Shouting at each other won’t help get those answers and how that influence changes public policy that directly affects us, that is survival.

The difference isn’t subtle. It is stylistic but style can hide a multitude of bad decisions just as a pretty face, Superfly or Supergirl, can fog our will to ask.

(Len) “With this I agree. This is fundamental.”

With all due respect to both of you, it IS important that we make judgments about the candidates. That’s the entire point of a public campaign.

If somebody has the nerve to stand up in front of us and tell a flat-out lie which is as bold as it is transparent, judgment is easy to pass: they’re either extremely arrogant, or they’re rank amateurs. Or perhaps they’re an especially dangerous combination of both.

In any case, we seed to be able to recognize – and by that, I mean judge for ourselves – what is going on. And then we need to vote accordingly.

It’s not a moral judgment, either. It’s simply a question of basic self-preservation.

With this I agree. This is fundamental.

However, a political candidate should answer questions of how her faith, her values will inform her governance, and most directly, the issues of concern.

Hillary and Barack have both done this.

Otherwise we are of the same mind. There are only 60 days left and the American voters can vote the identity politics or character politics or religious politics for the values by which they choose are theirs to choose. This is fundamental freedom: choice of choices.

But we really should be looking at The Deal. We’ve only 60 days.

And to know that, we must know where Sarah Palin stands on abortion and creationism, as well as energy, environment, foreign relations and the civil right to be educated, because these are decisions she may be called to govern.

These are not difficult questions to ask without personal attacks from the journalist so this question is as much about the questioner as the questioned.

Truthfully, though, from the purely professional political view: the less we see the more we want to see. Her rare value is access. When spinning news cycles, it pays to know where and when to put the hot air.

And it would not surprise me that Sarah Palin’s handlers have put her off limits for the usual news interviews. Yet, given that the media are largely owned by 5 or 6 wealthy individuals or corporations [think Sam Zell, Newhouse, and Rupert Murdoch, just as examples], one can be truly cynical and wonder whether any news interview will do any good for the ordinary person who has not sold his soul to ideology.

I would add one more thing: that the Republicans in general found an icon in the behavior of the late Henry Hyde: a staunch supporter of various moral/ethnic/family values, who nonetheless found a way to break up the marriage of two people by having an adulterous relationship with one of them.

Why is he an icon? Because when he was confronted with it by the media, he brushed it off
as merely “a youthful indiscretion” — despite the fact that he was 47 years old when it happened!

In another instance, when the issues surrounding
gay marriage were being vigorously debated, there
were people of both parties who would wring their hands over the presumed damage that gay marriage would do to the institution of marriage. To which Chris Rock, in his inimitable style, responded, “Harm the institution of marriage?! What about Britney Spears? [who had just been married in Las Vegas, and then had it nullified in a matter of hours]. And as the laughter of the audience subsided, Rock added, “And Michael Jackson!!”

I would argue that there is more than enough of
this hypocrisy around to sicken anyone for decades
[and we haven’t even gotten to the abuse of small
children by Catholic priests, and the indefatigable efforts by Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals to cover it up [except of course those Bishops who
themselves were found to be guilty of the same
apalling behavior, and were quickly removed to some ‘retreat’ or other ensconcement behind the gilded draperies of the institutional Church.

My original point, however, is that we can go on forever about this stuff, and still there is an energy
crisis to be solved, and a state sponsor of terrorism
about to complete its nuclear weapon, and an India/
China middle class that in a few years will exceed ours by six to one, while able to offer goods and services at half the cost. Check out an attempt to
analyze and solve some of these issues in the
recently published ‘Seven Deadly Threats to America,’ subtitled ‘Campaign 2008: Approaching the Point of No Return.’

We think the country is in bad shape now. Wait
until we see what it is like when the problems I
have touched on — energy, immigration, Iran’s
nuclear threat — are allowed to remain unresolved.

To paraphrase the scriptures, the hypocrites we shall have always with us. Nor should anyone feel he is without sin and able to cast the first stone.

That said, we have major crises brewing that will need to be solved in the next four years by whomever gets elected, and there are only so many names that will appear on the ballot 60 days from now. It’s long past time for the media, the candidates, and the people to focus on the real problems. If they are not solved, they will lead
to our decline as a nation just as surely as the sun sets in the western skies.

I don’t want you to think that the ’solution’ is simply ‘get rid of the GOP’.

My point is that the GOP has become entirely corrupt, and that this corruption is hindering their fundamental ability to govern.

Consider an alcoholic man. He may be loosing his job, alienating his family, and destroying his health. These are all serious, even life threatening problems. However, none of them can be addressed while the alcoholism still rages.

A party in power that has lost sight of its own way presents a nation with a similar problem. It’s not the only problem, or even the biggest problem. It’s simply the first problem. We need to get rid of these guys, and we need to do it a.s.a.p.

