Well, Sen Obama has one now. A veteran gave it to him and he wears it.

Hillary just wears a pants suit, no pin. The pin does not really matter.

It's clear now that Obama will be the Democrat party nominee. I wish him well. I'm a moderate Republican but Obama is someone new and hopefully a fresh look in a troubled world

a few months ago.. mid March maybe.. a few politically astute friends of mine concluded Obama would win the nomination. They weren't necessarily Obama supporters. They just understood the trajectory.

I find it hard to get free enough to reach this point, to believe the obvious. Many engineers knew Challenger would explode upon liftoff.. would I have believed them? If I had been raised Baptist etc would I discount the theory of evolution? What would I have believed in scott mcclelland's shoes?

Was on a long bike ride recently with an atheist friend. We came to a red light. No one's around. And he stops. And waits. Finally the light turns green and he joins me on the other side of the road and we continue riding. "I can't ride through a red light," he says after a while. "Catholic guilt thing."

I recently completed the following extensive article, and I welcome all to read. Be sure to do so with an open mind:

The 9/11 Truth Movement, Free Energy Suppression and the Global Elite’s Agenda

http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=182&Itemid=60

Breathed is so damned funny cleaver he leaves me breathless some times!!!!

Methinks this comic is about one's Search for Truth in the "programmed" (i.e. controlled) Matrix we call reality and not about "flag pins", or even Obama necessarily. The flag pin is merely the manifistation of the narcissism and vanity that is used to suffocate real debate in this country (i.e. control it) and keep us all spellbound.

This comic fits very well in the context of Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth, and Politics (link in sig).

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

...

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

...

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

The Pinter Nobel quote is extremely important but does not say we should stay home (from the polls) in November.

Yes, politicians are a breed of robots but they are OUR robots.

If we weren't about helping ourselves by hiring the right mechanical repairmen and women the corporations would have 100% control, instead of the 97% they now have.

We gotta keep the 3% in order to find free time to wash our pickup trucks and consternate over existence or just snooze in the backbed.

Where is the #%&@ing question mark on your punchline?

Who are the herd?

Is it the flag draped Republican patriot or the fruity headed existential Democrat.

Too bad you didn't bring it out when the flag pin controversy first erupted. Now I don't agree with you distictions but I can understand the need to question "truths".