Sorry for the latency. Real Life intruded.

In short, [Hillary's] vote for war in Iraq kept is one big reason why she's in our faces now. This would not be true for a male candidate, as we see with Obama.

I'm troubled by what I see as the implications of what you are saying. Hillary had to vote for the Iraq war in order to be viable as a presidential candidate. But it's OK, because she's female. We've spent near a trillion dollars, trashed our military, we have thousands dead, and tens of thousands wounded, we have ruined our standing in the world and we have trashed Iraq, killed lots of Iraqis and emboldened Iran. But if Hillary becomes president, it will all balance out. For who? I must be misunderstanding you.

Biden and Edwards both got penalized for their "tough" Iraq positions. They are male, last time I checked.

Wars are a tricky, nasty, and unpredictable business as the Chinese wrote thousands of years ago. If this Iraq war had gone as advertised (a walk in the park ending with a flower show), then I believe there would be no Obama, and Hillary would probably face an uphill battle against a red-meat Republican and energized base.

Maybe Hillary Clinton IS the wrong woman. I don't know. But I can't imagine the right one coming in my lifetime. And I'm only 43.

You don't like Nancy Pelosi? I only wish she was more aggressive. On FISA, she's not quite the doormat that Reid is.

I guess I'm a lot closer to the "Get off MY Lawn" stage of life that I thought. I don't think Pelosi is too old. We are constantly being told Hillary Clinton made the fatal mistake of being 60 Really? I never hear that about Hillary, but then again, I'm not watching MTV or whatever is hip these days. Hillary's age is certainly a non-factor for me.

I actually thought Murtha a better choice than Hoyer for getting stuff done on Iraq despite his other attributes. I blame Henry Reid rather than Pelosi for not getting anything done. The senate has been really, really lame. The House has been busy investigating, and might actually do something.

She [Pelosi] flunks the age, idiological purity and baggage tests. Plus, I'm not sure she wouldn't remind many men of their first wives if they listened to her stump speech enough times.

I think you're being too dismissive. Many of the younger male voters are still working on their first wife.

Dude, you keep trying to bring this up. But we have this thing called Google now. If anybody really wants to read what Obama said about Israel, Palestinians, Iraq, Iran and some Jewish opinion on same, check this out:

http://elections.jta.org/2008/02/25/obama-reaches-out-to-jewish-leaders/

I'm going back to my bong and GGW videos now.

Funny, on this site we are all words and no action.

AKA Smith,

We've spoken about this before. Another 4-8 years of Republicans selecting judges, executive appointments, and likely SCOTUS replacements would be bad juju for the good ol' USA. Not to mention setting foreign and domestic policy agendas. I have no doubt that some small group would vote McCain over Hillary. But you have to admit that some have posted on this site that they would vote McCain over Obama. Also a small group. I'll bet most of these people will vote differently once their passions cool. It's a long haul to November. And I think more people will realise that McCain 2008 is not McCain 2000. It's like comparing XP to Vista.

On a different note, I hear early turnout in Texas is huge. Any observations from your neck of the woods?

Excerpt:

Republican early vote for first three days: 56,408

Democratic early vote for first three days: 170,580

Democratic turnout in Collin County has increased by more than 1,300%

http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/2008/02/early-birds-ds-outvoting-rs-almost-3-to.php

If you are interested in gaining more respect, I would suggest two things.

1) Stop posting anonymously. Come up with some silly, stupid handle like Uncle Fester. People will come to know and hopefully appreciate your POV.

2) Read AKA Smith's posts. She can write. I don't agree with some of her thoughts, but her writing is very well executed (including links!).

You can't tell me that words don't matter on a site like this when all we know about each other is from words. It's pretty easy to tell the thoughtful posters from the drive by knuckleheads. Yes, I'm probably more Knucklehead than thoughtful.

I don't really care that Obama had dinner with Liebermann and regurgitated the typical political spiel. On the other hand, if you have a link pointing to some actual text beyond that, I would be really interested.

Obama's urging the Bush administration to conduct air strikes against terrorist targets within Pakistan without its approval. This seems very hawkish from someone perceived as a peacenik.

I don't perceive Obama as a peacenik. I don't perceive myself as a pacifist either. And you've got this quote wrong.

Obama said that he as president, would order military action, if necessary against Pakistan/Waziristan in order to get OBL, if cooperation was lacking.

You might want to check out that earlier link:

http://elections.jta.org/2008/02/25/obama-reaches-out-to-jewish-leaders/

It has some interesting thought about dealing with OBL and not pissing off a billion muslims in the process.

Plus: If you're watching the debate, you'll note that Obama re-iterated his policy on Pakistan. Stay Tuned!