I just read this today in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/us/politics/25biden.html

I am sick of this BS. I expect this kind crap from the Republicans. At least if they do it I am not surprised.

But the Democrats should just go away. I am sick of them, they are worse than the Republicans because they say they are for working people and the middle class.

That’s a lie, and Biden is a hypocrite.
Obama might lose in November, and you know what it will show the Democrats what they are, a bunch of phonies.

If Obama loses it will be the end of the Democrats as a party. They will be through and as far as I am concerned this country seems to be run by a one part system.

Ralph Nader is starting to make a lot of sense.

I disagree, screw the cable companies they charge a premium for sub par service and it’s time they towed the line. The FCC can change the rules if they wanted to, we should demand it.

Take campaign finance out of politics and we get our government back to some extent. Of course I am being naive on some level.

All these people(congress, and so forth) work for us, they should do this job because they want to serve the public, not for their own perks and private golf course trips to St.Andrews in Scotland.

The freedom of speech and free exercise of religion.
If you forget just google it how lazy is that.

Now that you mention the 1st Amendment I think lobbyist have turned this on its head and now for some reason giving money and lots of it has been turned into speech.

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways, that the American populous is just so uneducated that they deserve frat boys for presidents.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002113807

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11611015/

Not exactly. I’m suggesting that voters won’t take candidates seriously unless they spend million of dollars on advertising.

I am advocating that the adds should be free.

There is no such thing as “free”. Someone has to pay for the TV and radio stations and the pages of newspaper print. Broadcast TV and radio stations are being out-competed by cable (which is not subject to the sane FCC reg’s because it doesn’t take up RF spectrum) and we all know what the state of the newspaper industry is.

So, no, I don’t think it’s fair to ask these struggling businesses to be responsible for the lazy, self-indulgent US voters who can’t be bothered to look up some candidate’s voting record.

I think the system is karmic. Every democracy gets the government it deserves. Americans will become poorer, less-secure, watch more of their jobs disappear overseas, and have fewer freedoms and rights in the coming years, and see more of their kids come home in boxes from places they can’t find on a map, all because they are too lazy to change their ways in their personal lives and in their political lives. It may not be instant karma, but it’s karma.

A poll taken in 2006 asked 1000 Americans to name the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment and the five main Simpson’s characters. About 1/4 of the respondents could name the Simpson’s characters – exactly ONE in the 1000 could name the five freedoms in the 1st Amendment!

Americans live in a better country than they deserve to!

I think there is a percentage that do, then there are the different factions such as the Evangelical Right who vote more on moral issues.

My own opinion on this is that it’s more complicated than Mr. Neslon is stating. I agree that we need to be better citizens that’s a given.

I am advocating that the adds should be free. All politicians should have equal air time. The FCC needs to enforce the use of the air rights, our radio and tv rights. All politicians should be mandated equal funding for the electoral process. I know this might seem like a pie in the sky idea but it’s one place to start in reforming a system that is not working and is broken.

The political awareness of the average American is so poor right now. I am ashamed of how stupid we have become as a nation. We are quick to through insults on the Europeans, but they have more political awareness then we do and they are more apt to protest and demand more form their governments.

But as I explained, this is the result of voters demanding that candidates produce glitzy ads that appeal to them. Basically, the voters are saying, “If you don’t spend millions of dollars pandering to me with catchy slogans and melodramatic scenarios (…”It’s 3AM…”) I won’t vote for you!”

So it really does come down to the voters. If we want a better country we need better citizens.

Our elected officials are constantly searching for money to stay in power.

Witness the 2006 election of congress. They were elected on a mandate to end the war in Iraq and they did nothing. Nothing. The job of these people is to work for us, not Exxon/Mobil or any of the huge corporations.

I do agree that it does seem to me that a lot of Americans are pretty uneducated when it comes to politics (come to think of it most things) and seem to cast their votes based on some kind of moral and religious belief.

Almost 50% of the population believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 even after it was proven it was not him. A huge percentage still think this. There are people who think Obama is a Muslim.

It is also amazing that almost 50% of the population don’t believe in evolution, that the earth is only 5000 years old.

So it comes as no surprise to me that some of the people are complete idiots. I mean the whole state of Kansas waisted huge amounts of money debating this nonsense.

However, how our government is run is not decided by Mr. and Mrs. Average American in over sized stretch paints from Walmart. It’s seems to me that it’s decided by men in $2000 suites and $500 shoes with $200 haircuts.

But if that’s what it takes to get elected, then I do want Obama to appeal to that emotion in people. If people perceive him as a fume-blanc-drinking, squash-playing, Ivy-Leaguer it could be a political liability.

“I want them to get off their asses and start fixing the country. Start leading and stop pandering to lobbyist and big business.”

