Zzunk wrote:

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StarrEise wrote:

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That IS one of the major issues of this election, the fact that John McCain supports 90 percent of Bush's policies which were failures. That's not slinging mud, that's stating a fact. The Dems have been trying to talk issues for some time now, but now the Repubs are closing ranks, not permitting their own candidates to do interviews, etc. How can you support a party that is running on solely a candidate's personal history but hasn't offered any ideas on how to resolve problems facing the country?

Slinging mud is normal business in politics. All I'm saying, dearest StarrE, is the "90 percent same voting as Bush" statement is OLD NEWS. I would hope the Democrats could show more intelligence that just repeating the same thing. Obama has a large platform, so use it. Ditto for the Republicans.

As for the how can I support a candidate based solely on their personal history: I don't, but I am having a hard time with the Democrat's choice of a candidate that is less experienced than Herbert Hoover, who bombed as a President. I'm of the opinion that G.W. Bush has been a dismal President, and he had more experience than Barack Obama does. So why should I believe that a great orator like Obama is worth taking the risk on? He has only proven that he can get elected and raise millions for his campaign chest. He constantly dodges answering the experience question. I'd love to him explain why his credentials are equal or better than any other President-elect in the last 100 years.

I agree with you on the experience issue and, in truth, I was no Obama fan. Really, I'm still not. But the better candidates were pushed out of the race - that includes Dems and some of the more libertarian candidates, but as an Independent/Democrat, Obama's all we've got right now. He's certainly not ideal, but would have been in another four years or so. Be that as it may...

We've had 8 years of bad policies and bad decisions - the war in Iraq (based on false evidence) and Afghansistan (the right war, but we still have not achieved our missionthere of caputuring OBL), sabre-rattling over Iran, North Korea, and now Russia (even McCain threw in a line in his speech about potential conflict with Russia over oil). We cannot fight them all. We need to come up with an alternative plan to the "boot up the ass."

The economy is a mess, we've got people losing their homes, the airline industry in trouble (as a direct result of the lack of an energy plan - though I will give the Repubs a partial pass on that because Clinton didn't do as much on his watch to get us off foreign oil as he could have), unemployment is rising, jobs are being off-shored. Damn, we couldn't even evacuate a couple of thousand people from a convention center in New Orleans after a natural disaster.

We've got rampant corporate greed, lobbyists in control of the government, and privatization of crucial goverment services like paramilitary groups answering to no one but themselves even as OUR tax dollars pay their invoices; these groups put US troops in danger, with the okay from Republican politicians who are tied to private contracting companies. We've lost some of our civil liberties, we've got the Republican party laughing at the notion of Miranda warnings, etc.

For 8 years, the Republicans have lined their pockes at the expense of the American people, stripped government agencies of the ability to protect and preserve both families and the environment; and perhaps most galling, they blatantly ignore subpoenas, claiming executive privilege on whatever they don't feel like accounting for...

So...with all that said...I don't see how anyone can possibly vote for 4 more years of this party. McCain may have been a maverick once, but he's not one anymore. His pick of Sarah Palin proves that - he does what the party tells him to do, and they told him to pick a conservative Christian whose positions on important issues are off limits to the media and public in general. The Republican party has called the shots for the past 8 years; I'm not willing to risk them calling the shots for 4 more.

Most elections boil down to a choice between the lesser of two evils. In this case, that's Obama. I'm comfortable backing him, if for no other reason than he can't be any worse than what we've got right now. I think he has the aspirations, ambition and will to make a change in Washington if we just give him a chance.

StatelyWayneManor wrote:

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Plus, Obama has a nice smile.
I'm not helping StarrE much, am I?

yeah...but he's got those big old jug ears, so...I dunno.