I, um, have been supporting him for quite some time.

his wife outfit and jewwelry during the 2nd day of the conference was costed at around 300,000 usd$. the man uses his wifes company jet to get around and they have 7 houses.

who are the elites again?

The Clintons. They could buy and sell the McCains about 20 times.

i doubt it. clintons have made a lot of money from giving speeches and writing book but not .... mc cain and his wife are worth about 100million so that would make clintons worth 100 times 20 ... 2billion?!
mc cain made his money by cheating on his first wife and marrying into mafia linked beer family. i think mc cains 2 wifes father was arrested for various crimes during the 1920s. i cant look it up now, at work but im sure its on wiki.

i think obama is working for a kenyan al-quaeda cell and is plotting various crimes once his is president. i cant look it up now, too lazy, but im sure its on wiki.

yeeaahhh.... in general i consider it my priviledge as a voter to ignore hearsay

how could it have, it was basically the his biography for the 100th time in the NRC. can the repubican party really find no better endorsment of their presidential candidate?

and where were the issues?
it took him at least half an hour to mention his first policy stance (on earmarks)

sean has made several good points on the topic.
how can a candidate who cheated on his first wife with his present wife claims to have strong morals and ethics on his side. can you imagin what republicans would make of this if obama were the one to have done so. there's a reason he stayed quite when edwards disclosed his affair. it was pretty funny at the time :)

If you read wikipedia it actually states that him and Cindy McCain signed a pre-nup, keeping there assets separate. They apparently file separate income tax returns as well.

It says nothing about 'mafia' relations or anything of the sort. Many of his seven houses may come from the beer distribution money - but I couldn't find any clear statement.

John McCain confirmed what I'd thought about him for months, with his pick of Palin for VP and his speech tonight. He doesn't care about issues anymore, all he cares about is getting himself elected. He'll say and do whatever he thinks he needs to to get to that point, and there is no way I'll ever vote for him.

what's surprising about that?

to Thucydides ... an anybody lese
if anybody wants to read about mccain wife's fathers mob connections here it is.

http://community.marketwatch.com/groups/us-politics/topics/cindy-mccains-father-all-mobbed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hensley

From a purely 'speech' point of view,

McCain spoke very well. He has his constituency and gave them what they wanted;

From what I have seen of Palin, she is going to be a formidable adversary and I do not think many would want to go one-on-one. She is the only one of the four who is a real debater.

Obama will have to get beyond his "change-forward-new" vagueness if he faces her live on tv. She does not fire blanks.

I do not really understand how she has remained so hidden before or how she will get rid of some of her baggage, but in terms of speaking, she will be the one the media want to see.

lol flashman, I hope you watch the debates so that we can come back to this :)
Obama speaks substance, policy, issues. I was disapointed, but not suprised, by the lack of such discourse in the RNC.

Rich doesn't equal elite. It's true that many rich people are also elitist, but to me it's more of a mindset. Elite is also not a bad thing - when people use the word as a slam, it could just be replaced with "snob". But elite by itself? The Navy Seals are elite, the Army Rangers are elite, NFL players are elite in the world of footbal and guys like Tom Brady and LT are elite among professional players. Olympic athletes, and so on.

Paris Hilton is elitist. I'm using her as an obvious example that no one should be able to argue with. She truly thinks shes better than others because of her money. In other words, she's a snob.

McCain is not elitist just because his wife's family ran the Budweiser distribution in Az for decades. It just means he married a rich chick, and man was she smokin hot back then!! Good for him!

I also don't think Barack is elitist. He certainly aspires to wealth and will do some shady deals to get it, but I don't get the impression that he thinks he's better than everyone else. In fact, I think that an elitist would think that his thoughts and ideas are correct and if you disagree with him, you just aren't smart enough to get it. Clearly not Barack. He will change his thoughts and ideas to match his audience. He should realize by now, that everytime he says something different, he's being recorded, but he clearly doesn't get that yet. Even last night on O'Reilly, he said "The surge has exceeded beyond our wildest dreams". wait till he talks again to the people who won him the primary, the radical anti-war crowd, see what he says then.

Not at all, I was specifically referring to the quality of the speaking rather than the merit of the content.

Most people are swayed by the impact of a speech not the details... Try Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech" - do you know how many times he said that in it? Go on, guess.

Perhaps I should quote Paul Simon here, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."

Palin was a powerful act in terms of rhetoric, so much so that Biden was on air (CNN) straight after and said he would be unwilling to debate against her as he knew that his style would be overwhelmed. I for one would like to see her in action a few times if only because the last 8 years have thrown up truly awful debates at this stage in the campaigns.

Obama is currently doing the closed doors town hall act, 'public not invited' - not exactly a man to fear at the stump then is he? He might have the majority on policy but he is not an awesome speaker. He reminds me of our former wimp Tony Blair, a man who believes in his own publicity.

McCain's speach did not convince me to vote for him last night.

Obama convinced me to vote for whomever was opposing him months ago. That happens to be McCain. Had it been Romney, Huckabee, Gulianni, or Paul, I still would have voted against Obama

I was in jail for the speech.

but my answer would be no

Cue the soap jokes...

Did anyone see the corporate sponsored banners hanging over the convention? I think it's pretty clear the future of this country if McCain wins

they were at the DNC too. why dont you try living in a world without corporate sponsorship, moron.

and flashman, as to your Paul Simon quote. It is interesting to note that the next thing he said after "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Was, "but not all the time. I'm generally just trying to get publicity with a clever quote, ha ha ha." Just kidding. But I thought it would be delightfully ironic if it were so. I actually agree with you about the substance thing though.

actually i thought the best speech at either convention was surprisiglt Kerry!
im not that big a fan of kerry, thought it was silly for the democrats to put him up last time but i like this speech. here is the tail end.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, "Next up, Baghdad!", Barack Obama saw, even then, "an occupation of "undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences" that would "only fan the flames of the Middle East." Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it "the soft comfort of appeasement." But today, Bush's diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it "cut and run." But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on - guess what? - a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a "contest of ideas," now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn't put America first.

No one can question Barack Obama's patriotism. Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American by his family: his grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II, his grandfather who marched in Patton's army, and his great uncle who enlisted in the army right out of high school at the height of the war. And on a spring day in 1945, he helped liberate one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald.

Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama's uncle is here with us tonight. Please join me in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne. Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division. He will be a president who seeks not to perfect the lies of Swift boating, but to end them once and for all.

This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don't decide who loves this country; you don't decide who is a patriot; you don't decide whose service counts and whose doesn't.

Four years ago I said, and I say it again tonight, that the flag doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any political party. It is an enduring symbol of our nation, and it belongs to all the American people. After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country.

Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us saying, "My country right or wrong." Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

This is one of those times, and Barack Obama is telling those truths.

In closing, let me say, I will always remember how we stood together in 2004, not just in a campaign, but for a cause. Now again we stand together in the ranks, ready to fight. The choice is clear; our cause is just; and now is our time to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States.