143 Days

And you think Palin with her 2 years as Governor is any better. Our country is a mess. After the last 8 years we are the most hated country in the world. Trying leaving your town of mt home and go OUTSIDE of american and you will see how much other countries hate us. It is almost scarey to go to another country for fear you will be attacked for being American. I love american and I love our military and I am very proud of the job that they and the past veterns have done to give us our freedom, but I dont think just because you are a war veterns you should automatic be president according to Palin.. Wake up Mike..America is getting worse year by year, we are so far in debt. We need to STOP helping other countries and help our own americas. We have so many kids right here in our own town that dont have insurance, parents cannot find jobs, no food on their table.

So I will take a 4 year senator over a two year Palin.. I dont not belong to either party, I always vote for who the best at the time of election. But Im sure idaho will go Republic again as we are a military town and they alway go with what the president says.. Even our own president did not even attend the republic convention what does that tell us american people.

Bazookaman,

Very well put!

Abraham Lincoln had one term in the U.S. House and some time in the state Senate before winning the presidency. Chester Arthur had been head of the New York Port Authority before joining a national ticket. Warren G. Harding, Samuel Tilden, Herbert Hoover all had less experience than Obama or Palin before being nominated on a national ticket. The "experience" is far less important than what the candidate has done with it.

And what Palin did with it is leave a town $22 million in debt and with a policy where rape victims had to pay for their own medical evidence investigations, and where she fired employees based not on job performance but on whether they supported her politically.

Obama is running to be "the" commander-in-chief? I thought we had 51 of those now - since every governor is "commander-in-chief" of the state guard, according to the Sarah Palin Fan Club.

Dear lovemthome,

I haven't made up my mind yet, but you have given me some things to think about.

WEll, as for being fooled . . .let's think about it.

For the past 8 years, this country has gone down the tubes. The unemployment rate is now over 6% and gas is up to $4 a gallon.

We are mocked by our allies and made fun of by Russia and China. The U.S. was prevented from giving any assistance to Georgia because all of our resources are tied up in Iraq.

Our government leaders sleep with Saudia Arabia and the big oil companies . . . and you have the gall to ask who is being fooled?

So, . . . in these past 8 years, how has life treated you? Are you really better off now than when we were governed by a democratic president?

I am so happy that americans actually have someone who has the courage to stand up for their beliefs and convictions and ADVOCATING CHANGE instead of going along with the same good ole boys. That person is Barack Obama.

At least he knows what it's like to be middle-class, because that's the way he grew up. At least he knows how important adequate health care is for the average american.

I am so looking forward to restoring respect and justice to the government. Frankly, it just can't be done under McCain/Palin.

I mean, have you seen those commercials McCain is putting out? He's has the nerve to say he is bucking the system and his party, when he has voted with Bush 95% of the time?

I'm voting for family man, who hasn't had affairs, I'm voting for a father who isn't a war hawk and will REALLY THINK about the consequences of invading another country and putting our sons and daughters in harm's way.

By the way . . . what do you think about Palin now? I mean after you heard that she's deep in troopergate, has billed the Alaskan government thousands of dollars to stay overnight in her own home, lied about the bridge to nowhere, lied about her son's deployment date, and doesn't even know the Bush doctrine and is willing to take Israel's side against all other nations without asking questions? Oh yeah - she says she's against earmarks but she advocated for millions of federal dollars to study the mating activities of crabs. More of the same. I guess the american people are supposed to just take everything she says as gospel and follow like lemmings. Well folks, if we keep on the path we are currently on, we will jump over the cliff just like lemmings do.

Oh yeah . . . just more of the same.

You want to know where Obama stands? He wants to expand funding for charter schools and pay teachers based on performance. The Associated Press reported that four days ago. In the past two weeks, ABC has asked him about his position on abortion and comments he previously made on CNN about it, The Las Vegas Sun has reported on his position on subsidizing health care for people who can't afford it, The Los Angeles Times has reported on remarks he gave defending habeas corpus and due process, a writer for BusinessWeek is imploring both candidates to talk more about technological innovation's role in the economy, and Bill O'Reilly questioned Obama on the surge and taxes on Fox News - which was then reported on by the Boston Herald.

