yeah, mostly I was just being snarky. I apologize.

Nope. I have a long list of reasons why I wouldn't vote for Palin, and that one's not on it. I do think this election would have been over before it started if it came out that Michelle Obama had an association with a similar group, though.

I know. I just like to make fun of the No Quarter guy. Although I do think source matters. While I might read them, I wouldn't post a link from Huffington Post or the Nation here to support a position.

No Quarter? That's the dude that promised us video of Michelle Obama railing against "whitey" months ago. He assured us his sources were impeccable, as I recall.

So suppose Michelle Obama or Jill Biden had been a longtime member of a group that advocated secession from the US and whose founder said things like, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. And I won't be buried under their **** flag." ...that would be a problem for you?

Or seal DNA in Alaska! Yeah, it's interesting to me that Obama appears to have conceded the point to McCain on earmarks. I think it's one of those things that's too complicated to explain, so he's decided he'll sound too "professorial" if he tries, and he should let it go. I hate that professorial is a bad word. Anyway. It seems to me that earmarks are a flawed system for funding a lot of important things. No one denies that earmarks fund a lot of good stuff (as is evidenced by McCain suggesting that it will be a tremendous sacrifice to give them up); the debate is on whether the system is so inherently corrupt that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater (apply a hatchet instead of a scalpel? pick your metaphor!) Obama history on earmark reform is actually pretty good. Unlike most senators, he discloses his earmarks, and he was a sponsor of the Transparency and Integrity in Earmarks Act, which would require everyone to do so. And he has asked for earmarks (albeit not lately), but he's a far cry from the worst offender. Now, as far as I can tell, McCain walks the walk on earmarks--Arizona receives the smallest amount of earmark money per capita (Alaska receives the most). But this is a big point in his favor only if you grant his premise that the earmark system is so corrupt that it shouldn't be used at all. One could say the same thing about Obama and not taking money from lobbyists, I imagine, if one were John McCain.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mccains_small-business_bunk.html

Right, but he keeps implying that he has some kind of foolproof secret plan that he's going to implement as soon as he's president. He has a sympathetic Republican administration to work with right now; I'm sure Bush wouldn't mind salvaging his legacy a bit by using McCain's plan and capturing Bin Laden.

I've had one thumbsucker, one paci-addict, and one utterly non orally fixated child. I honestly couldn't tell you what my preference is. My thumbsucker is 7, and still sucks it occasionally, but not much (he's got some anxiety stuff going on, so I don't begrudge him his thumb). We took the pacifier away during the day from my now 5 year old when he turned 2, but he STILL uses it to go to sleep at night. We went on vacation and forgot it a couple of weeks ago, and he was in bed, not able to fall asleep for HOURS before DH finally gave in and ran out to buy one. Sigh. Dentist says his teeth are fine, so I don't have it in me to fight him about it. And I would have done anything to get youngest to take a pacifier during his infancy when he SCREAMED every time he rode in the car, but he wanted nothing to do with it. He's the only one who's ever really nursed to sleep and had trouble learning to fall asleep on his own. He still, at almost 3, needs a lot of help to settle in and fall asleep, whereas the others have always dropped right off with the help of a thumb or paci. So...I dunno?

A lot of people think health care is a "basic service." I would also encourage people to look into the systems in other countries. By any objective standard, the US is pretty much at the bottom of the heap as far as quality of life, patient satisfaction, deaths from preventable diseases, per capita health care spending (by bottom of the heap, I mean we spend the most), infant mortality, etc. etc. It's a bit irrelevant, though, since Obama is not proposing a single payer system like most other industrialized countries have. From reading this thread, it seems like there are a lot of misconceptions about there about his proposal...it's all available at his website for anyone who's not clear on the details. As far as when....uh, probably not anytime soon. One of the drawbacks of democracy is that it's terribly inefficient. Our system was carefully designed so that no one would ever really get what he/she wants. I watched an interesting press conference many months back, when Obama and Clinton were going round and round about health care (she wanted mandates; he didn't, was the essential difference in their plans). Obama said something like, "look, by the time this goes through congress and everyone's rewritten it to death, it's not going to look anything like what any of the candidates are proposing right now." It's the sort of talk you don't hear later in the campaign--an acknowledgment that what you put on your website and talk about in your stump speech is your Utopian vision about what you would do if you were king instead of president. The long proposals you have to write are useful only as a way to see where your candidates priorities are, not as a window into what life will actually look like if your guy wins.

