This Is Important

Thank you, Anna! This presidential election has gotten ridiculous with all the tactics to avoid the real discussion. Let's get to the nitty gritty. How are the candidates going to get us (i.e. the USA) out of the mess we're in? It feels like we're one step away from careening into either the Great Depression or another nuclear war. We need change and we need it fast.

Palin religiously believes that these are the "end times." So she is okay with American or the world being distroyed, because Christians will go to heaven.

Obviously, Palin will not keep us safe from terrorism.

Think this over.

As always, Ms. Quindlan brings the issues to a clear point. Thank you.

I grew up and live in the midwest. As we all know the midwest and the south will vote republican for the most part this election. It always does. The state of our economy, foreign relations, security and freedom is of little concern. They will vote Republican no matter what. The same states will vote the same way as they always have over the last 20 years no matter what's happening or who's running. This country is hopelessly divided. Fourty nine percent of the country acknowledges the realities of today and desprately wants to move forward. Fifty one percent still thinks it's 1982.

A POEM TO HONOR SARAH AND JOHN of the "Palin-McCain Ticket"
(or GI Joe and Barbie action figures, as there currently being coined)
ONE AFTERNOON WHEN BARBIE
WANTED TO JOIN THE MILITARY
It was a crazy idea, she admits now,
but camouflage was one costume she still hadn't tried.
Barbie'd gone mod with Go-go boots during Vietnam.
Throughout Panama she was busy playing with a Frisbee
the size of a Coke bottle cap. And while troops
were fighting in the Gulf,
she wore a gown inspired by Ivana Trump.
When Mattel told her, hell no-- she couldn't go,
Barbie borrowed GI Joe's fatigues,
safety pinning his pants' big waist
to better fit her own.
She settled in his olive tank.
But Barbie thought it was boring.
"Why don't you try running over something small?"
coaxed GI Joe, who sat naked behind the leg
of a human's living room chair.
Barbie saw imaginary bunnies
hopping through the shag carpet.
"I can't," she said.
GI Joe suggested she gun down the enemy
who was sneaking up behind her.
Barbie couldn't muster up the rage
for killing, even if it were only play.
Maybe if someone tried to take her parking space
or scratched her red Trans Am.
Maybe if someone had called her a derogatory name.
But what had this soldier from the other side done?
GI Joe, seeing their plan was a mistake,
asked her to return his clothes,
making Barbie promise not to tell anyone.
As she slipped back into her classic baby blue
one-piece swimsuit, she realized
this would be her second secret.
She couldn't tell about the time
she posed nude for Hustler.
A young photographer who lived in the house
dipped her legs in a full bottle of Johnson's Baby Oil,
then swabbed some more on her torso.
Barbie lounged on the red satin lining
of the kid's Sunday jacket. He dimmed
the lights and lit a candle
to create a glossy centerfold mood.
"Lick your lips," he kept saying,
forgetting Barbie didn't have a tongue.
She couldn't pout. She couldn't even bite
the maraschino cherry he dangled in front of her mouth.
Luckily there was no film in his sister's camera,
so the boy's pictures never came out.
Luckily GI Joe wasn't in the real Army
or he said he would risk being court-martialed--
he wasn't supposed to lend his uniform
to anyone, especially a girl.
Just then a human hand deposited Ken from the sky.
Somewhere along the way he'd lost his sandals.
"What have you two been up to?" he asked.
Barbie didn't have the kind of eyes that could shift away
so she lost herself in the memory of a joke
made by her favorite comedian Sandra Bernhard
who said she liked her dates to be androgynous
because if she were going to be with a man
she didn't want to have to face that fact.
Barbie was grateful for Ken's plastic flatfeet
and plastic flat crotch. No military
would ever take him, even if there were a draft.
As GI Joe bullied Ken into a headlock,
Barbie told the boys to cut it out. She threatened
that if he kept it up, GI Joe would
never get that honorable discharge.