So you must not be looking too hard for Obama explaining his positions, because the mainstream media has been covering it. They're doing a better job than you, who as recently as August was claiming Obama is a Muslim who was sworn in on a Koran as if A) It's true, which it isn't; and B) It matters, which it doesn't.

Palin billing to stay in her own home is no different than good old Butch being paid to live in his own home here in Idaho. Many elected officials get a HUGE allowance for that (sometimes more than their actual payments...if they have any) and take it all. So, what is the big deal if Palin does it? They said she was within her rights when she did it---it was not illegal. Do you not think that the president gets the same thing to maintain his homes while he is in the White House. Please!

Affairs come out after they are in office not before. Just wait. Ask the people of Illinois how great he has been for them. He is a typical politician nothing more nothing less.

Obama had a 68 percent approval rating in Illinois according to a Post-Dispatch/KMOV poll as of January. In a Rasmussen poll in July 60 percent of Illinois voters viewed both him and McCain favorably.

Actually, I left Idaho back in 1999. I'm casting my vote for Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, which could send its 21 electoral votes either way.

I trust Obama because I agree with him on Iraq, Pakistan, diplomacy, trade, taxes, and most of the Constitution - his doesn't just stop at the second amendment and mine doesn't either. Though I'll concede he does not respect the second as much as he should, the real threats to our liberties are the erosion of due process, separation of church and state, the right to privacy, and the balance of powers. I wish he had executive experience or that the Democrats could've found someone who did that could've beaten Hillary Clinton, who in the past has shown the same tendency as her husband to buy into failed Republican ideas. But I can live with a resume that includes four years in the U.S. Senate, eight in the state senate, several years teaching constitutional law, and work on getting asbestos removed from public housing and job placement offices open in his neighborhood - "community organizing" work he did back when Palin was a TV sports reporter.

And someone here had recommended, I believe sarcastically, looking at what his constituents in Illinois thought of him. That's why I bothered to look it up. The point about Ted Kennedy is well-taken. John Kerry isn't my favorite politician but I have more respect for him than I have for most Republicans.

No, it's not reasonable to assume the Alaskan governors' office is kept in the national security loop since it only increases the chances of information being leaked. And the Soviet Union disolved, what, 15 years before Palin took office - the real risk now is the proliferation of nukes out of the former Soviet Union to third parties including terrorist groups, an issue Obama has worked on in the U.S. Senate.

Like I said,

the economy was much better under the last democratic president.

I didn't pay $4 a gallon for gas.

The U.S. government wasn't bailing out private businesses with taxpayer dollars.

We didn't go to war under false pretenses and kill over $100,000 innocent people.

We had respect from our allies.

Alan Greenspan just said yesterday that this is the worst U.S. economy he has ever seen.

I'm 51 years old and have to agree with him.

Our national debt has never been so high. Our government is borrowing more money from social security than ever before with no intention on ever paying it back.

We need a change and that change should not be 4 more years of republican government.

Fact it folks, democratics are going to have to clean up the mess - their the only ones that can do it.

How do I post a blog topic?

Yes, please, go outside of America and see what it's like. Yeah, it's not perfect, but we have it real good here. Both my parents immigrated to this country and too, have traveled quite a bit and still have most of my relatives living outside this country. There is opportunity here and you need to take that opportunity to find/move to a job (my parents had to move to another country, learn the language and then obtain various degrees of higher education) and put food on the table. It's not the government's job to feed me, provide me w/a job or to take care of me. It's their job to provide a safe & secure country that they run in a fair manner so I can do for myself.

It's funny, though, the criticisms of Obama for not having any substance, and the one part of the statement Gov. Palin made to Charles Gibson you forget is the part that concerns the substance of Obama's record.

I looked up the transcript. Gibson asks her about the McCain campaign's misstatements about Obama's tax proposals, and rather than address Obama's proposal to introduce new tax credits and exemptions cutting taxes for between 80 percent to 95 percent of Americans, she changes the subject to Obama voting against "94" different tax proposals which she does not elaborate on.

