Chilly

When you said Raffi, I thought you were talking about the singer. Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring, banana phone

God I was drunk last night rofl I dunno, I think a Michigan win might hurt us since we lost to Ohio State.

Hell, if Muslim = bad like you think, why not gay = bad?

No, it has to be the people that it attracts and how the show is aired.

Gee what a surprise. I raise a point-by-point discussion by you, and you ignore it.

OMG I AM A BIG FLORIDA FAN, BUT IGNORE THAT, I LIKE FLORIDA!!! THEY SHOULD GET THE BCS NOD CAUSE I LIKE FLORIDA BUT I'M IGNORING THAT I LIKE FLORIDA! YAY!!!!!!!!!!

All I have to say is, Welcome to real College Football Ed This is the stuff that big Universities go through. Its great that you got to be a part of it

Time to buy a Whitner jersey! Everyone's gonna want one now!

Oh, I read your post as to mean that Dean selected the candidates, not Emanuel. I gotcha now.

Right now it does, obviously, look like Hillary is going to win the nomination. All of the poll numbers show that this is the case, and she has some pretty decent support in the party. There is a way, though, for her to lose, and it has to come within the next couple months. The earlier that candidates throw their name into the ring, the better the chance that they have against Hillary. The parallel here is the 2000 Republican primary. Bush announced on March 2, 1999 that he is forming an exploratory committee to run for the Presidency. Soon after, Bush announced that he officially was going to run for the Presidency. McCain noted via fax that he was going to run for the Presidency, but delayed his official declaration until September 27, 1999. This gave a HUGE advantage for Bush. On June 30, 1999 Bush announced that he raised $37 million dollars. Compare this to McCain at $6.3 million and Elizabeth Dole at $3.5 million. This created both media attention for the Bush campaign, as well as made believers in his own party. Bush was able, then, to snatch up all of the best Republican campaign talent in the US. Because of this, his strength continued in victories in the 2000 primaries. The same thing could very well happen with Barack Obama. If he does announce soon that he is running for the Presidency, he could jump out to a huge fund-raising lead over John McCain, as well as grab up the best Democratic campaign talent. This would be enormous. In theory, so could Vilsack and the other possible Democratic candidates. I do not, however, have as much faith in their popularity and fund-raising skills that would be needed to convince Democratic talent to jump on board with him over Hillary or Obama.

TPS is right, its Emanuel. He was the guy that chose the conservative candidates for the Democrats in this race, and played toward the middle. Dean's tendencies from watching him at the head of the DNC is to play to the base, not the middle.

Foley = does enjoy a little boy's misery.

This will also take billions and billions in infrastructure costs in order to actually rebuild Iraq. Thats not something that the American people as a whole right now seemingly want to endure. Thinking that its going to evolve into a Democracy with what we have right now is also a pipe dream. It is going to require a great bit more resources then the people are willing to spend if it is even possible. And? You're criticizing the Democrat's plan for the transfer of power to Iraqis, yet you are presenting the biggest issue that is facing the whole damn thing, whether you go with the Democrat's or the Republican's plan. This isn't isolated to the Democratic plan. See point above. Regional diplomacy is *HUGE* in attempting to create a Democracy. If the neighbors around Iraq don't play hands off, it would never become a democratic nation in the first place. This is something that is essential to both the Bush Administration's plan and the Democratic plan. Actually, you forgot Poland. I took it to mean having a united diplomatic front for the nations surrounding Iraq, not military support. Not constuction, constructive. This is part of the "ally" part that you were talking about in the quote above. This has been an idea that I've heard of for a while as well. The counter-argument is that a small number wouldn't be strong enough to build up the Democratic institutions that start a Democracy. At this point, though, I think the best we can do is build a quasi-democratic state in which we give the appearance that we left the country in good shape.

Hopefully they decided to borrow only what worked, and not borrow what didn't work. That seems like a bad plan to borrow both.

Direct from Nancy Pelosi's website http://www.democraticleader.house.gov/pdf/thebook.pdf So what, exactly, is wrong with this? The fact that there aren't as many American troops as there were before?

lol the Daily Show had an awesome bit about this

The whole idea for every Iraq plan that I've seen, even Bush's, is to slowly remove troops and give it over to iraqi security.

Of course, Wolf Blitzer's on CNN, which means its more entertainment oriented then news oriented (no matter how they try to claim its an actual "news" channel)

Olberman isn't really a news show, its a news-as-entertainment show.

He should be confirmed by the lame duck congress.

God you're bipolar. First you guarantee a win, now you predict a loss. Good luck to you and RU Ed.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is higher then religion!

Depends on the sources and methodologies of the studies. The studies that are the ones showing reporters to be liberals are garbage in my opinion. Thats great and all, but theres really not a lot of research into how that has an effect on reporting. The stuff that is compelling are the studies by people such as Robert Entman. Entman's book, Projections of Power, has a very good chapter entitled “Debating War Against Iraq”. What he finds is that the media, at least in the realm of foreign policy, is highly supportive of the Administration in the news pages, yet critical of the Administration in the editorial pages. He finds that critics leading up to the Iraq war didn't get much coverage at all, and that their ideas were largely ignored by the media. The story selection was such that it helped the Administration make its case for the Iraq war, and it didn't air critics and their views very much. He judges it based off of the amount of space given to supporters of the war versus the amount of space given for people against the war from the get go. There have been other similar studies on the media and airtime for supporters of a President versus critics. By in large, the supporters get more coverage then critics of an Administration. One of the arguments out there is that the media report based upon what the public mood is. When the public supported the Iraq war, the media was supportive of it. Of course, this raises the issue of who actually started these attitudes. Which is why I think its more or less controlled by the almighty dollar. When the media feels that they can play on public interest and patriotism (such as what the country felt after 9/11), they are supportive of the President. When there starts to be sentiment that he's screwing up, that sells newspapers, and thus becomes a big story. The "biases" that are perceived are neither Democratic, Republican, or Green party, but rather Green Bill. I am, however, referring to the News Industry, not the News As Entertainment industry (CNN, MSNBC, Fox, most radio - hell most stuff except for newspapers, *some* online reporting, and a very small amount of radio. The Network Nightly News can sometimes be the News Industry too).

But what about the Flying Spaghetti Monster?