Nobody took a shot at my questions above from last night. Does anyone even know what I am getting at with them? I wonder.  I say I have some idea of how McCain would answer simply because he has a long track record in Congress. Obama has almost no track record, except for voting the solid Democratic party line the few years he's been in the Senate. From this I have to assume he is a left wing Democrat, but I don't really know since he dodges the issues with vague talk about change and hope. I say BO is leftwing like I would say certain Republicans (not McCain) are rightwing since they vote the party line most of the time.  Your view of the candidates' politics tends to be colored by where you stand on the politic spectrum. I will say though that it's hard to distinguish the far left from the far right.

I voted today. Dropped my ballot off at the county clerk's office. I'm going to make a big sign for my door saying "I already voted. You're wasting your time knocking on my door."

Sam

 Sam,

Believe me, yes, I could engage you in discussion on all your questions, but to what end? This is a dog board, and I feel uncomfortable even having taken part in this subject matter, but some of the writing just irritated me so much I could not help myself LOL. Some of the questions you pose are ones I wrote on in my recent ethics course. All people should be required to take such a course, but that is dreaming of another time. Someday, if we ever meet, you and I can sit and have a coke and discuss, for example, whether there is such a thing as a "just war" and some of the other questions you pose. Frankly, most probably won't take the time to even understand what you are asking, and to answer any of those questions deserves a well written essay.

Smith, if you knew how to write your own language, perhaps you would learn a little more about critical thinking. There are reasons not to like either candidate, but when you try to write garbage and cannot even write that properly, no one takes you seriously. Get used to it. Your next President will likely be Obama, and you will or will not fail in your business because you either have the necessary skills or don't to continue and prosper.

Hodie, I'm old enough to have taken mandatory classes in logic in school. LOL, that was a while ago! I have thought about these questions since I was in grade school.  If we do meet, we can discuss them. I too have been reluctant to post on these Off Topic threads, although I have some very decided and I hope well reasoned positions. But they are for another type of board or list. I sometimes just can't contain myself over some of the wilda$$ statements from the depths of the political fever swamps that have been posted here. I'll have to stop reading these OT threads.

 Sam, 

We will have some interesting discussions.

Just one more indication of a lack of ethics in this developing story:

Palin abused power in firing, Alaska panel finds

man this is nothing compared to bush & neocon machine's dealing have we forgotten 9/11 - lesser of 2 evil? maybe jump the heck of the coin?

another pov of the above video http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/100908b.html

 9/11?  What's the matter, tinfoil on a bit too tight?  

The Obama-Ayers Education Story: Funding Left-Wing Radicalism In Education

An exerpt:

"And of Obama's involvement in the activities of a group whose board he chaired:

Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit....Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

Kurtz's conclusion:

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle."

In addition:

by Micky D on 11 October 2008 - 04:10

"Ayers is the Skunk in Obama's Trunk."
"Domestic Terrorist Billy Ayers 'walked out of jail' and into Academic circles by dint of his Daddy's ComEd power circle that embraced University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Woods Fund, Sidley and Austin Law Firm, and any number of left-sensitive political animals. Ayers' insulated life allowed him to leap from 'Underground' to Hyde Park influence without so much as time out for his decades of crimes against America.

More significantly, Ayers was placed in a position to wield influence on Education policy through Chicago's Public School Reform scams which created Local School Councils to serve as wedge between Public School Administration and the Teachers Unions.

The purpose rooted in Billy Ayers' activities is to undermine the root values that American Education has inculcated through curriculum development and instruction in the sheep's clothing of 'social justice.' 

Larry Johnson's No Quarter site offers important and thoughtful analysis of Obama's 'go-along-to-get-elected' agenda: Appeasement in Foreign Policy and Surrender in Education.

Ayers bombed and robbed in a simpler time. Back then, mobbed up guys broke appendages and took blow-torches to dead-beats. Now, criminals engage in wire fraud and identity theft. Billy Boy Ayers is nothing if not craven sophisticate.

Ayers and his gang use 501(c)3's, State Legislatures, daffy elected officials, a gutless if not completely corrupt Chicago Media and artfully duplicitous academics to 'bomb' the pillars of American Education:

 Ayers himself wrote on his website in a January 19, 2008 essay on school reform: 

“The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. ‘Across the US,’ the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, ‘a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.’ This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood ‘racial achievement gap,’ and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy….Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.” (Emphasis added.) 

At a certain stage in American history it might have made some kind of desperate sense to make this kind of argument, perhaps prior to 1865 or 1965, but in 2008? Even then it was possible and there were examples of multi-racial efforts to fight for justice and equality for all Americans. 

Of course, today when millions of white workers suffer conditions little different from those of inner city blacks it borders on the absurd to make such an argument. Nor is it clear that throwing more money at our public schools is the real solution. Yet it seems to be the kind of argument that is behind the new race-based approach argued by those in favor of paying off centuries of “educational debt.” The unanswered qu