The whole is the sum of its parts. Just get out and circulate in a crowd anywhere and see the decline in American thought, manners, attitude, and signs of decline in our educational system. We are no better than we vote. Political campaigners have gone into these crowds and found that campaigns must dumb down to the mental level of the majority of our citizens who no longer care about substantive issues, but instead want to know what sport the candidate's children play in order to cast a vote or which pastor the candidate has listened to in which church for how long.
This opens the door to win national elections on issues which have nothing to do with government, after which the victors can do what they will with the vast power thusly gained, since all they have to do to please the voters who put them in is go to a popular church and indicate that they are against questionable sexual practices. The vast wealth of the country then trends into the pockets of a very few as time goes by and hardly anyone understands a bit of it until one day the whole damned country goes broke, while the beneficiaries of this vast store of ignorance sneak off with its wealth. It just did. Goodbye America. Hello Rome.

"ABOVE ALL THINGS I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to, conviced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." Thomas Jefferson

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. I ask Newsweek readers to PLEASE consider the following comparison of our institutions: our pubic schools and our private financial "powerhouses" that are now being bailed out with our taxpayer dollars.

We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Think about this, voters PLEASE! Not just for the sake of your own personal interests, but for the sake of our country.

Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing. No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" (terrible for morale) because of unrealistic goals/unfunded mandates funded by politicians seeking to score political points. What is often "left behind" in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students.

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists that effectively secured deregulation and what they consider "optimal" conditions for success (deregulation). And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of other peoples' money.

John McCain has a record of being a major player and advocate of deregulation and has taken money TIME AFTER TIME from the deregulation lobbyists - the very same "fat cats" he's now criticizing! NOW McCain is calling for change, when his deregulation in part has created this mess?

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth way of thinking has infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately, young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire corporate lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have limited resources. And there are little organized efforts to reform and progress/ lead our public schools into the 21st century. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there are sustained efforts to improve, fund, and prioritize education.

In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Let this difficult period be a lesson. We all want healthy money markets and retirements. We must see the connection between healthy public schools and a healthy economy that is investing in human capital. Hopefully (as we say in class) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

"...a running mate he seems to have chosen out of calculation rather than the best interests of the country..."

McCain did not choose Palin, he acquiesced in the decision made by the dominating segment of the GOP. The result is the same, but the distinction is important. It becomes clearer and clearer that McCain does what his handlers and patrons tell him he must do to win. And he wants to win more than anything else he has ever wanted. He needs to out-rank his father and grandfather, and the ONLY way he can do that is by becoming the Commander-in-chief. That the country could go to the dogs in order to meet John McCain's psychological needs is a tragedy in the making. The next few years will determine whether the United States will remain a nation-to-be-taken-seriously or will decline to a "used-to-be-taken-seriously" status like other former colonial powers. Electing Obama is essential - no other word will do - if we are to avert the kind of chaos that will surely come if America declines in a way which scores of millions of ill-informed Americans cannot understand and will not be able to accept. This election, I believe, will decide the nation's future. And the difference between what McCain will bring an what Obama will do is IMMENSE.

Where is the article on OBAMA's shape shifting? It if funny that you only point out MCCAIN but not one word OBAMA's view. You don???t have to look to far especially during the primaries his stated view was much different than it is during the general election. I guess you already know that he shifts around on his views for political votes.

Where is the article on OBAMA's shape shifting? It if funny that you only point out MCCAIN but not one word OBAMA's view. You don???t have to look to far especially during the primaries his stated view was much different than it is during the general election. I guess you already know that he is shifts around on his views for political votes.

OK, then Quindlen...where is all this rubble?
Gossip, NONSENSE or lies?

Always the sanest voice in the crowd, but so many of us are so frightened that the questions you pose, "It can't really be that America has become a nation so small-minded that intellect must be belittled. It can't really be about likability, can it?" are exactly what we have become.

So my fearful question is: What if that is just exactly what more than 50% of this country want us to become? How do the rest of us live in a country that looks like that?