Vote the bums into the wilderness, where they can sober up, detox, and come to their senses.

And they better do it quick. There are some pretty iffy characters among the Democratic leadership as well. This country needs a viable, coherent opposition party, and it can’t wait a decade or two for the conservatives to get back on their feet.

In the meantime, I’m just thankful we have a candidate with enough clarity, decency and good sense to put together a document like this:

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf

My big hope is that he has the political skill and the personal fortitude to survive the challenges he’ll face, from outside his party and within.

We *have* seen the fruit, and by it, we have come to know the tree.

To wit, we have a ‘Christian’ president who has presided over an administrated that has ravaged the Geneva Conventions.

Instead of allowing themselves to be governed by the law, and deciding that their chosen course of action needs to be re-evaluated when it collides with the universally accecpted definition of ‘torture’, they choose to do legal backflips, attempting to redefine the word itself, making a mockery of the law that betrays a total lack of moral restraint, and an absolutly profound manifestation of hypocracy.

When Sarah Palin gave her speech, she didn’t stand up for the ideals of the law, her country, and her faith. Quite the opposite – she mocked the people who did. And she did it to deafeningly loud cheers.

She trashed herself, sir. And the crowd in that room discredited themselves along with her.

The larger point is that people who observe her with a well-founded sense of moral recoil don’t need to dirty their own hands engaging in the type of baseless smear campaigns that have given an appropriately bad name to extremes on the left and right alike. They simply need to hold her to account for what she has actually done and said.

Unfortunately, this will not be easy, given that her handlers have refused to grant any interviews with the press. The official line is that this is ‘unnecessary’, and the the public can ‘learn everything they need to know from her prepared (and ghostwritten) speeches’.

This is appealing in its own right, but it marks an entirely new low in cynical manipulation when it comes not 24 hours after the Presidential candidate who selected here addressed the nation with a promise of ‘the most transparent and accountable government ever’.

There were no Democratic machinations that got that line inserted in McCain’s speech. They’re doing this to themselves. And it’s evangelical voters, in particular, who seem the happiest to let them.

Which is my point too; let them. And when November comes, vote them into political oblivion.

McCain was right about one thing. It’s time the GOP got reacquainted with basics. Sarah Palin was right about one thing too – the Oval Office is no place to conduct a journey of personal discovery.

They also seem to adopt the stance that one must think as they do, which gives rise to the illusion that anyone can govern from either of these extremes. They cannot.

I agree that there has been far too much preaching,
on the part of both sides, as to how individuals
should live their lives. In the meantime, no one’s
‘living of life’ is going too well at the moment, as
energy shortages/rising costs have brought retail to
almost a complete halt — complete enough to cost
a lot of jobs and worsen the mortgage crisis.

There are solutions to the energy crisis that are
completely independent of whatever stance one
takes regarding sex education, teen pregnancy,
birth control or abortion. One of those is going
to a four day work week, which will likely be accepted by most people when gas is $5/gal or
$10/gal — the latter being the likely price should
Iran carry out its oft promised threat to close the
Strait of Hormuz and block 40% of the world’s
oil supply.

Instead of worrying about teen pregnancy, and
whether the monomaniacal Right or Left will be
howling (since they seem to find a way to do that
no matter what the issue of the day), why don’t we
come up with a solution to the Iranian threat. After
all, they report that they have just increased their
number of centrifuges that process nuclear fuel
from 3000 to 4200. That’s a lot of centrifuges –
and a pretty steep increase in the number thereof –
for a program they claim is solely “for peaceful purposes.”

If it was a 17 year old daughter of Biden, the right wing would be howling.

The problem with so many of Palin’s ilk is that they talk the talk and don’t walk the walk. The hypocrisy is sickening.

My point, for this post, is that everyone would do
well not to sit in any form of judgment over Sarah
Palin, nor over her choice of a house of worship.

If we really want the best people to run this nation 
in a time of great and imminent dangers, it would
be far better to make our judgments according to the criteria Christ gave us: “By the fruit you shall know the tree.”

That measurement speaks volumes about the past
stewardship of our current president and many in
the Republican party. It also ’speaks bookshelves’
about the current rants of the Left and Right, who seem to think they have accomplished their
mission on earth if they have thoroughly trashed
their opposites, and refused to allow that their opponents might have some solutions for the
problems the nation faces.

On the day I see someone — anyone — come up with effective solutions for the problems we face in healthcare, immigration, education, global competitiveness, energy independence, and Iran’s nuclear threat, I will care less what church they go to, for they will surely have been touched by the Spirit of God.

It certainly won’t be the result of various kinds of
machinations, such as ‘giving people enough rope’
to destroy themselves.