What’s truly troubling, and you didn’t touch on this, is how close the race is between Obama and McCain. Here’s part of the problem. People, in general, are pretty dumb. Here’s a few things I’ve heard, unsolicited, out of people where I live here in suburban Chicago:

“Obama supports gay marriage, which means they would be teaching that to our children in school!”

“Obama is a Muslim, therefore he supports terrorism”

“Obama is a Communist”

This is the kind of stuff I’ve been hearing and unfortunately, for these people, there’s obviously no ability to reason logically with them since apparently they’re intellectually void. This is the kind of blind, mindless sheep mentality that saw Bush to a second term. As you’ll recall, they battle cry on ‘04 was “we gotta win the war against terrorism”! Of course, no one at that point had any obvious point of reference since the mainstream news media hadn’t clued in yet that Iraq had effectively nothing to do with the current domestic terrorist problem, so all they had to go by was the rhetoric from both parties, and the American people put their money on “the devil you know” spot, without any consideration for any of the other domestic problems we faced at that time. Unfortunately, the American people have only partially awakened to the notion that closing your eyes and wishing something to go away doesn’t make it actually go away. The only action that seemed to make sense at the time was to move a Democratic majority to the Hill, but all that did was grind the Federal Government to a complete halt for the last 2 years. If for nothing else, at least if Obama makes it into office, SOMETHING will get done!

He is a professor of Arab studies, sat on the board of a Republican-funded institute for research in Middle-Eastern studies, he is a member of a multifaith organisation of Jews, Christians and Muslims dedicated to dialogue and advocacy regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and is probably the leading Middle Eastern scholar in America today. Basically the kind of person that anyone with an interest in the area should be talking to. He’s also very much involved in education reform – which has always been one of Obama’s hobby-horses.

But yeah, he’s brown and has a funny name so that makes him a terrorist obviously.

It is the “Russian invasion of Georgia” issues that made me go for Barr.

McCain jumped right on blaming Russia. Obama’s “For MANY months, I have warned …” talk is laughable too (source http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/11/obama-responds-to-conflic_n_118276.html)

It is interesting the republican who I can’t convince to vote for Barr thinks just like McCain….

First off, you are no conservative Scott. Anyone that would cast a vote for the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate and the most liberal Presidential candidate in the history of America is most certainly not a conservative. Claiming to be the opposite of what you believe is one of the oldest tricks in the book and hopefully most readers didn’t fall for it.

People telling me I’m not allowed to call myself a conservative any more never gets old. (Ignore the fact that so many conservatives are endorsing Obama this year that Colbert did a joke on it.) Maybe we can come up with a new label instead. I hear “whig” is free.

I detect thinly veiled snobbery here and contempt for people who happen to hold traditional values. In your world, only people that are fortunate enough to attend an Ivy League university are qualified to be vice-president or president of the USA.

I went to a commuter college in north Florida (and never finished, at that) so I suppose I hold myself in contempt as well? Methinks you are projecting a bit too much. At any rate, I have no problem with people who hold traditional values (such as, oh, I don’t know, myself). People who try to impose traditional values I tend to disagree with.

Being a good leader is far more then being an intellectual, it’s about having character — something that narcissistic Obama will never have despite his debonair charm and teleprompter eloquence.

How dare our leaders be well-spoken and thoughtful!

Sarah Palin never set out to be a presidential or vice-presidential candidate.

This is inaccurate. She sought out to (and did) impress the editors of the National Review and Weekly Standard a few years back during their yearly Alaska cruises with an eye towards a place on the national ticket.

Meanwhile, Barry Obama’s entire life has always been in the pursuit of activities and associations that would pad his resume and further his rise to power.

Yes, he’s an ambitious politician. HOLY CRAP STOP THE PRESSES, CINCINNATUS ISN’T RUNNING THIS YEAR.

Do you know Sarah Palin personally? If not, then how do you know she has no opinions?

Through her writings, speeches, and interviews. How do you know anything about anyone you don’t personally know?

How did she get an 80% approval rating in Alaska with “no opinions”?

Because she’s young, attractive, and not Frank Murkowski.

You, on the other hand, Scott the Blogger seemingly have lots of expert opinions on many subjects and surely that makes you qualified to be vice-president right?

Unlike Ms. Palin, I am well aware of my lack of qualification for high political office.

Never before in the history of politics has a vice-presidential candidate been the victim of such a concentrated campaign of hate and smears as Sarah Palin.

Yes, normally Karl Rove’s operatives concentrate on the top of the ticket.

I doubt you or any of your crew on this thread hiding behind their monitors would survive 5 minutes of the kind of insults or scrutiny that she and her family has faced.

