
He writes on his Web site, http://www.blacksunjournal.com, “Church
Universal and Triumphant is a cult that has now survived past its
founding generation. Though the organization faltered for a few
years, it now seems to have stabilized and shows no signs of
disintegrating. As long as there are people who need the particular
brand of Ascended Masters teachings my parents offered, their
successors will continue to propagate their messianic zeal.”
In a telephone interview last week, Prophet said the church
is putting the best face it can on a failed prophecy.
“It’s bad fruit from a bad tree,” he said. “The (new chapel)
is a meeting house for the community to give them a place to go. They
raised $2 million for that, but that doesn’t hide the fact they spent
$20 million on shelters for nothing. They ruined a lot of peoples’
dreams.”
The time after the shelter event was a turning point for Sean
Prophet, who began to question the teachings he’d grown up with. He
walked away from a powerful position as a minister of the church
and denounced its beliefs.
“They made it all up,” he said. “These religious ideas have
been handed down from one person to another throughout the centuries,
drawing from earlier fictional accounts, such as the books of Guy and
Edna Ballard, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and others, and my parents
just picked ideas they agreed with.
“In the end,” he said, “It’s all about the money, buildings
and who gains the most.”
Prophet said he knew the new chapel building well.
“There’s an underground shelter under there, too,” he said.
“There are steel trap doors in the floor near the altar. They may
have covered it up.”
The main bomb shelter Sean Prophet helped build, which he and
members entered to escape a feared holocaust, is located in a high
meadow at the end of Mol Heron Creek Road, five miles above the main
compound behind a big log gate on which is a sign, “RTR,” for Royal
Teton Ranch.
A no-trespassing sign is posted on the gate.
“That’s where they hold their retreats,” Prophet said.
“It’s our Heart,” Drake said. “The spiritual center of the
ranch. We take the young people on wildlife hikes up there. The bears
and mountain lions are doing very well, so we keep everyone together.”
Near the end of Mol Heron Creek Road sits a collection of
more white tent structures atop an embankment with railroad tie
steps. A short way beyond, the county road ends at the closed gate to the big meadow.
“The bones of a failed prophecy,” Prophet said, “are buried
up in Mol Heron Canyon.”
Mark A. York
Livingston Enterprise
Staff Writer
myork@livent.net
(406)222-2000
July 25th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Yeah, Randy, Reagan used the term “citizen of the world” decades ago when it didn’t mean the leftist ideals that the term carries today. What you conclude has no more relevance than Reagan saying in 1960 that he went to a gay party.
July 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Oh, Balter, give me a break! The fact is that Obama didn’t care enough about the wounded soldiers except to use them for a campaign photo-op. He couldn’t go see them as a non-candidate, but he could make a speech in Berlin as one. What a crock.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Since Obama was in Germany on his campaign’s dime, this was a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation, given the preponderance of deranged assholes such as yourself on the wingnut right.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Yeah, Randy, Reagan used the term “citizen of the world†decades ago when it didn’t mean the leftist ideals that the term carries today. What you conclude has no more relevance than Reagan saying in 1960 that he went to a gay party.
Supply some proof for that statement you moral relkativist mental midget.
Your position is pure poppycock, Woody. You get called on your nonsense and then engage in nothing more than contradiction. You got nothing, as usual.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
The fact is that Obama didn’t care enough about the wounded soldiers except to use them for a campaign photo-op.
Actually, that’s an opinion. Woody raises the flag when he can’t raise anything else.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Fact: Obama could have gone to the military base to see the wounded soldiers but declined when told that he cannot use it as part of his campaign. He declined the invitation based upon that. But, he did make a speech in Berlin saying that it was not part of his campaign. What’s the difference? The Berlin talk gave him press coverage.
Randy, you’re an idiot. I don’t have to give links to other people’s views to make obvious conclusions.
