@mir: i think part of the problem is that the dems have allowed that to happen. obama seems better than anyone i’ve seen in US politics at staring down stupid and irrelevant debate issues/media coverage. while kerry, gore, hillary etc always seemed to squirm and and look bad under the glaring lights of attack, obama seems (to me) to come out of each encounter looking stronger. he looks like he takes it on the chin, acknowledges the attack, answers it if it needs answering, but always finishes off by giving the impression that the attacker has wasted everyone’s time with silliness. i’m biased to the dems of course, but i never got that impression from any other democrat.

we’ll see if he can keep it up, and how the american population will react.

Unfortunately, even if your pragmatic suggestion is bang on the money, Americans by and large have been hoodwinked into thinking that morals should be at the root of their governance choices

So I think the real risk of this election is that Republicans will continue to vote for the GOP despite it’s pathetic recent record because it will be impossible for voters to go over to the “other side”. There is just too much of a moral and ideological identification at stake regardless how misplaced that is.

I think in Canada we are lucky in that our political fervor (sucha s it is) is much more measured and a lot of the time based on outcomes not deeply held beliefs. At bad times we get frothy about geography and nationalisms, not religious beliefs – thank God.

Only now with Harper and his stooges apparently trying to model our system on the one to the south are we having to deal with ideologically manipulative policy decisions designed to split the country along moral lines.

That’s right Harper keep this up and in 8 years we’ll look like the states. How embarrassing.

All I have to add is this: can you Blog like this way more often?

thank you!