Incidentally, does anyone else want to go see that $3 million projector in Illinois now? It must be pretty awesome :lol:

Not true. Take a look at the Lugar Obama act (to keep nuclear weapons from terrorists) and the Coburn Obama act (for transparency in government)--both important bills he co-wrote with Republicans. As for most liberal voting record...depends on who you ask and what you call liberal. I believe the organizations that called him "most liberal" counted his ethics reform votes as liberal. If you want to call ethics reform a liberal cause, then you're welcome to :)

Yeah, his jokes fell flat all night. I didn't think the "not you, Tom" thing was rude, so much as just a very bad joke. And then someone pointed out today that the hairplugs joke was a dig at Joe Biden, which I didn't even get last night. I got the "nice to be at a townhall meeting with you" joke, and I thought that wasn't a bad bit of snark, but I doubt most people watching got it. I've been interested and a bit surprised that all the polls have handed both debates decisively to Obama. Sure, I thought he won them, but I'm used to thinking that about my candidate and then being shocked when the poll results don't say the same thing. I think part of it might be the rise of instant polling--the public gets to say who won before the pundits have a chance to spin things and change perception. And then also it's probably just reflective of Obama's momentum--McCain is coming into these things on the defense. My favorite moments: when McCain mocked Obama for wanting safe disposal of nuclear waste. I haven't seen polls, but I'm pretty sure most people agree with that. And when McCain declared that the grand sacrifice he's going to ask of everyone is....giving up earmarks. I thought Obama was much stronger on the "sacrifice" question, but I still keep waiting for a genuinely honest answer from either of them on that--a Kennedy-esque "Ask not what your country can do for you" moment. I don't think we're going to get it, though. I guess even Kennedy waited for his inauguration to say it.

I'm not suggesting that it wouldn't have been brought up had one of the many Republicans who've worked with Ayers decided to run for president. I'm saying...did anyone have a problem with the fact that, from everything I've heard, pretty much anyone involved in education reform in Chicago--conservative and liberal alike--also had a working relationship with Ayers BEFORE it became something that could be exploited for political gain? I'm saying the fact that this did not become an incredibly important issue that simply couldn't be ignored until McCain was down 7 points in the polls (and, likewise, did not become so terribly important for Hillary Clinton until she unexpectedly found herself in 2nd place) is....curious.

I'm curious about this, actually, and I'm not sure how to search for it....the NPR story quotes more than one person who was there saying/suggesting that no one ever objected to working with Ayers based on his background. I wonder if this is true. Does anyone have any evidence that anyone has refused to work on projects Ayers was associated with because of his background? Andrew Sullivan, of The Atlantic is an unabashed Obama supporter, but criticizes him for the association: But is it truly about being a "Hyde Park liberal"? Maybe, but there seem to be a lot of conservatives who've worked with Ayers as well. Until this election, has anyone raised a stink about it?

I posted this link to an NPR story on the subject on another thread: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95442902

It just so happens that the first major study was released a couple of weeks ago: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/22/MN7N132L5U.DTL&feed=rss.news

Although the seasoned wood thing is a good point!

Thanks for all the input, everyone! (and keep it coming, please!) I should mention that we live on a very heavily wooded acre, so I think we can harvest a lot of our own wood. There's a big tree down in my backyard right now that's just waiting for someone to get around to cutting it up (and a stove might be just the motivation we need). My perusal of Craigslist indicates that there's plenty of affordable wood to be had, too, if we need to buy it. And I see offers around all the time for free wood if you'll cut it up and haul it away. So I think woodburning is definitely the way to go in our area (and my heavily wooded acre is a reason why solar is probably NOT, for us, though I'd love that). Anyone want to give me a ballpark on cost (for the stove plus installation)? Our whole house is around 1900 square feet, and I'd probably be looking for something to heat just the downstairs, so maybe 1200 square feet? The upstairs (where the bedrooms are) has a separate furnace, can be closed off from the downstairs, and we keep the heat turned down pretty low at night anyway. Plus it's upstairs, so if the downstairs is warm, it's pretty warm, too.

NPR has a story on the Ayers/Obama connections. You can listen to the audio on their site, but from the story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95442902 It discusses the project Ayers and Obama were involved with at some length, and includes some interesting quotes from prominent Republicans who were also involved.

Well, the Senate Ethics Committee criticized both McCain and Glenn for having exercised "poor judgment" while not issuing any formal sanctions. That's not quite the same thing as saying they did nothing wrong. McCain himself has called his involvement "the worst mistake of my life."

I think I want to get one this winter. What do I need to know? What should I look for or watch out for? How much should I expect to spend? Should I look at used ones, or is that a bad idea for whatever reason? I really like the looks of this one: http://www.harmanstoves.com/features.asp?id=2 because, well, I just like the way it looks, but also because it has stuff like an optional grill and rotisserie, and I like the idea of being able to do some cooking on it (I will admit that paranoia about global economic collapse and all that is fueling (ha! get it--fueling?) part of my desire for a stove). Are there a lot of stoves that come with options like that, or is this one unique? Also, how does the whole thing work? If I'm using this as the main heat source for the house (which I'm thinking I'll be able to do on all except the coldest days, being in Georgia and all), do I put the fire out every time I leave the house? Or just not have one unless I'm going to be around all day? I'm kind of clueless. TIA!

The possibility of having to move is part of being a renter. It's unfortunate, but you need the house, too, and you're family. It's not at all uncommon to ask tenants to leave when the space is needed for a family member. Assuming they're not intending to break his lease to give you the place (i.e. assuming either he has a month to month agreement or his lease is almost up), it doesn't sound at all unethical to me.

Indeed, the facts show that Annenburg had close ties with Nixon, Reagan, and Rupert Murdoch, and once used his newspaper to smear the Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania and cause him to lose the election. The plot thickens! Factcheck is shilling for EVERYONE!