July 25th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Correction: Randy, you’re a fucking idiot. Or am I the idiot? Hmm, a little self-reflection could be dangerous. I think I’ll just continue to repeat myself incessantly and call the rest of you fucking idiots, since I’m not able to provide any better arguments.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Whether or not he’s right about his predictions, it’s interesting to hear the perception. Thanks for the pointer.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
By “he” above, I’m of course referring to the author of the Der Spiegel article, not to anyone in the comment thread.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I post under Woody’s name and want his attention because I think he’s really hung.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“Weldon Fuller Says:
July 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
My wife brought this article home from the hair dresser asking isn’t that the Mark York always getting bashed on Cooper’s blog. Sheepishly, I had to admit it was.
My story hit the AP wire today.”
This reminds me of the kid who called the school to say “My son won’t be in today, he’s sick.” When asked who it was calling, the kid replied “This is my dad.”
York, you are more pathetic than reg. And that is saying something!
July 25th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
” suppose he could win big, but if all those skills haven’t put him ahead by more at this point, what makes everyone(Woody, Bob and GM excluded) so sure of a landslide . I see him winning a pretty close race.”
Evets strikes again with uncommon, relative to most other comments here, wisdom and judgement. Then again, that could just be that I agree with it.
With all the bad stuff going on right now, under a Republican President; depressing gas prices, depressing home market, depressing wars, slowing economy, and a very talented Democratic opponent, it is quite surprising just how close McCain is to Obama.
If I were Kerry….uh Obama, I would be very nervous about an average 6 point spread at this point. I find the skyhigh optimism of the born agains……well, amusing happy-talk.
July 25th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Woody makes a couple of odd arguments here today.
It was OK to call oneself a citizen of the world in the 1980s when (or because) Ronald Reagan did so. [Was it OK in 1940, when the "Casablanca" script was written, for Cap'n Renaud to respond to Rick's "admission" that his profession was "drunkard" by observing that he was thus "a citizen of the world?"] It is not OK now, however, to acknowledge the same status because Woody and his pals think that is now (but wasn’t then) some sort of leftist password.
Woody then, oddly, construes the Pentagon’s order that no campaign could use any military installation as a publicity backdrop to be some sort of pretext for Obama’s real intention, which must have been to offend hospitalized soldiers. It doesn’t matter to Woody that the trip was explicitly a campaign trip, and that any appearance, including one at a military hospital, would be understood, reasonably, to be a campaign event. He prefers his politicians running for office to charge his frequent foreign excursions to the taxpayer, and to claim they are “public service,” as John McNoEarmarksForMe has.
More evidence that it’s been a bad month for the right.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
“I post under Woody’s name and want his attention because I think he’s really hung.”
That bulge is Depends.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
lol @ Jim R…..
July 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
MC, Obama was still welcome at the base as long as he didn’t bring all the press and his campaign workers with him. He declined. However, he did “suspend” his campaign to talk in Berlin. Why couldn’t he do that for a few moments to see our wounded soldiers? Well, the answer is that he doesn’t care about them except as publicity props.
It is true that “citizen of the world” has taken on some global plan to make all nations the same. Liberals want us to be like Europe. Liberals blame us for poverty in other nations. Liberals think that the U.N. should be in charge. Liberals are more proud to consider themselves “citizens of the world” and are ashamed to call themselves citizens of the U.S. The context of Obama using that was made worse by his criticizing the U.S. to the Germans in the same speech. Those ideas didn’t exist within Reagan’s mind and speech.
July 26th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Well, obviously, there’s no way that I can take back that misidentified post above that was really from me. I don’t think that Shrieking Queer holds those views.
July 26th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I thought either Roy Cohn or J. Edgar Hoover had risen from their graves.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:34 am
A note on Obama’s visit from a Cpt serving in Afghanistan. (Not Verified)
July 26th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Obama for President of the World! (or, if the French like him, something’s wrong with him.)
Vive la Obama différence!
July 26th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Woody – you’re a piece of shit, circulating an email that has been verified as bogus.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/Military_blog.Obama_072508w/
July 26th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Hey Woody – how about some more video links to crazy people.