As far as her "doing her homework," if you count reading a June 9 McCain campaign press release, or one from the Republican National Committee on the same day, or media accounts in which campaign staffers were interviewed and repeated the numbers for a few days after, as "doing her homework," I guess. Or maybe she read factcheck.org's July 3 posting where they argue McCain's counting 17 votes cast for the same seven measures to pad the total and note many of the measures would've cut taxes for the majority of Americans - where they also credit the campaign would keep on saying it. 94 is the new magic number.

I think Gibson's a nitwit too, though, for a question he asked Sen. Obama in a debate on capital gains taxes which assumed as a given a relationship between revenues and rates which I feel the data disproves. Just a little more of that substance you say Obama is never challenged on.

President Bush didn't need to be "all by his little lonesome," the House was controlled by Republicans for six of the past seven and a half years, and the Senate for four. Plenty of windows of opportunity for Republicans to set Republican policies. It is largely a "Republican thing."

And at no point have the Democrats had large enough majorities to override any vetoes, so they can't roll back Republican policies even if they wanted to - and on any given issue including the Second Amendment, many of them don't. On that one its the Democrats from rural areas who respect the Second Amendment, Pennsylvanians like Bob Casey, Chris Carney, and Paul Kanjorski, and Mike McIntyre in North Carolina, who outnumber the pro-gun control Republicans like Peter King of New York - specifically Long Island I believe - who will keep gun control measures either at bay or heavily watered down by eliminating whatever majority the Democrats have after this fall on the issue.

I guess if you ignore the past two elections you could measure the policy preferences of the electorate by proximity to D.C. Otherwise, you notice that generally the rural areas - in Idaho, in Pennsylvania, in Washington state, in Ohio - vote for the party or the candidates which cater to their interests and the urban areas vote for the party or candidates which cater to their's. For instance, Cleveland, represented by Dennis Kucinich, is more "submissive" - whatever that means - than solidly Republican, NRA towns in Pennsylvania like Mifflinburg and Reynoldsville -despite Cleveland being farther from D.C.

Part of the structure of our system is the intentional overrepresentation of rural areas in Congress - the Senate was created for that exact purpose - and it gives conservatives an advantage on both issues I agree with them on, like the Second Amendment, and on issues I don't. Something more useful than what are on the state flags for me to keep in mind when voting.

And no, I don't think the former Soviet Union is dismantling its weaponry, which you should already know since I wrote in the same paragraph in which I mentioned the demise of the U.S.S.R. that the threat is in the weapons being given to terrorists. But I'll repeat it anyways since the CIA director now has said Al-Qaida is the No. 1 nuclear threat to the U.S. And again, Barack Obama worked with Republican Sen. Dick Lugar to secure and dismantle such stray weaponry before it gets into terrorist hands - the Lugar-Obama Act of 2007.

"Trying leaving your town of mt home and go OUTSIDE of american and you will see how much other countries hate us."

You don't have to leave the country to experience that. You can just go to Obama's church.

"The unemployment rate is now over 6% and gas is up to $4 a gallon."

The recent decline in gas prices must be due to the fact that Obama is going to win the election. By the way, gas prices have been on the rize for a lot longer than 8 years. Dang Republicans.

"The U.S. government wasn't bailing out private businesses with taxpayer dollars."

Isn't that exactly what Obama is proposing for American automakers? Or are you just implying that it is just more smelly B.O. (Barack Obama) to get votes?

"We didn't go to war under false pretenses and kill over $100,000 innocent people."

How many innocent people died there in the same amount of time under Saddam's rule? Saddam had to go and had every chance to avoid what happened.

The Democrats have always been about avoiding accountability (for their party, for criminals, etc...), but they are sure doing a lot of finger pointing and placing blame on everyone else.

I have to agree with Bazooka that the two party system sucks and is eroding our country.

Wow - almost couldn't believe my eyes when I read Idahoborn's rational for justifying over 100,000 innocent lives lost in Iraq due to the American invasion.

