I am always amused at the experience thing. IMHO, there is no job in this plane of existence that can prepare you for the presidency. I look at what most of the people who have occupied the office have done, and I think:”the less experience the better.”

I want someone to lead a team of folks who can think different. (to steal from Apple) I want these different thinkers to build teams that share the vision of ways we can all work together for our mutual benefit and support.

A funny thing about Mavericks is they resist herding and cooperation with other cattle. They make life miserable for everyone in the herd. They impede all progress. And they usually wind up dying stuck in a bog.

You know, it just came to me, one of the things I have been meaning to scream about. We as a nation have allowed the heard right to define way too many of the terms of discussion. Now we are letting them sour the idea of one of the things I hold sacred: government

One of the things that I love about the “Declaration of Independence” is the starting sentence: “We the People, in order to….”

The right is seeking to achieve freedom from cooperation by destroying the vehicle of cooperation: “a government of the people, by the people and for the people” working together to achieve goals that they can’t achieve as individuals, as city states. and even as states. Government is what we form to do great things together.

We need to assemble a government that can work together, not a loose consortium of mavericks who all want to be left alone to go their own way.

Thanks for your kind words, and I will look forward to taking this journey with fellow optimists

I’m holding out great hope that, once in office, Obama will win over many of today’s doubtful (whether of experience or color or both). I, too, am old enough to remember living in the days of “separate but equal” and celebrate the distance we have traveled and am hopeful about the miles ahead.

I just hope that we don’t have another post-election debacle. Maybe the margin of victory will be undeniable.

I am a hothead and I know that Senator Obama will need the support of the middle-of-the-road in order to win. I just hope that, in order to embrace the middle, he will be able to avoid all of Bill Clinton’s mistakes.

I am a fellow Southerner and a twelfth generation Floridian. Sadly, I am old enough to remember “separate but equal” and I can’t believe how far we have all come together. I see Barrack Obama as just what we all need in a president.

I think that he will be the best president since Madison.

I just feel like so many of the things that we need to strive for would strike a common note in all our hearts, if only we are asked.

This issue reminds me of all of the crisis of faith stories about Jed Bartlett on “The West Wing”. (don’t think badly of me, I needed a great president)

A real pleasure to be with you. I am happy to folo.

I was glad to see that you had a couple of Republicans in here to rile everyone up. I was sorry to see that they are doing the usual thing and just reciting the litany of fear that the party has been spewing since Senator Obama came on the scene. It is a sad thing about Republicans, they just haven’t had a lot of original thinkers in their ranks since Barry Goldwater. Sometimes I am sad to think that the Party of Lincoln has become a congregation of “ditto-heads”. Is a free-thinking Republican just an oxymoron?

I was a little upset by Senator Obama’s performance at the debates. I figured that any guy who was top of his class at Harvard Law would have had to be a great debater, but his persistent running past his time made him look a little desperate. Time lights everywhere and he was ignoring them all to chase after McCain’s dimwitted and badly delivered taunts.

Someone needs to tell him that there are are charges and allegations that are too absurd to dignify with a response.

He also needs to know that he has to embrace his convictions with true faith and answer the questions that he is being asked. I support him with my whole being, but I can see when he is dodging a question. Fence sitters have their radar turned up to full looking for those types of cheap political stunts.

I am not sure that there are a lot of honest uncommitted potential voters out there so I think that it is about time that he starts to tell the truth about what has to be done to repair the damage from the last forty-four years of negligent government. I want him to start team-building with his supporters and being honest about how he is going to need more than their vote. He is going to need their sacrifice.

Bush was correct that the country was under attack, but he was wrong about the attacker. We are under attack by the greedy who think that the interest of the shareholders are paramount. We are being attacked by those who will outsource our jobs forcing us into work that beggars us fiscally and spiritually. We are under attack from those who would try to convince us that we can afford mortgages that put off repayment of principal and “adjust” the interest rate based on changes in barometric pressure. We are under attack by those who would help us convince ourselves that it is appropriate to shop at stores that use up their employees like toilet paper and work to place them on public support for health care because they pay them too little to pay for the inadequate health insurance packages they provide. Stores that take business from manufacturers who hire American unionized workers and treat like the assets they are. Stores that give those jobs to businesses who have moved abroad to escape all responsibilities to their workers, their communities, and the countries they love. Stores who do all of this in order to assure their thoughtless patrons of “always the low price”.

We are under attack.

We are under attack from ourselves, from our thoughtlessness, from our self-obsessiveness, from our lack of commitment, from our fear, from our lack of love for each other.

I wonder if we have the courage to embrace a leader who will ask us for the sacrifices that are going to be required if we are going to be able to dig ourselves out this “Miasma” and to do the hard things that will be required to build this country, get us off the poison of carbon based energy, the isolation of our automobiles, the insulation of our air conditioning and gated “communities”.

Do we have the hard need to heal that will be needed to walk away from cheap disposable consumerism?

Have we got the chutzpah to start treating working people well enough that they can play a full role in our communities?

I believe that we have been waiting for the leader who has the strength of faith and the courage of conviction to ask for our help.

I thought it was Barrack Obama.

I still do.

I hope that he will rediscover that faith in himself that will allow him to push away from the image coaches and spin-meisters. I hope he will stop that he will stop paying attention to the taunts of a failed ring-knocker, and honestly and succinctly answer the questions put to him.

I hope that he finds in himself the Barrack Obama that won my heart.

Mrs. Bush didn’t (and as far as I know, still doesn;t) have a beautiful mind. It’s a small, narrow mind-closed to all but those who think just like she thinks and it will forever remain very, very small. When it comes to minds -size *does* matter!

Respect.