US problems are mostly from the ground, up. The president does not have the power to “fix” much of anything. If Americans want to live in a better country they have to study and work harder, turn off the TV, learn some science, geography and history so they can better understand and evaluate policy options, save more, get out of debt, and get healthier (exercise more, lose weight, stop smoking, less junk food and more fresh produce). We will never afford national health insurance if we stay as unhealthy as we are now.

And even the problems at the top (congressmen schmoozing with lobbyists, etc) are the fault of the voters. Partly because they tolerate it but also because it’s the voters who DEMAND politicians spend as much as they do on advertising, which is expensive! If voters didn’t respond to expensive ads politicians wouldn’t need so much money. Can you believe I have not seen or heard a single political ad on TV or radio in 2008? I don’t watch TV or listen to commercial radio. When I choose a candidate it’s based on his/her positions and voting record, plus discussions like this. That costs NOTHING! If other voters were like me (immune to ads) we could eliminate the role of money. So again, it comes down to the voters.

When people talk about “elitism” they are not referring to BEING elite; they are referring to ACTING elite. You’re right that many, if not most, of our leaders came from priveleged backgrounds, so clearly that’s not a liability. But behaving as though the common people are inferior, foolish, or given to primitive emotions, is political suicide in a nation like ours with a strong populist streak in our politics.

Obama has already run afoul of this in his “guns and God” comments, and the implication that people might not get the joke of the New Yorker cover only adds to his image problem.

Keep in mind that my own views are quite elitist – I think that most of our problems, from the Iraq War to the mortgage crisis to our loss of jobs overseas to the cliff we’re about to fall off of when the Baby Boomers reach retirement age with inadequate preparation, are due to Americans’ anti-intellectualism, general laziness, and preference to stay glued to a TV instead cracking a book or a newspaper and actually learning something about the world. Most Americans know history, science and geography about as well as they know Norwegian. But I can say these things because I am not running for office and no one reads these postings anyway (sorry WBUR!)

Anyone running for any higher office is going to come the elite of our country. In McCains case he was the son of an admiral and joined navy and became a fighter pilot. Pretty elite credentials.

Obama worked his way up from very humble beginnings and was smart enough to get into Harvard. He was on the Harvard law review, which is the elite of Harvard law school.

Now I ask you was not Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton all in some ways ‘the elite’?

All this talk of ‘the elite’ and elitism is a waste of time and it obscures the real issues we face as nation.

Just as talk of Obama’s ego is a waste of air space. He’s running for president not dog catcher. I seem to recall the guy now in office was touted as someone who you could have a beer with. I don’t want to drink beers with elected officials, I don’t want them to be my friends.

I want them to get off their asses and start fixing the country. Start leading and stop pandering to lobbyist and big business.

. . . and this would be different from what they’ve been doing for the last 7 1/2 years . . . how?

Spears and Hilton are two of the best examples I can think of to illustrate the media’s fascination with empty, glamorous fluff. Since that’s obviously how the McCain camp is trying to portray Obama, Spears and Hilton would seem to be the logical choice.

If you were running an an ad campaign where your assignment was to show someone as the product of the media’s fascination with empty, glamorous fluff, who would you have chosen? If they had chosen a black celebrity then THAT would be called racist.

This is the same debate I was having with someone (Jeff?) here last week – some of Obama’s supporters are so hypersensitive that they won’t tolerate any poking fun at him. You have absolutely no evidence that McCain intended any racist message with that ad.

As an Obama supporter myself I think that this oversensitivity and humorlessness undermines Obama’s chances of winning the election because it will make him seem thin-skinned. A good example of this is that New Yorker cover a few weeks ago. That was actually a great caricature and if Obama and his supporters handled it better it would have been a great opportunity to talk about extremism and tolerance of free expression. Instead, it made him seem like an elitist, implying that most people are not smart enough to recognize a joke, and it echoed the hypersensitivity of Muslim extremists to cartoons about their religion.

If we want to win this election we need to lighten up and if someone makes a joke at our expense we need to respond with a joke of our own and not a whine.

I wish someone had asked Matt how the United States could deploy its Navy near the fight in Georgia when the United States has been denied access to the Black Sea by Turkey.

Are Republicans really letting guys like Matt Continetti, who doesn’t even know basic geography, guide them in foreign policy?

This is from a devoted American listener in Switzerland.

It is understandable that today’s first hour was political, but I missed (admittedly, I tuned in late) mention of Russia’s work right now to put in a new pipeline through Georgia to help supply Europe’s needs. Wouldn’t this be a factor that would affect the market favorably for Americans?

If Europeans switch to gas instead of oil for heating, there would be more oil for American heating. Europeans are also using warm pumps to heat water for heating homes by running pipes through hot underground. Three of my immediate neighbors (near the Lake of Zurich) have recently installed the paraphernalia for this system, which the French have been using for a many years.

The Russians would need to be around in Georgia to install and protect the new line?

I think the weapons industry in the U.S. is desperate to have a war scare.

Sincerely,
Portia Herold