July 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
QUARTER OF A MILLION? Bull crap!
How about closer to 20-25,000?
July 26th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
hey reginald… what part of PART don’t you get?
Officer: Part of anti-Obama e-mail was wrong
July 26th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Roper, you’re so lacking in anything resembling honesty or integrity, it’s really a total waste of time dealing with your sorry shit.
Keep swimming in it…
July 26th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Here shitbag – argue with the Lt. Col:
“The Army refuted the accuracy of the account of the Obama visit.
“ ‘These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect,’ Bagram spokesman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green told the New York Daily News.”
July 26th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Just a question for you and Woody – aren’t you guys EVER embarrassed by the crap you sling here ?
July 26th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
reg, I don’t expect you to recognize political pressures on the military author of the disgraceful Obama visit.
July 26th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I’m pretty good at estimating crowds. Look around. This one wouldn’t fill the college stadiums where I go to games. Two-hundred thousand, my eye.
July 26th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Randy, you’re an idiot. I don’t have to give links to other people’s views to make obvious conclusions.
Which still means you have absolutely nothing, as usual except your usual puerile name-calling.
t was OK to call oneself a citizen of the world in the 1980s when (or because) Ronald Reagan did so. [Was it OK in 1940, when the “Casablanca†script was written, for Cap’n Renaud to respond to Rick’s “admission†that his profession was “drunkard†by observing that he was thus “a citizen of the world?â€] It is not OK now, however, to acknowledge the same status because Woody and his pals think that is now (but wasn’t then) some sort of leftist password.
Woody’s response to my link to reagan’s referring to himself as citizen of the world is probably the single greatest proof of his hypocrisy.
July 26th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Unfortunately, hypocrisy isn’t the worst problem this utterly dishonest and creepy rightwing crank has.
July 26th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
As for Woody’s self-proclaimed skills at estimating the size of crowds, I would estimate that the tree line at stage right to the tents at stage left is at least half a mile (880 yards). In addition the distance to the end of the crowd where there is a gap between the trees – as far as I could see and I could not see to the end – was at least another 600 yards. The entire area was filled with people.
But let’s dumb it down for the sake of argument. The dimensions of the Rose Bowl are 880 feet by 695 feet. The seating capacity of the Rose Bowl is in excess of 90,000. Given that the space is significantly reduced for the sake of a football field, if one wanted to, one could easily fit 200,000 bodies in the Rose Bowl.
If one does not believe that the distance from the tree line to the tents is at least 1000 feet (less than two tenths of a mile) and that the distance from front to back is at least the length of two football fields, then one is pretty crappy at estimating crowds or just willfully blind.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:12 am
I caution everyone I meet to beware the popular noise around Obama and especially the plethora of polls with the usual sampling, by phone, of nine hundred or a thousand respondents.
People can fudge on the phone because another person is on the other end and want to appear more tolerant than they might be if anonymous.
Follow the AOL poll for awhile and you will see an entirely different set of numbers.
The weekly sampling is in the range of four hundred thousand plus and the result is staggering.
McCain creams Obama, 2 to 1 every time and sweeps all 50 states.
USA is uber racist down deep.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Sorry, but the AOL poll doesn’t have “sampling.” It’s not a poll of distributed voters but a straw poll of people who gravitate to AOL for their political news !!! Ron Paul won the GOP nomination in that poll.
July 27th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Just went to check it out and voted 3 times (use diff browsers)
July 27th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Randy, football stadiums rise up many rows and often have upper decks. I didn’t see anything but flat land around Obama’s speech. You can fit more peas in a bowl than you can on a flat service of two demensions.
A long time ago, I used to have a job which included estimating the crowd size at sporting events. Today, we still do it as a contest and then wait to hear the official announcement, since they have instant electronic reporting on that now.
I estimate that there are two people in your household, but only one of them has brains, and I give that to her despite marrying you.
July 27th, 2008 at 8:17 am
reg: “aren’t you guys EVER embarrassed by the crap you sling here ?”