Just because Saddam killed his own people, does that make it better if Americans kill them?

Aren't we just as terroristic as Sadam?

We were dragged into two wars right after the twin towers dropped! We were dragged into this after the Billary administration deemed Bin Laden "not a threat to the US". Saddam DID have to go and not because it was a personal vendetta for the Bush family. He was up to something and we didn't need to find out "what" the hard way.

You are missing the point/justification, kimjean, on who is killing/killed who. And your last comment is insulting to every person that wears the military uniform. Past and present. Say that to a GI that is getting ready to deploy for 6-12 months, seperated from their families, for the 3rd, 4th or 5th time since 9/11.

In EVERY war there has been collateral damage. And sadly, it is impossible to avoid.

Ok. So, Obama and Biden have been sent from "heaven" to save us all while McCain and Palin are sent from the depths of he@#. Did I get that about right?

First of all, this crappy economy was the result of the Clinton admin. and others prior. This mess has been in the making for way more than 8 years. Our economy has been artificially inflated since Clinton, which is why we are in the mess that we are in today. Old Bill should have worked harder at his job and left the "cigars" alone. What goes up must always come down and boy has it. Banks have been loaning out HUGE sums of money to people that NEVER had an ability to pay it back. Mr. Alan G. started that off with "low" interest rates.

We have been living high on the hog (so to speak) for a very long time. The U.S. has borrowed huge sums of money from China, Japan and who knows who else---and for what? To export all of the industry to Mexico, China, etc. to save money in labor. Now we complain that nothing is made in the USA. We did this all on our own.

Obama is great at public speaking and charms the audience. Women think he is handsome. There is more to a president than a nice a@@ in a suit! Wise up folks! America deserves better than a smooth talker and a lifetime politician. It is time for fresh blood that does not break/bend for the good old boys of DC. Been there...done that!

The night Sen. Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, Sen. John McCain went on TV and said the U.S. would never get the manufacturing jobs back. We can get those jobs back. Obama, unlike McCain, George W. Bush, and both Clintons, has staked out protectionist policies on trade - renegotiate the trade deals that force Americans to compete for jobs with Mexicans and Chinese 13-year-olds who work 15-hour days.

I personally would rather exit the deals altogether and immediately implement high tariffs on products made in conditions which would be illegal in the U.S. Neither solution is the quick and easy solution Americans want, and I worry I can't trust Obama to deliver even renegotiation or that negotiations would ultimately protect the value of American labor. If he wins and then sells out on it, I'll have to look for someone else to back in 2012 - which would be unfortunate since out of, what, 10, 11 candidates on the Republican side this year only one was clearly protectionist, and he got 1 percent of the vote. But as of the past thirty years and again with this ticket, the Republican answer (the one Clinton bought into as well)is to pretend the problem IS the solution - more "free" trade that ships more jobs overseas.

Even for people who don't work in manufacturing, the tightening of the labor supply would force employers to be more competitive and pay better wages and salaries - which have stagnanted under Republicans and that weak sellout "Centrist" Democrat Bill Clinton. The revenues from tariffs, along with revenues from higher capital gains and dividends taxes and the return of the estate tax could put the U.S. in a position to seriously cut the earned income tax. Along with the right spending cuts I bet we could get the earned income tax rates down by two-thirds.

I want candidates who recognize working people deserve tax breaks before Paris Hilton and people collecting stock dividends do. And I recognize a lot of investors are productive members of society and also hold down real jobs, jobs that require work and not what amounts to loan-sharking - great, since they get the tax breaks on earned income too. The Republicans assigned a higher priority to eliminating the estate tax than they did lowering earned income taxes. Obama proposes earned income tax credits for the middle-class and will increase capital gains taxes - that's the sort of balance I like, give preference to those that work over those that don't.

Is Obama perfect? No. He is at best merely adequate in terms of having experience and a record. He is not a perfect match with the direction I want to see the country go but he's considerably closer than John McCain and a whole lot closer than Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Mike "30 percent sales tax" Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani.

