Vote '08

WASHINGTON (AP) - Which of the top presidential candidates would you prefer having at your summer cookout?
An Associated Press-Yahoo News Poll finds that people who were surveyed would rather barbecue burgers with Barack Obama than John McCain, by a 52 percent to 45 percent margin.
Men are about evenly divided between the two while women prefer Obama by 11 percentage points. Obama is a more popular guest with younger voters while McCain does best with the oldest.
Party label means a lot, with three-quarters of Democrats picking Obama and the same number of Republicans picking McCain. Independents are about evenly split.
The AP-Yahoo News survey of 1,759 adults was conducted online by Knowledge Networks from June 13-23 and had an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. The margin of sampling error for subgroups was larger.

Fooey! Vote08 doesn’t believe in false choices! I love that the premise of this quadrennial poll is that you actually have to make a choice among these candidates, as if they’re knocking on your door & you can only let one of them in. Let’s have a 4th-of-July-Eve-Eve fantasy in which ALL of the recent presidential candidates stop by for a bite, shall we?

Okay, fellow barbecue lovers! Let’s hear from you! Which candidate(s) would you like to see at your 4th-of-July barbecue, & what specific dish would you ask them to bring? We eagerly await your comments!

ADDENDUM: (from the Wall Street Journal, March 2nd)

“McCain, dressed in a sweatshirt with a family photo embossed and jeans, spent much of the afternoon turning ribs and chicken over the grill on the wraparound deck of his cabin. He happily disclosed his recipe: a dry rub made up of one-third black pepper, one-third garlic powder and one-third salt. Fresh lemon juice is squeezed over the ribs during a slow cook. The slow cook, he assured observers, allows all the fat to drip away. He promised skeptical eaters that the ribs were practically fat free.”

UPDATE: I asked the entire newsroom to give their responses. Here’s what I have so far:

“You can imagine that I’d love to have Senator Clinton at my next backyard BBQ. I feel confident she shouldn’t be asked to contribute to the meal… but I’m equally confident that the conversation would fill my constant hunger for stimulating conversation. How ’bout seeing what you can arrange?”

“Most elected politicians could supply/bring their own “pork” at your expense of course.”

What say you?

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - A spokesman for Ron Paul says the Republican presidential candidate is ending his campaign.
Spokesman Jesse Benton says Paul will make the announcement Thursday night during a speech in Austin, Texas. Paul also will announce that he is beginning a new effort to elect libertarian-leaning Republicans like himself to public office nationwide.
Benton says the announcement was not a disappointment, but rather is exciting.
Paul’s announcement will be a formality. The Texas congressman won few delegates during the Republican primaries, but he raised millions of dollars online and developed a large, grass-roots following among those backed his call for ending the war in Iraq and smaller government at home.

An interesting pair of twists & turns today.

Connecticut Senator & former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman (I) writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the foreign policy of Barack Obama:

 “There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.”

& Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel (R) spoke out yesterday to criticize John McCain:

“I’m very upset with John with some of the things he’s been saying. And I can’t get into the psychoanalysis of it. But I believe that John is smarter than some of the things he is saying. He is, he understands it more. John is a man who reads a lot, he’s been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things.”

Guys, just switch parties already!

What do you think?

(above: example of my handwriting, age 4)

What does each of the candidates’ handwriting say about their personalities?

The Los Angeles Times delves into a little graphology to come up with the answer:

Does this mean anything? Is it an accurate portrayal of the candidates? Who knows? We eat this stuff up, nevertheless.

Signed,

As you can see, four - or in this case eight - years in the White House takes its toll on a President’s facial features (this applies to all presidents, not just the current one.)

The folks at PopPhoto.com provided some helpful insight into how four years of the presidency would change the appearance of each of the three major candidates.

& no, it’s not pretty.

Click “read the rest of this entry” to peer into the future — if you dare!!!!!!!

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#5.

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#1.

One of the major failings of the Bush administration since September 11th, 2001 has been the lack of any kind of call for national sacrifice (& no, we’re not counting the call from the President to “go shopping“).

After the jump, we offer some thoughts on how the next president needs to change this.. even though we have evidence they’ve given no indication they’ll do so. 

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Today General David Petraeus & Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave the Senate Armed Services Committee an update on the Iraq war.

View clips of Petraeus & the candidates after the jump.

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This is a great piece on how one well-placed phrase or speech, or one badly-placed sentence or misstep can determine the outcome of a presidential campaign.

Has a ‘make-or-break’ moment already happened this year? Post a comment & give us your thoughts!