Asked by the worlds champ crap slinger. Sheesh reg, can’t you come up with something original?
July 27th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Document something I posted here which was a fabrication, and then had the audacity to defend once it was exposed. Apparently that’s your definition of “original”, i.e. shit that’s made up.
You are getting creepier with each comment.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:43 am
reg, if someone looks hard enough, he can find some left-wing site to twist your claims so as to appear true. But, I seem to remember rants about Karl Rove and your claim of his guilt that proved false.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Randy, football stadiums rise up many rows and often have upper decks. I didn’t see anything but flat land around Obama’s speech. You can fit more peas in a bowl than you can on a flat service of two demensions.
That may be true, but again you can’t see the entire distance there in the photo. Is the square footage of the space there smaller than the cubic footage of the Rose Bowl? Do you know if that is true?
So who’s more credible here: you, a gassy ideologue looking at a panoramic photo or the police who were actually there and made the crowd size estimate?
A long time ago, I used to have a job which included estimating the crowd size at sporting events
Was this before or after your science show on television that you never told anyone about?
Today, we still do it as a contest and then wait to hear the official announcement, since they have instant electronic reporting on that now.
With two advantages: you know the actual seating capacity and you are actually there.
I estimate that there are two people in your household, but only one of them has brains, and I give that to her despite marrying you.
Always with the cheap insults when you have nothing.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Yeah, leftwing sources like these:
Valerie Plame leak shoulda cost Karl Rove his job, ex-aide McClellan says
The Associated Press
Monday, June 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM
WASHINGTON – President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent’s identity, his former press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Sunday.
“I think the President should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left,” McClellan said in an NBC “Meet the Press” interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush’s leadership.
Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, and Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, assured McClellan they were not involved in leaking Valerie Plame’s identity in 2003, and he repeated those assurances to reporters, the former spokesman said.
In fact, a criminal probe later confirmed the pair did leak Plame’s identity. While Libby had resigned by then, Rove remained in office until August 2007. (end clip)
You’ve got the mentality of a self-absorbed, not-terribly-bright child, Woody.
July 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Shouldn’t you boys be in Church?
Reg’s excused cause we know he’s one of them there ifidels. But Woody knows the price of sin.
Bless you my sons.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
” Woody knows the price of sin.”
As should any accountant…
July 27th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Especially a capitalist one. Toxic.
You wasn’t one of them there Country Wide ones, was you Woody. If you are, get out of California. Their looking for you.
I shouldn’t pig pile Woody. Without him, Marc’s blog wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun to read. Seriously, he does a pretty good job holding his own here…..and with goo humour.
July 27th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
‘goo’ is ‘good’ for christsake. Scuse me Jesus.
July 28th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
You can fit more peas in a bowl than you can on a flat service of two demensions.
People aren’t packed 3-dimensionally into the Rose bowl; duh. Project the Rose Bowl onto a flat surface of the same dimensions and you get the same number of people, since no one is directly above anyone else. Just another matter that Woody is absurdly wrong about. (But even his many errors are better than GM Roper’s juvenile “Yeah? Well so’s your mother!”-style comments.)
One of the many ironies is that the McCainites (including his many friends in the “liberal media”) have been telling us that Obama was “presumptuous” to speak before 200,000 people. That’s apparently the criminal difference between McCain giving speeches in other countries and Obama doing so — that too many people came to hear Obama. But expert crowd estimator Woodrow Sinclair assures us that Obama isn’t guilty of that sin after all.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Given that the space is significantly reduced for the sake of a football field, if one wanted to, one could easily fit 200,000 bodies in the Rose Bowl.
I doubt it. If the Rose Bowl were perfectly round, the radius of the field would have to be 3/4 that of the whole bowl for it to accomodate the extra 110000 bodies.
Is the square footage of the space there smaller than the cubic footage of the Rose Bowl?
Comparisons between volumes and areas are not meaningful. It’s the surface of the bowl that matters, not its volume.
February 14th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Happy Valentine’s Day!