I have no doubt that at some point in the future the Germans will wonder why the American people allowed Obama to come to power.  It is not about McCain versus Obama: It’s about Obama getting into power and altering the direction of this country.  I don’t particularly like McCain. As a matter of fact, besides Huckabee, McCain was the least desirable Republican running in the primaries.  I guess people are so fed up with Bush that they will vote for anyone who proposes change regardless of who that person is.  I haven’t heard one good argument for voting for Obama other than he is going to bring change.  The post World War I German economy was in shambles when Hitler rose to power promising change.  The Germans got a change but not the change they wanted.  I am sure Hitler was just as charismatic as Obama and anyone who questioned his sincerity was considered a kook.  The sad part is, if Obama doesn’t make it this time there will be another Obama in the future and someday this country will go the way of every other nation that has come before us.

You don't think the political left isn't alert to a guy who is like a Hitler? Hitler was a freak artist, a loner turned patriotic war veteran, I'll point out. He came lately to politics. Obama has spent his adult life in politics and was actually a community leader organizer. From there, nothing is similar about them.

I could think of plenty of reasons to vote for Obama. His tax policy is more rational. His health care plan, energy and education policies are better. What's more, compared to McCain, he's far more pragmatic and is willing to "reach across the aisle" more than he's given credit for. How do I know this? Exactly because he was willing to work with people like Ayers and that he votes present. He is neither stubborn nor belligerent. His choice of Biden was a master-stroke giving him somebody on his team who can work with Congress, so he won't turn into Jimmy Carter.

Now, about his temperament and bearing, he is head and shoulders above any President we have had since Kennedy. Very Presidential. The important part of a President is the ability to lead, whereas Republicans since Nixon have followed without really selecting somebody who was fit to lead. Obama does fit that even without the office of the presidency. Repubs have voted for guys with the notion that they would follow them, but without caring whether they were actually leaders. In fact, non leaders appeared to be more encouraging to Repubs. Probably because competence might actually make the government effected, but mostly because they fallaciously associate competent politicians with Hitler. Unfortunately, this isn't true. Most adept politicians are not like Hitler, and Hitler was not a very adept politician.

Now look at a picture of Obama and look at a picture of Hitler. Look at their faces, then listen to their speeches, you don't have to know the English translation to hear the tune. What is similar?

IMHO Obama is an extremely adept politician. Repubs prefer to have incompetents in office over that.  

BTW, Have you noticed he hasn't made too many gaffes after he went on vacation?

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 11:48:44 AM

I sincerely hope you are right.  However, I also wonder if you are one of the people who want change so much that you have lost your power of reasoning.  BTW you put forth well thought out arguments.

you're an idiot.

Hitler didn't exactly come off as a totally scary dude at first.... he built upon it... and slowly intimidated folks through the "brown shirts".... and all you have to do is listen to folks who surround Obama to get a feel for the company he keeps... and the ideas around him to be scared...
but hey, you go right ahead... and vote for the dude... he cannot be worse than mcCain.

When we stand up as a nation and DEMAND real leaders with real solutions for the citizenry - instead of folks who take money for holding certain positions, then things will start to get better....  as to your comment about Nixon... what was reagan... or for that matter - Ford.... who sacrificed his own political future for the good of the country... now there was a man who was truly underestimated....

When you make a list - charisma, socialism, racialism, add in Farrakhan, Acorn (voter fraud) and the Chicago thugocracy - your point is not that far-fetched. If you really want insomnia you could also add an unpopular war and a weak economy...

you might as well say it

YOU DO NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH A BLACK MAN IN THE PRESIDENCY

Colin Powell is another black man I would consider.  However, with Obama it is not about race it's about political philosophy. There is an old saying, "Show me your friends and I'll tell you what you are."

As for the de-evolution of Hitler, I think his countenance and bearing were pretty much complete by the time he ran for office. So, I think you could compare them.

So, you don't see Obama as a man with real solutions. No, I don't think he takes money to hold certain positions. This was as close of an election as this country can get to DEMANDING politicians with answers. I mean, it is the longest campaign, fought interactively on the Internet. People have argued and gone back and forth about it for almost two years now. They have individually donated money, which makes one hope that perhaps Obama will follow the demands of most his donors.

No, speaking my mind, I don't think Reagan and Ford were real leaders, though Ford did a lot of good. Most people only remember Ford from Chevy Chase's SNL act. That's the impression he left people with. Reagan, as people have said, looked and sounded like he was out of it most the time; whether true or not, he didn't inspire more than a fifth of the population. What's more, I could never escape thinking that he was playing the part of the President while everybody else around him was playing the part of his faithful followers. I predict admiration of him is going to drop throughout the 21st century.

No, I don't give Reagan any points for ending the Cold War and bringing down the Soviet Union. He didn't do that. He didn't have a strategy that planned for it, and that wasn't what he was doing when it fell. When he, or his speech-writer, actually, said "Tear down this wall . . ." he didn't expect that it would actually happen.    

There's a logical contradiction in what you wrote. If the people DEMAND real leaders-- how could they get a leaders? And if they DEMAND it won't they also offer him money to watch over their interests? That's off-topic, but I hope you know it sounds stupid.  

BTW, Bizz, I didn't say vote for him he's different than McCain, I pointed to policy proposals that I liked. Instead of reading it through several times, I think you read it once and dreamed twice.

So, from here, things will deteriorate into insults, hot air, ad hominum attacks. Not this time. I will not read anything you post for the next 7 days. I don't care what you say, this doesn't get escalated to idiocy that demeans us both.

