I tried being civil, but respectfully, screw you.

I've worked at Dunkin' Donuts, The Dollar Tree, and Hoffman Car Wash (Upstate NY). I've also graduated from a Boston-area university and proudly reflect on the opportunities afforded myself and all Americans who follow the path of education. Spare me your garbage leftist stereotypes.

Your rambling post about Obama's history aside, I don't think you've said anything substantiative. I'd like to add that your party's reduction of the complex conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to matters of "victory" and "surrender" are meaningless - just ask General Petreaus. Maybe one day someone will ask John McCain what he thinks a victory in Iraq will look like. It also bodes poorly for you and him that the farce of a military strategy that is the Surge is beginning to unravel - those US taxpayer-funded Awakening councils, credited by our own military as the major factor in the recent reduction in violence, are coming under fire from the Maliki government. So please, tell Senator McCain to keep putting all of his foreign policy eggs in the Surge basket.

And incidentally, wouldn't the voting exam I suggested earlier elimate both one-issue antiabortionists and African-American voters who will cast their ballot for Obama simply because he's black? Wouldn't it be a positive for everyone? Or are you too jadedly partisan and hurried to consider something like that?

Educating voters isn't a partisan issue. You think voters would be swayed if they knew the "truth" about Obama's record. I think voters would be better off if they knew the truth about everyone's record. Once again, it's a two-way street.

Try as you might to reduce this to an issue for partisan bickering, having an informed electorate is something we all should care about.

I'm blown away that even after all the reporting on Obama, that some still think he is a Muslim. What this means is that they got some internt chain letter, or heard from their neighbor, or watch FAUX news, and are unable to think for themselves.

It is sad to think that race is still a huge problem in America, but it is. If a man with Obama's background and superb campaign was white, there would be a big shift in the polls. Sadly, millions of Americans would rather vote for an old has-been verging on senility than vote for a black man, and the Republicans are counting on this as usual. They would rather vote for the dumb guy they want to have a beer with than an intellectual with a Nobel Prize. This is turning out to be an election between the educated and the uneducated. I am personally tired of being held hostage these last eight years by religious fanatics with little education that are too insecure to vote for someone who doesn't look like them.

Perhaps part of Barack Obama's problem with white middle-class Americans is the "one-drop" rule, which has traditionally labeled anyone having any African blood as "black" or "African-American." People of African descent seem to have embraced this nomenclature and proudly call themselves African-Americans. However, most of these people also have genes that came to them from other racial groups. In many cases, due primarily to the lack of records from pre-Civil War days, they cannot pin down their exact racial makeup. In Obama's case, he appears to be exactly 1/2 African and 1/2 European. Perhaps it would help him develop a deeper connection (and consequently more rapport and trust) with potential white voters/constituents if he would honor his white heritage equally with his African and refer to himself as an Afro-European American. Maybe he should make a "Racial Rapprochement" speech to explain why he has decided to change his racial auto-designation and to urge others to honor their complete genetic profile, as well.

Mrs. Palin's resonance amongst voters may have more to do with her actually going against the political grain and doing something about government's big spenders, the bureaucrats and elected politicians. This is something that every politician promises but never delivers. Something that Liberals like Obama do not understand is that we who identify with Mrs. Palin are the voters who pay for all of the largess he is threatening to rain down upon our heads if elected. We resent that. We know that politicians can't solve problems. Their solutions only cause more problems and Obama is a politician. Every grand idea he has has a price tag--more taxes on the workers. When are he and his progressive liberal supporters going to realize that the well does have a bottom, our pockets are only so deep. My trail is coming to an end. I am 65 years old. My children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences. I dread the government price tag that will be left them. Thank you FDR, you motherless son

I bet Dan Hoyle who wrote this letter is not from small town America. And neither are any of you. You make judgements on things you know nothing about. I also am from small town America. I have been to more foreign countries than Obama. Love my country and consider myself an American before a Republican. You are what is wrong with America today. I grew up with a set values that we do not pass judgement on people we do not know, and do not talk behind people's backs when we think they are not listening. Holding on to our guns and religion. I guess that was what Obama was thinking of them. He has no right male or female , black or white. He told small town America what he thought about them a while ago. Considering most of small town America lives in swing states that should prove pretty interesting. I say go McCain/Palin

Maybe you didn't notice what lay behind America tucking Sarah Palin under it's collective wing. It wasn't just her Northern Exposure kind of Annie Oakley appeal. It was the wave of relief the that comes from encountering the familiar.