As far as inviting the enemy for tea and crumpets, under Democrats and Republicans we meet with a lot of enemies of the American way of life - China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan under Musharrif. Why shouldn't we meet with the rest of them? This idea that having the President meet with other heads of state is such an honor we shouldn't bestow it to Iran only honors despots like the Saudi royals and Chinese Communist leadership - until the day we can go completely isolationist, which is decades and a lot of events that probably won't happen away, I'd rather Obama meet with Iran than pretend China and Saudi Arabia clear some sort of moral bar for that privilege.

I would love to see McCain and Palin in office. Everyone is worried about Palin's experience, but, everyone is also forgetting that it is not just Palin running. Yes she is in the running for VP however the worries should be between the experience of McCain and Obama. Everyone is talking experience. How about the fact that Obama has not even held a Senate position for over a year yet and how is he supposed to be able to lead the military if he has never served in the military. Obama also has a problem with making decisions. He will start on side of something and because he can't seem to make everyone happy he will go to the other side of things. As a Senator, Obama has really not done a darn thing. He hasn't voted on anything important because he knows that his vote is public and does not want to make anyone upset. Look at his voting record.

McCain in a war vet, a POW, and has been a senator for quite awhile now. He knows what the military wants. He also can make the decisions that need to be made unlike his opponent.

Now for Palin and her being inexperienced. Palin may be a governer. What do you think she does all day. She helps run the state of Alaska. Yes she has only served a short time in that position but look what she also gotten occomplished within that short time.

I don't know about anyone else but all I want is what is best for our country and our military. Barrack Obama is not the person to have in office. He has a plan to cut troops in our military. His health care plan is down right rediculous as well. Yes I do agree that it is time for change however we need a good change not something of someone to tear this country apart anymore than what it already is. McCain and Palin are the way to go. They both care for the military and what happens to their country.

scm:

I can say that because I AM THE DAUGHTER OF A VIETNAM WAR VET, THE DAUGHTER OF CAREER MILITARY MAN, AND MY SON-IN-LAW IS CURRENTLY SERVING IN IRAQ ON A 15-MONTH TOUR.

For your to insinuate that I don't support our troops is your presumption of knowing nothing about me.

I support the troops - but I don't support our current President and his actions that got our country into this mess.

When our twin towers were bombed, the U.S. had the opportunity to go and find the murderers and terrorists who did this to us and we had the backing of the whole world. We went into Afganistan to find Bin Laden and his thugs and put a stranglehold on Pakistan to help us.

Instead of finding Bin Laden and bringing him to justice, we left Afganistan with a minimal military presence and went into Iraq, a country that posed no threat to us (except for the "made-up" threat that Bush promoted.

So, what do we have now?

Bin Laden is still free, Afganistan is becoming a terroristic state again and Pakistan is really just ignoring us and threatening to attack us if we cross their borders?

Where is the big stick? Oh, I forgot, it's in Iraq where all of our military forces are focused on a false mission.

By the way, my father (vietnam vet) and son-in-law (currently serving 15-month tour of duty in Iraq) agree with this premise as well.

K Brown, Barack Obama has been a U.S. Senator for three and a half years, I'm not sure why you're lying about information so readily available.

She probably stated the ACTUAL days the bone head has been IN office and worked! He sure has a lot of things he does not vote on...probably because he was not there to vote. He is a used car salesman in an expensive suit with his nose and ear hairs trimmed and his nails done. So he has great communication skills and can hold part of the nations attention. So could good old Bill and look how that turned out for the USA. Promises made to GET elected are always way different than what happens after the election. Buyer beware!

"Instead of finding Bin Laden and bringing him to justice, we left Afganistan with a minimal military presence and went into Iraq, a country that posed no threat to us (except for the "made-up" threat that Bush promoted."

Our entire country and most of the rest of the world thought that Saddam was a threat. Saddam was definitely a mad man and had every chance to avoid that situation. Once again the liberals don't want to hold anyone accountable until they are running against them. There were sanctions against Saddam and he violated those sanctions. Force was necessary. Hind sight is great, but I would rather have someone that is looking to the future than the past. I don't want to see Obama running this country.