I find this highly amusing given the abuse I’ve personally suffered being a visible figure in the MMO community over the past decade, including death threats, obscene photoshops, angry Geocities hate sites, drunken people ranting at me in bars in person, and the occasional indecipherable screaming about “Trammel”. Admittedly this does not compare to the fury of Alec Baldwin waxing wroth on the Huffington Post, but it still is, I note, highly amusing.

In 1992 a young and previously unknown governor of the State of Arkansas named Bill Clinton become the President. According to a recent interview with one of his advisors Dick Morris, he had ZERO foreign policy experience when he got elected. Morris said that it took Clinton about a year to get up to speed on foreign policy after entering the White House. Governor Sarah Palin from all accounts is also a very quick study. Given your logic a governor of any state in the USA would be automatically disqualified from being the President because they lack any substantive foreign policy experience. By the way, sixteen U.S. presidents were state governors before holding the highest office in the land. Thankfully the American people know better and exhibit much more of an open-minded approach regarding the experience of who they support for president.

Bill Clinton did not avoid the national media out of fear of actually having to answer questions. Sarah Palin does. And from all accounts within her campaign (note: *within her own campaign*) she is anything but a quick study, but instead is a ‘diva’ and ‘whack job’ who was so unprepared she was kept from the media out of a sense of preservation. (Note that those quotes are not from the Obama campaign, but from the *McCain* campaign.)

I find it interesting how you conveniently forgot to mention that Obama totally fumbled his initial response to the Russian invasion of Georgia

I find it interesting that you apparently think “the Russian invasion of Georgia” is a clear cut case of Russian aggression that Obama “fumbled”, when in point of fact it is entirely arguable that Georgia provoked the attack though indiscriminate rocket shelling of Tshkinvali (the S. Ossetian capital). I also find it interesting that you apparently think Russian intervention into a former Soviet state in the Caucasus is worth taking the US into war with Russia over. I also wonder if you, like McCain, actually are aware of the history of post-Soviet successor states (which, including Georgia, are far from paragons of democracy) or if you are simply parroting neoconservative talking points.

You also failed to mention the many gaffs that Joe Biden has made regarding foreign policy including his plan to partition Iraq and his feeling that Obama’s inexperience will in essence be an open door for him to be “tested”.

You are aware Iraq is already de facto partitioned largely through American fiat, correct? That Kurdistan is a de facto independent state, which is not a de jure independent state only due to Turkish sensitivity regarding their own Kurdish minority, and that the US military has been funding Sunni “Awakening” militias ostensibly to protect themselves from al’Qaeda in Iraq (which is effectively wiped out as a military force) but in reality to protect themselves from the Medhi Army militas, SCIRI, and other Shi’ite militias that in effect run the Iraqi central government? I mean, I wouldn’t want to assume that you were speaking out of ignorance on Iraq and judging Biden’s proposed recognition of reality on the ground based on that. Or that, again, you would merely be parroting someone else’s talking points instead of doing your own research on the subject.

And you are worried about Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience? At least she’s not a bumbling oaf like Biden.

No, she is entirely her own brand of bumbling, you are correct there.

Now back to Joe the Plumber. Here we have a guy who happened to be throwing a football with his son on a Ohio street where Obama was walking down and (read: looking for an easy photo-op) and asks a simple question and now suddenly he’s the bad guy for daring to ask a question?

That would explain why Wurzelbacher is a long-time figure in Ohio conservative talk radio who plans to run for political office. It’s all the Democrats’ fault, picking on a poor innocent plumber! It’s not like McCain has made him a keystone of his campaign or anything.

Equating people who vote for John McCain and the Republican party with Nazi Germany is a clear sign of desperation and immaturity on your part. Your ego must be huge if you think you could escape the invocation of Godwin’s Law

Equating people who demand Obama’s execution as a terrorist with the sort of rhetoric heard in Weimar-era fascist rallies is entirely appropriate, given that the propaganda techniques involved (demonization of the ‘other’, nationalist resentment over percieved social injustice) is identical.

Please provide some concrete and verifiable examples where this administration has impinged upon the rights of Americans to exercise free speech or squelched dissent?

Oh good lord, where do I start? Patriot Act, oversight-free wiretaps, search and seizure of laptops at the border being so bad businesses literally instruct travellers not to take them through customs any more… oh, you mean actually impinging on free speech? Here you go: http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/silenced.html

It is the Democrats who are opposed to dissent as they are considering reinstating the so-called Fairness Doctrine in an effort to silence talk radio — the only medium that the left has failed to utterly dominate and control. Why? Because it’s the only medium left outside of the Internet where the average American (you know those uneducated, unintelligent, socially conservative dolts who don’t have blogs — that you seem to despise) have a voice.

I agree with you that trying to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine would be a mistake. So does Barack Obama.

Some Americans are rightfully afraid about the candidacy of Barrack Obama because they know so little about him due to the negligence of the mainstream media who is desperate to get him elected. Obama has failed to release many details about his past to the public and lied about his associations.