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 2:57:42 PM

This 1984 electoral map looks totally uninspired. Yea. Right. 60% to 40% popular vote.

Maybe you meant to say that he inspired an EXTRA 20%, many of them being Democrats.

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 3:20:03 PM

The one thing I like about the Obama candidacy is that he is a black man. I am a conservative but I believe the country still has a nasty scar from slavery and racism and I hope that an Obama presidency would help to heal that.

Jackson has made a fortune exploiting his own race with the message that they are being screwed over by white America.  If he really cared about the welfare and well being of black Americans he would try to motivate his people like Bill Cosby has tried to do.


Andrew Young was a member of Martin Luther King’s entourage in the early days of the civil rights movement.  He went on to public office in Georgia and was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations by Jimmy Carter.  Young was the son of a successful dentist in Atlanta and was raised in an upper middle class environment.  Young has many other accomplishments to his credit.  In my opinion he is a very credible man.  


Andrew Young told Charlie Rose that in the early days of the civil rights movement he travelled through out the south with MLK.  They were supported largely by small contributions from poor share croppers whose savings consisted of crumpled up dollar bills in coffee cans under the bed.  They either slept in their cars or stayed in the cheapest motels they could find.  They only ate breakfast and small dinners because they wanted to get the most mileage out of the meager resources they had.  Everyone is the group pulled together to make it work except Jesse Jackson.  Jackson had no trouble blowing money as thought he was entitled to unlimited funds.  On one occasion he had a suite custom made by a tailor in Memphis.  When MLK saw Jackson in the suit he broke down and cried.  As much as he hated to do it, MLK asked Jesse Jackson to leave the movement.  Young said it was very difficult to MLK to discipline another person and eventually allowed Jesse Jackson to return the SCLC.  Young said Jackson was out for himself until MLK was assassinated and the SCLC changed leadership


Jesse Jackson was the opposite of what MLK, Andrew Young and the other dedicated civil rights leaders stood for.  Jesse Jackson was in it for the money then and he is in it for the money today at whatever cost to black America.  Young said so called black leaders like Jesse Jackson have seriously stalled the progress of blacks in America.

Voter turnout at that election was 51 percent. I thought it was more like 30 percent. So, indicated there we have the opinion 59 percent of 51 percent of the population. So, taking out my calculator, I find that 30 percent of the eligible voters voted for Reagan.

But then there's a few unknowns. The main one being who was voting against Mondale rather than voting for Reagan. And how many people who there were who afterwards had "buyers' remorse." Let's be generous and say that 75 percent of them were voting for Reagan not against Mondale, who had the onus of being Jimmy Carter's vice-president. So, that's .51 x .59 x .75 = 22.5 percent.

So despite my error, I still place Reagan's strong popularity at about a fifth. And I think that it's generous.

Now, there's a few things that fly in the face of Reagan as being a very popular President:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1832

". . . a look at Gallup polling data brings a different perspective. Through most of his presidency, Reagan did not rate much higher than other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years, Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent), George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55 percent). His popularity frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71 percent.)"

So, I rest my case saying that among people he is popular with, he is very popular. Among people outside of that demographic, he's not very popular. And as I said, I think his stock is declining along with the popularity of Repubs.





-- Modified on 10/11/2008 6:19:33 PM

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 6:28:24 PM

Doesn't have anything to do with a biased criminal justice system where black people make up 49% of the prison population but 13% of the US population?  It can't be attributed to the fact that black people who made over $100,000 per year in 2005 were more often the recipients of sub-prime mortgages than white borrowers with similar credit who make less than $35,000/yr?  Jesse Jackson is to blame for the disparities in health problems, where a myriad of studies show a definitive genetic trend between the diets of slaves and increased instances of death from diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension in black people?  The lack of more people like Bill Cosby is why communities all over the US are segregated, with predominately black neighborhoods suffering from discriminatory zoning, ordinances, and other racist policies?  

I can assure you that this list continues on and on into oblivion, but I'm having a hard time understanding how Jesse Jackson's travel expense reports have anything to do with racial inequality.  You're telling me that "most of the racism today" is because of people like Jesse Jackson and not the US's entrenched history of slavery and discrimination?  LOL...you'll need to do a little better than that.  I can honestly say that I have great disdain for the Reverend and how he conducts himself (and Bill Cosby too as a matter of fact), but to put the burden of racism on his back or any other less-than-perfect civil rights leader is absolutely ridiculous.  Please counter with something more concrete that disagreements between two people involved in the civil rights movement.  

Let me correct your subject line:  "Most of the racism today can be attributed to those who formulate ridiculous conclusions about its origin.

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 6:40:10 PM

-- Modified on 10/11/2008 8:15:08 PM

We're talking about his RE-ELECTION. Pretty good opportunity for remorseful buys to "step up".

He had more than his share of enemies, but there were an exceptional number of moderates and Dems that supported him. I do chuckle your spin efforts though.

I'm invoking Godwin's Law.

If there is anything bringing this country towards a resemblance of pre-WWII Germany, it's the Bush and neocon policies of the past decade.  Obama will clearly work hard to reverse such policies and the people who are fearful of this will tend to fall into one or more of the following - racist, emperialist, fascist, elitist, or undiagnosed special needs.

If you go to Obama's site, you will find very detailed information regarding what policies he wants to change and how he wants to change them.  The direction we're going in, read: this whole Roman Empire thing, is NOT working... not for most of us, anyway.

That is what you get when you believe someone else is going to solve all your problems and ill facing the world.

When people start to exhibit sheepish behavior and starts following someone based on their eloquence, oratory, and charm, people gets fooled in the end.

Remind you of anyone today?