There are two things most uninformed voters base their choices on during national elections:

Guns, and Religion.

Problem is, one-issue voters don't come close to considering the breadth of problems and issues facing our country. As a result, the rest of us shouldn't have to live with their misguided or totally baseless opinions when it comes to national politics.

Love guns and think a 2-year-old should be able to walk into Wal-Mart and buy a 12-guage? Hate abortion and want Roe v. Wade overturned? Take it to your state and local officials. That's what the federal system is great for.

One-issue voters are poison in the national electoral well, and shouldn't have the right to affect the lives of people around the country and the world.

Is where the good guys are always simple white people beng threatened by nefarious predators, sophisticate city slickers or various and sundry dark haired men . Only the white male can save the day through his honesty and courage.

Small town American has to preseve their beliefs or face the horrible truth .Many people NEED to believe Obama is Muslim just like they NEED to believe Iraq had WMDs since GWB said so. Even when these lies are uncovered they still NEED to believe that America should rule the world because of it's ethics and genorosity, truth not withstanding. That democracy and freedom are what drives the our rulers..

These are the same people that make their children kiss 'funny" uncles and priests and send them trustingly to overnites at the coaches house.. They mail their last dollar to the tv evangelist in his Italian loafers and ship off their own tender youth to senseless wars.

Small town white people choose to protect their depravity with ignorant innocence because If they ever truly grasped America's history they would spend the rest of their mornings in church begging forgiveness .If they ever truly awaken to their collusion there would be no choice but suicide.

I remind you, Clinton left a budget surplus.

Bush created a budget deficit so large they will need to create new words to encompass it, he lied to get into a War which I think might be viewed as less worthy than WWII.

But it's those damn Democrats.

Can you imagine what it must feel like for those of us who understand simple math when encountered with posts such as yours?

By the way, Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs. If you object to them so much feel free to turn those down.

For years I've found it interesting that the two presidents who guided post WWII America were from small towns about 150 miles apart.

Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower were both from rural heartland America. Both were interested in the world and America's place in it. By the time Truman graduated high school, he had read all 2,000 books in the Independence library. His political support came from the corrupt Pendergast family in Kansas City, although there is no evidence Truman was anything other than a stand-up guy.

In 1919, during a time of widespread anti-semitism, Harry Truman's business partner was a Jewish man by the name of Eddie Jacobson. Years later, Truman would be the first American president who addressed the NAACP in person, in spite of the fact that Truman's own mother held a fierce grudge over the civil war and refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom when she visited Washington.

FDR and Truman barely knew one another, and Roosevelt failed to inform his vice president on vital programs such as the Manhattan Project. Because he was a voracious reader, Truman was able to not only bring himself current, but also comprehend the ramifications of what was going on.

Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. The man who out smarted the efficient German war machine. As far as major events of the 20th Century, it's hard to beat. Yet Eisenhower is rarely cited by Republicans these days. Maybe it's due to the remarks in his final speech as president warning Americans of the political military industrial complex, or because he's the last president that had a balanced policy in the mid-east. Older Egyptians remember when Eisenhower went to the U.N. to call back British, French, and Israeli forces from the Suez Canal.

When I visited the Eisenhower museum a couple of years ago, I was struck by one of his quotes near the exit: If all that Americans want is security, then they can go to prison.

This morning when I got online, one of the top stories in Wired was about Jack Kilby, a man from my small hometown, Great Bend, Kansas, who, on this day in 1958, showed his colleagues at Texas Instruments his new invention - the integrated circuit. He's largely responsible for us to be able to communicate like this.

I know there are small towns across this country who can point out similar stories from their own history. So, what is wrong with small-town America in 2008?

Excuse me, Hootowl, but when you tell me "Don't you dare blame them for your stupidity," I don't know what you're talking about. It must be because I am "tired and lame" as you so nicely put it.

I said thst it's incorrect to blame all of Obama's problems on racism and, in the remark that you quoted, that "in my small town, the people who won't vote for Obama because he is an African-American would never have voted for a Democrat in the general election."

The people I speak of who will not vote for Obama because of his race would never have voted for Hillary Clinton, the candidate I supported in the primaries. They didn't want a woman president any more than they want one who is African-American. They would have voted for McCain, Bob Barr, Ron Paul or stayed at home rather than vote for either Obama or Clinton.

For a long time, I doubted those who suggest that there are many Republicans on Salon working overtime to build up hatred between supporters of Obama and Clinton as their best shot at keeping the White House in November. But it's becoming obvious that the only way McCain will win is to attract Clinton's voters, particularly women.

That strategy is going to backfire because as angry as we Democrats get at each other, we still share far more in common than we could ever have with a party that nominates someone with Sarah Palin's ultra-conservative views as vice president.