Obama has written two autobiographies. Perhaps you want him to write more?

The constant attempts by the right-wing media to conflate Obama and Bill Ayers are ridiculous and serve solely to use the words “Obama” and “terrorist” in the same sentence. This is not “rightfully afraid”, this is manipulation via base propaganda.

If only the mainstream media had put the same scrutiny on Barrack Obama as they have done on Sarah Palin this would not be an issue and Americans would be able to make an informed choice. Don’t blame people for being afraid of someone they do not know especially when that person is seeking the most important job in the world.

Barack Obama has been almost impossible to avoid in the media. He has given hundreds if not thousands of interviews, among them to some very hostile questioners. Yet apparently the right wing media is fond of insisting that “we just don’t KNOW about Obama” – are Obama’s beliefs somehow hidden? I mean, there’s a whole website full of them, with his name right there in the URL. It certainly couldn’t be because the right wing media is appealing to fear of Obama’s foreign sounding name and implying that he is somehow a Muslim and that means he’s evil and a terrorist (because all Muslims are evil and terrorist simply by virtue of being Muslim), correct? Certainly they wouldn’t be implying that, they simply want to know what Obama stands for, right? So by that logic, I can only conclude that the right-wing media is incapable of using a web browser.

Please provide some evidence where a legitimate news organization or any serious conservative thinker/pundit has claimed that Ayers caused the stock market problems. That is patently false.

It’s an ironic joke based on that the McCain campaign found Bill Ayers’ history more worthy of discussion than the collapse of the financial system.

Granted, George Bush in many ways has been a less then competent president. Let’s be honest, the current Democratic congress has the lowest approval ratings of any congress in the history of the USA — lower then the current approval ratings of George Bush.

Let’s be honest, the Democrats have held power in Congress for less than 2 years. But, hey, clearly the problems in this country are all their fault – if only the Republicans had had two more years of uncontested political control, everything would be *fine*!

You just finished stoking the flames of fear by equating McCain supporters and Republicans with Nazi Germany but then you are indignant that the media and the American public have no right to be afraid of a candidate that went to a racist church for 20 years and who associates with known terrorist spokespersons such as Khalidi and unrepentant terrorists like Ayers?

What are you actually trying to say here? That Obama isn’t what he advertises himself to be – namely an unrepentant liberal Senator from Illinois – and is some sort of Manchurian candidate that is going to turn over the country to Hamas and the Black Panthers? Leaving aside the casual dismissal of Obama’s religion as a “racist church” (because only whites are allowed to attend politically active ministries, apparently) and McCain and Palin both being linked to ministers who have said things equally as vile as Wright – what exactly are you trying to say? Is it not enough to vote against Obama because he’s liberal? Because that at least would be intellectually honest. Calling him out on his links with Rezko and crony Chicago politics – again, a fair cop, and something Obama should do a better job of explaining himself on.

But trying to paint Obama literally as a terrorist by his attending a dinner here and a party there with people that we should *fear* as the *other* (despite neither Khalidi nor Ayers actually being, you know, criminals)? That is not fair political discourse, it is guilt by association, leveraged by fear of someone who is feared for being a different race and ethnicity from the speaker and the spoken. Which is not just McCarthyism, but also an appeal to racist fear.

And you’re damn right, I will *not* meekly accept that.

So far all the friends who can vote I have talked to (2 McCain 2 Obama), only 1 McCain voter agreed with me and voted Barr. The 3 guys who won’t change all cited that Barr will not win as the reason.

- Sarah Palin is an idiot. Plain and simple. Anybody who argues to the contrary simply makes a fool of themselves. She got elected in Alaska because 1. Alaska likes their women (even family sometimes *wink* *wink*). 2. She’s sexy (to Alaskans?).
- Joe the Plumber is a fake. He has been a regular on Ohio conservative radio shows for years now. If you haven’t read any of what has been revealed about him in the last couple weeks, you need to watch something other than Fox News.
- Obama “inaccessible”? Gee, you would think someone who wrote an auto-biography wouldn’t have much more to hide. Bill Ayers? The man was an anti-war protester, not a terrorist. A lot of people said a lot of things about the US Government back then. Saying you’ll do something and never following through does not make you a terrorist, it makes you a hot head. Terrorists, on the other hand, actually do some pretty awful things and rarely are they preceded with clear warnings.

Frankly, I am shocked that someone clearly as intelligent as you could be hoodwinked into towing the Republican line. There are only four reasons why anyone would still be in the Republican tank:

1. Older generation (60+).
2. Social conservatism (Hates gays).
3. Ignorance (What newspaper do YOU read?).
4. Rich and Greedy (You must be Rupert Murdoch!).

Choose any two. Which are you?