You owe this country an apology for voting for Reagan.

First, Carter's plan for energy independence before he was derailed by the massive right-wing media assault against him.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html

What actually happened during the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis

what happened during the 10 years of continuous hostage crisis during Reagan/Bush 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon_Hostage_Crisis

Reagan freed some hostages by secretly trading arms to Iran, others were killed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair

Reagan the "teflon" president because, then, as now, the media such as ABC relentlessly attacks Democrats while letting far worse crimes by Republicans slide off (why are we talking so much about Wright and not about Hagee?) Overall, looking back, there really is no comparison between Carter's handling of the middle east and Reagan's. Carter was far and away better and much more representative of America's ideals.

By the way, Carter only had 4 years, and spent most of that time trying to clean up after 8 years of Nixon/Ford mismanagement that led to the economic mess in the first place that you remember so well. But simple minded fools like you were impressed by an actor's tough guy rhetoric. Meanwhile, any progress in Palestine had to wait 12 years until another Democrat got into office.

Russia considers Afghanistan their Vietnam... a mess they wish they never had gotten involved in... our meddling really didn't make much difference to them.

As for Saudi Arabia, I would make them as much of a pariah as we made South Africa during Apartheid for starters. And demand them to hand over Osama's head, since he is one of their own after all as a minimum before we have any further dealings with them in any way, shape or form.

of "winning the cold war" is pretty much met with head shaking outside of American right wing propaganda meisters. Economic stagnation within the Soviet Union had gotten so bad by 1985 that Mikhail Gorbachev started trying to reform the Soviet system. True, he considered the arms race an idiotic waste of money and effort (and the quagmire of Afghanistan didn't help either... a lesson we didn't learn), so initiated numerous peace talks with the West, but otherwise, the collapse of the Soviet Union was pretty much due to internal stresses and internal reforms. But, Republican spin meisters (i.e. liars) have used the fact that Reagan happened to be president when the Soviet Union started to collapse under it's own weight to claim Reagan somehow brought freedom to the Eastern Bloc. Everybody I know from the eastern bloc who lived through that era thinks that is pretty much looney-tunes.

But don't let reality intrude upon your movieland fantasies Reagan lovers (who loved Willie Horton ads and wouldn't vote for Obama anyway, getting back to the topic of this post).

When commenting on what a lousy job at moderating a debate some organization has done, state up front and repeatedly the name of that organization. I read this and the CNN "report" and it was only mentioned in the last line of the CNN story (and not here) that ABC was the sponsor. should be the in the title eg. "ABC debate wastes 45 minutes on nonsense distractions"

Otherwise, why would they even try to do any better?

Take comfort, because Larry King interviews Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow about the PA primary, and announces that he has joined CNN as a Political Contributor

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/22/snow.q.a/index.html

I mean, history has shown that there are no pundits more politically objective than former White House press secretaries! Even better than hand picked by Pentagon ex-Generals/current military contractors, since those Generals had to waste their time learning things like tactics, weaponry etc. instead of spending their lives figuring out how to mislead their listeners.

With Huckabee out of the race, he gets 12%, and Paul gets 16%. Hmmm... I just find this curious that more than 25% of the Republic voters are still protesting his win. Not sure what to think about tht.

As for the Hillary "win"... about as bad as you could hope for. Not enough to keep her as a viable candidate, but enough to barely justify to the public her continuing to campaign, since the mass media pile-on at the end did seem to halt Obama's gaining ground in PA. So, really, if she had any sense of responsibility, she would continue campaigning but focus her attacks on John McCain. But I suspect she will continue every dirty trick in the book to bring Obama down, because she has nothing more to lose and, at heart, doesn't seem to really care about if the Democrats win in the fall. But, what can you expect? Because, at heart, she, like her husband, are still Goldwater Republicans (sigh).

perhaps the most striking, most significant, and most underreported split is not along racial or gender lines, but along educational lines. The support goes from nearly 2 to 1 for Hillary for those with high school or less to 2 to 1 for Obama for those with post graduate educations.

I would guess most other demographics really follow from that, with the black vote being the exception.

to the poll about education split

http://www.gallup.com/poll/106360/Obama-Dominates-Clinton-Among-College-Graduates.aspx

I'm not sure what to believe about exit polls that are reported before the end of the work day (would seem to overrepresent retired people and stay at home moms). But, regardless, the "high school graduate only vote" went 64% to 36% for Hillary according to the CNN exit poll. So, my statement stands. Obama has to learn to speak to the uneducated.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#PADEM