the saddleback forum

[Evelyn]

If you watched it, you heard Rick Warren say, "We need to learn how to disagree without demonizing the opposition," about three times. If you missed it, you can find a summary and full video here.

My quicknotes (copy-pasted from gchat):

it was really interesting
i watched the hour of analysis with the political experts afterwards too
everyone's reactions were pretty much the same
mccain had a great night
his answers were concise, direct, specific, to-the-point, and had a lot of examples
obama was more nuanced and personal
both handled every question with grace and dignity
they flipped a coin and had obama go first
while mccain sat in a soundproof room
you should have heard one of the very first questions
to be fair, he asked the exact
same set of questions to each candidate
and one of the first ones was, "you've said that you're a christian.
what does that mean to you exactly, and how does that faith inform your daily life?"
i was like WOW, he just went THERE.
obama seemed to be pulling catch phrases from a pile of miscellaneous sermons in old
memories
but he said, "it means that i trust in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior."
i was like, oh snap, he just said it.
and he went on to elaborate, displaying his familiarity with the correct theological tenets of the christian faith
i assume he elaborated mostly for those ridiculous people who still think he's somehow a muslim extremist. (<--i lol foreverrr....)
he seems a little naive about faith
like he wants to be associated with good moral principles, but openly humanistic as well
so his moral ground is still kind of muddled in my opinion, albeit well-intentioned
when the same question was put to mccain, he was a lot more direct
"it means that i'm redeemed and forgiven."
and then he went on to answer, "what do you think is america's greatest moral failure."
i liked obama's answer better.
it struck me as more aware and compassionate
obama definitely has a heart for the poor
mccain is more politically experienced, so he is more practical and articulate when it comes to economic solutions
obama comes off as more vague as far as tax plans go
obama wants to lower taxes for the not-rich, which are pretty much middle class people who make less than 150k a year
and raise taxes for people who make more than 250k a year
he wants to raise taxes to improve education and health care, and says, "if we want to care for future generations, we have to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices"
which makes sense to me
but then mccain's answer was like,
"i don't want to raise taxes for anybody. people think that small business owners who work 16hrs a day are really rich and we should tax them more for their hard earned hours, but why should we tax them more? i'm not interested in evening
out the classes - the issue in the past five years hasn't been our taxes, it's where we're spending the money.
"we just spent 5 million dollars researching bears in montana last year. 5 million dollars. of your money."
working for a small business owner myself, i think he has a good point there
but what i didn't like was that, being a fairly wealthy person himself, mccain didn't seem to understand or care about our education dilemma
he was like, "what america needs to have is choice. the choice to choose a charter school, private school, etc..." and i was like, "umm... some kids don't have a choice? so what, you're just going to give up on the public schools in the inner city? what about them?"
i just can't see all these black kids in the inner city suddenly able to go to all these charter schools
that's stupid
so anyway, i think mccain is really naive about education reform, and doesn't really have a plan to even out opportunity there
and obama needs to get more specific about how to actually make those reforms work
so that we don't have another useless act like "no child left behind"
anyway
i can't wait until they announce their vps
also
rick warren is being interviewed by larry king tonight
you should watch it
i know i am
i'm definitely going to watch it because i know rick warren's not a flake

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My picks for related reading:

McCain and that faith stuff
ahahahaha Dobson
scour this for the anti-McCain
postscript whaaaat