Thanks for your broad over-generalization and your insults. That's another reason why I don't vote for elitist candidates because they and those who support them tend to be rude, condescending and arrogant. I know it does not compute in your mindset, but it is that level of overt condescension that cost Kerry the 04 election and may also end up costing BHO to lose as well.
But I do agree that this election is turning into another American Idol. BHO is an empty shell that has a record of voting strictly the Democrat party line--never deviating and therefore showing no proven record for change. He has never reached across party lines to achieve anything. His one accomplishment of bi-partisanship legislation was an amendment to an existing bill created by a Republican and another Democrat senator that was supported universally by both Republicans and Democrats--therefore it was not something seemingly remarkable like Obama makes it out to be.
Obama likes to make grandiose claims of hope and change, but he does not have a history of bucking his own party, like McCain has with regards to reform. Obama only stopped requesting earmarks this year when he started campaigning. Beforehand, he asked for around $1 billion in earmarks. Compare that to John McCain whose been in the Senate for 28 years and has not once asked for a single earmark. Obama has only been in the senate for less than 3 years and spent the last 18 months campaigning. He likes to tout his "presidential" experience as a community organizer and that he knows how to run a good campaign as proof we should trust this guy with the presidency. By that same logic, Hitler was also a community organizer and Karl Rove got an idiot like Bush elected twice, does that make those two guys fit to be president? At least FDR spent time as a governor.
People criticize McCain for making a cynical choice of choosing Palin, because Obama picked some Democrat senator whose been in the senate longer than McCain has and therefore must be just as experienced as McCain whereas McCain picked a governor with about the same experience as Obama, but somehow the other side doesn't see her experience as relevent, totally ignoring the fact that Obama has not done squat. If Obama ran a business, even a small business I would give him a lot more credit. At least I know he can manage something. Running a campaign just means that David Axelrod is a good campaign manager, it does not mean Obama is.
Biden may be a nice guy, but he's says some idiotic things that reflect poorly on Obama's decision making skills. Disregarding his gaffe about Indians and slaves, I dislike the pick of Biden more than I dislike the pick of Palin, on the grounds that Biden represents more of the corruption in Washington that "Hope" and "Change" Obama was promising to rid us of. But because Obama was getting hammered on the experience angle, he did the pragmatic thing (already breaking his promise for change) and picked 'talking' Joe Biden--a guy who plagiarized a speech from a British politician, because Biden's own life story wasn't interesting enough [
Source].
People say McCain lies, but Biden stole someone else's life and tried to pass it off as his own in order to win an election. He did not even both to change the life story events to fit his own, he copied the British politicians background exactly--what does that say about character. To the contrary, McCain said he'd rather lose an election than let his country lose a war. That shows a level of selflessness, integrity and love of country I want the president to possess--which is something I find lacking in both Joe Biden and Barak Obama (I'm not saving they don't have it, but they aren't showing it, which is important). Biden has also shown signs of extremely poor judgment, luckily he's never administered anything. After 9/11 he suggested to aids that in order to improve the US image in the Arab world, we should send a $200 million dollar check to Iran, no strings attached. [
Source] I find that incredulous that the Democrats so called terrorism/foreign policy expert would suggest a stupid thing like that. Also not mentioned in that article, is the fact that Iranians are Persians, whereas the terrorist in Al-Qaeda are mostly Arab based. Added to the fact that Arabs and Persians hate each other, I don't think sending Iran money would suddenly endear us to the Arab world and do anything more than waste tax payers money.
In conclusion, if anyone is the idol, it's Obama. This cult of personality around the Democrat's "Dear Leader" is a big turn off for me. It's cynical for me to say this but if Obama was not black, I don't think he would have gotten as much traction as he has gotten (especially on a vague platform of hope and change), just as Palin would not have been chosen as VP if she was not a women. Bottom line, Obama makes great speeches, likes to parade around Europe like he's already the president, but on substance and merit I find nothing to substantiate why I should vote for this guy. I'm not even a religious guy and the Democrat party is expecting me to take a leap of faith and "Hope" that this guy is going to bring about change, when he has no record of that and seemingly no way nor past intention of achieving that. Hell, this guy did not even win the majority of the Democrat primary votes--that was Hillary and she got screwed by her own party and the media. And to top it off, Obama rejected her and picks a guy whose been rejected twice by his own party when running for president. If the Democrats picked someone more centrist instead of a left-wing extremist, I would vote Democrat. Heck, I even voted for Gore 2000 because I wanted more of the same of Clinton and was also disgusted by how McCain got screwed over by GW and the smear campaign against him.
As a final note, I agree that we lose as a nation when the electorate does not do its homework. I've done my homework and I still don't like Obama. Energy independence is a must, both candidates support it, but Obama has no solution for what to do in the interim. With higher fuel costs, leads to higher food costs, lost jobs in industries reliant on cheap fuel (eg. aviation, transportation, etc), higher heating/electricity and less cash overall. At least with McCain, domestic drilling will at least keep some of the $700 billion we send overseas to be spent at home and out of the hands of unfriendly regimes. Plus, unlike Palin, he is against drilling in ANWR, which is a sentiment I support. Another thing, I used to like Clinton, but I've come to the sentiment that his pussification might have caused 9/11. And I don't mean he could have gotten Bin Laden but didn't crap. As read
here, the cruise missile strike into Afghanistan caused the Taliban to get closer to Bin Laden and led to the two to actively work towards what we all know eventually happened. I'm not going to blame Clinton or Bush, but I will say that now in this post 9/11 world, I want a president who'll follow up on the job to destroy Al-Qaeda or diminish it enough that it could never rise again. While in theory, we all want our elected officials to be pillars of virtue, nice and principled as Jimmy Carter, as what had happened during his administration showed, the world does not play nice and we need a president who has the balls to play by those same rulesl. When I hear Obama whine about the mean McCain campaign, I think if this guy can't take it then imagine to his surprise when he meets Putin or opens his mouth slacked jawed, when the world fails to change its opinion of the United States. They are still going to see the US as a mean and selfish country and unless Obama plans to do a complete 180 degrees in foreign policy (eg. abandon Isreal, go soft on Iran) I doubt that is going to happen. Remember, people hated America well before GWB came to office. World opinion is still going to be the same whether a Republican or Democrat is in the white house.