What this election has created, and Karl Rove has exploited, is that there are now two opposing camps of True Believers.

Sarah Palin is the face in the mirror, the face next door,or the face behind you on line at Wal-Mart. That gives Salonistas countless occasions to sneer. But what it does for people who actually live in small towns, not those just slumming through them to shill for Obama, is give them a reason to get involved in the electoral process that they didn't have before.

A lot of those who had been considering sitting it out will now be voting.

I was a Hillary Clinton supporter. I am writing her in because I have to vote for someone for president and either pick is now somewhere beyond folly.

Watching the way the Democrats TWICE dropped the ball about her has assured us all that we don't have to wonder how Obama treats women. We've already seen that the only one around is an icy high-maintenance Jackie Barbie clone set to default to glower.

But I'm not the one who would vote for anyone based on their spouse. With Obama there are just way too many reasons not to vote for him than take the chance.

And what will win Mccain the election is the main Rove Rule:

In times of crisis the stressed invariably skew to the familiar. Sarah Palin just showed you that. Which part aren't you getting?

She is making it acceptable to vote for the Devil you Know factor with McCain.

There will be around 100 million people voting. Less than a million blog, even less than that read newspapers. Only a couple of million listen to the news.

In the last election I had a neighbor on one side of me who spent hours every day informing herself as to why she'd vote for Kerry. The one on the other side voted for Kerry because --I am not making this up-- he had Presidential Hair. The mayor across the street had a thicket of Right to Life and Bush lawn signs.

We all acknowledged him to be a dork. But we didn't count on the parish priest fulminating for over an hour 2 days before an election, informing the hapless congregation that they would be accomplices to murder and in direct danger of excommunication and losing their immortal souls if they voted for the candidate who wasn't Right to Life. I was there. That's exactly what he said.

He's still there and he's going to dust off that same sermon. One reason I will never vote for a republican. Presuming to interfere with the separation of Church and State is terminally offensive to me, but it worked on too many others.

You can't say Sarah Palin is not a suitable candidate without facing that most people who feel Obama is equally unsuitable still feel that way for exactly the same reason they did on Day One.

He has no experience, no tangible accomplishment and less creds by the hour. Berlin and that genuflection of a convention were appalling to many out here. One reason Big Brother is such a scary image is it's an easily effective nightmare to conjure up.

The very first quote in this article hit Flyover opinion right on the head. There is no way to relate to Obama. And no way for an unrelatable candiate to win. A million dollar patronage paid for mansion for a community-organizer Man of the People while people are losing their homes. Months of Chicago machine-style manipulations for all to contemplate, but mostly, it's that it always ends up being All About Obama. And not being About U.S.

The truest thing Rove has done is to pick up on turning us into sports fans. In a country sick of division, Obama has already become irrevocably emblematic of it. In a country where congress rates even lower than the president, Obama represents nothing but lifetime entitlement, senatorial perks and leaning on political privilege. all those people finding themselves shifted to the back of the line, so the Obamas could be first? They vote.

He has never had one job that didn't end up in a government paycheck. He may have suffered a paper-cut opening one in service to his country, but McCain will be seen as having really paid his dues and fair's fair The American Legion will say.

His background is clouded in doubt well beyond the Muslim thing. An African grandmother saying she was there when he was born in Mombasa, and a couple of different hospitals in Hawaii claiming he was born there, no one in Hawaii saying they were around to see an infant Obama,not even first baby pictures as back-up and a replacement birth certificate to make it all weirder. This, to a country were many in small towns are commonly rooted for several generations. As is Palin.

There is no on coming forward to say how great Obama was working with Obama as a community organizer while Palin has had every member of their community interviewed twice over.

Change is scary to people. You have to administer it by getting people to incrementally trust in your judgement and trust in you no matter how you are marketed. Obama's saying one thing and then endorsing another has damaged what little there was to believe in.

For those who keep believing in Obama, those of us who don't can only wonder why. And keeping McCain and now Palin out of the White House is not as threatening to most as the idea that, despite blanket marketing a paint by number hologram there is absolutely nothing reassuring about Brand Obama.

-gala1