Thanks, Professor Cole. Once again we note how enemies come to resemble one another, revalatory perhaps of some underlying psychological truth.

The Said Qutub of Alaska? I don't know, but I damn sure don't want to find out.

Palin's values ARE closer to a Muslim extremist than that of most (I hope) Americans, who should be able to distinguish between personal religious belief and the public servant's oath to the Constitution and ALL Americans.

The problem is, the media is deathly afraid to bring this ugly truth to light. Owned by their corporate masters, true journalism is practiced by the MSM at their peril.

Any moderate who has read or watched Pentecostal propaganda should feel a chill down to their bones. It is immediately apparent that to them, everything is subordinate to their religious dogma.

We must force the media to exert at least as much focus on her religious views and those of her churches as they did to Jeremiah Wright.

...won't this country wake up and realize that this country was run by theocrats for 8 years... and we are about to have at least another 4 shoved down our collective throats if Obama does not stop them.

The Republican Party has been the party of theocrats for the past 20 years at least - Palin's presence on this ticket should surprise nobody.

Say good by for your lifetime to the supreme court, say goodbye to the line between church and state, say goodbye to sane foriegn policy...

If McCain and Moosebuger get elected - you can count on war with Iran - and we can all kiss our collective asses goodbye.

her speech was "a home run" because she was nasty, snarky, and sarcastic and didn't sound as inept and awkward as John McCain does whenever he opens his mouth.

Thanks for a voice of sanity, and all you've really done is list the most obvious reasons that she has no reason being anywhere near the Presidency of this country, unless we've suddenly become a theocracy.

Sometimes I wonder.

That the right-wing has so much antipathy for Iran, since that's the clearest model of what they want this country to be like. Just swap out for a different flavor of Sky Bully. Pastors instead of mullahs.

Of course, in this country, religious beliefs are automatically given deference and respect, no matter how crazy and/or dangerous they may be. Pretty much anything goes, if God told you to do it.

is the fact that in America we have never had to deal with a REAL theocracy. Europe has. The Middle East has. Even a good chunk of Asia has. America has always lived by "christian" principles. But theocracy by the technical definition? No, not quite. Most of these people, I suspect, don't really understand what they are asking for. I real theocracy would suspress all forms of dissent against government becuase it is based on the idea that the state is an instrument of God. That means that if those filthy "dems" raise taxes, guess what? You have to live with it.

It would also mean the supression of alcohol, tobacco, not just porn but those car magazines with women in bikinis, almost every popular TV show, and the suppression of music. Most Americans who either look at the religious right as a harmless fringe group of crazies or actually believe they are fighting for "preserving a christian heritage" would probably take issue with a good chunk of what they are actually trying to do. But of course telling the public that half their video collection would be illegal is no way to get them on your side.

The MSM would be the most affected by the kind of America that the republican base wants to live in. We need to remind them that for their own survival they need to confront this kind of pandering and they need ot tell the rest of America, no matter how much scrutiny they come under. Most Americans don't know how much freedom they will lose if these people get their way.

I have an uncomfortable relationship with reality right now. I just have to take comfort in the fact that, if president, McCain would have access to health care that could probably build a bionic version of himself, if need be.

The Obama We Don't Know

June 4, 2008; Page A20

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121254834844844045.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

This is the Obama Americans don't know. For all of his inspiring rhetoric about bipartisanship, his voting record is among the most partisan in the Senate. His policy agenda is conventionally liberal across the board – more so than Hillary Clinton's, and more so than that of any Democratic nominee since 1968.

We can't find a single issue on which Mr. Obama has broken with his party's left-wing interest groups. Early on he gave a bow to merit pay for teachers, but that quickly sank beneath the waves of new money he wants to spend on the same broken public schools. He takes the Teamsters line against free trade, to the point of unilaterally rewriting Nafta. He wants to raise taxes even above the levels of the Clinton era, including a huge increase in the payroll tax. Perhaps now Mr. Obama will tack to the center, but somehow he will have to explain why the "change" he's proposing isn't merely more of the same, circa 1965.

There is also the matter of judgment, and the roots of his political character. We were among those inclined at first to downplay his association with the Trinity United Church. But Mr. Obama's handling of the episode has raised doubts about his candor and convictions. He has by stages moved from denying that his 20-year attendance was an issue at all; to denying he'd heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks; to criticizing certain of those remarks while praising Rev. Wright himself; to repudiating the words and the reverend; and finally this weekend to leaving the church.

Most disingenuously, he said on Saturday that the entire issue caught him by surprise. Yet he was aware enough of the political risk that he kept Rev. Wright off the stage during his announcement speech more than a year ago.

A 2004 Chicago Sun-Times interview with Mr. Obama mentioned three men as his religious guides. One was Rev. Wright. Another was Father Michael Pfleger, the Louis Farrakhan ally whose recent remarks caused Mr. Obama to resign from Trinity, but for whose Chicago church Mr. Obama channeled at least $225,000 in grants as a state senator. Until recently, the priest was connected to the campaign, which flew him to Iowa to host an interfaith forum. Father Pfleger's testimony for the candidate has since been scrubbed from Mr. Obama's campaign Web site. A third mentor was Illinois state Senator James Meeks, another Chicago pastor who has generated controversy for mixing pulpit and politics.

The point is not that Mr. Obama now shares the radical views of these men. The concern is that by the Senator's own admission they have been major moral influences, and their views are starkly at odds with the candidate's vision as a transracial peacemaker. Their patronage was also useful as Mr. Obama was making his way in Chicago politics. But only now, in the glare of a national campaign, is he distancing himself from them. The question is what in fact Mr. Obama does believe.

The young Senator has been a supernova exploding into our politics, more phenomenon than conventional candidate. His achievement in winning the Democratic nomination has been impressive. Now comes a harder audience. The presidency has to be earned, and Americans have a right to know much more about the gifted man who is the least tested and experienced major party nominee in modern times.