She could - that doubt will never be in her head. I mean, unless she becomes a crack-whore or something, but she won't. (I won't let that happen, come on!)   

Obama's election is huge in that sense. It's not just straight white protestant (and one Catholic) men - any qualified American can do it.

Awesome. So awesome.

And let's be really clear here - it wasn't that long ago in America that women were also viewed as sub-human or property - women have had the right to vote for less than a century in Christian America. And just like in the middle east, there is a rising fundementalism here in America; don't doubt for one second that it couldn't get as bad under fundementalist Christians as it could under fundementalist muslims.

Fundementalists of all colors are evil.

What's going on in certain parts of the middle east is bad, yes, but it's not a normal part of islam. It's a perversion.

I mean, I would likely be killed too - being a smart-ass atheist isn't cottoned there either, but you are correct. Women get a very shit deal there. I just don't want to downplay the evils that go on to this day in America under the banner of Christianity. The whole world is still suffering the last century and a half of Christianity, frankly. For a religion that, depending on the chapter you read, preaches peace love and forgiveness, they sure do like to torture kill and maim.

And with fundementalism on the rise in America, I don't want to see us make the mistakes that happened in the middle east when Fundementalists took over.

I think this goes to your earlier point - you said you don't have a lot of muslims around you - I've always had muslims around me. They were nice people. So were the Christians around me. In fact, I grew up around pretty ok religious people - the buddhists were annoying with their smug self-rightiousness but whatever.

Don't take the current actions of mad dictators to be the truth of the religion; that, or just realize that all religions are an ugly thing that can be abused. No?

Off current topic but on point:

I think Obama is getting a bum rap on the BP oil spill, in the same way that I thought Bush got a bum rap on Katrina.

The tragedy of Katrina -- and it was a tragedy, we brought it upon ourselves -- was a failure of all levels of government to prepare for a known outcome. Hurricanes happen. And eventually, a big one was due to slide into New Orleans. But the levees were allowed to fall into disrepair, building was permitted in areas where there was an increased danger of flooding, and there was no disaster planning or method of coordination between the emergency services from all the levels of government. Yet, we the people continued on in blissful ignorance because we expected that somebody, somewhere had thought about these things.

Katrina was a textbook failure of all levels government to do their job, in both regulation and disaster preparedness. These failures occurred well below the level of the President, and built up over a long, long time. 

The tragedy of the BP oil spill -- and again, it is a tragedy, we brought it on ourselves -- is yet another failure in the enforcement of regulation and the development / implementation of a disaster plan. Again, blissful ignorance on our part as we assume somebody has already thought these things through.

As the facts come to light in the subsequent investigations of this matter, I have no doubt we'll learn about a captive bureaucracy that had gone native and failed to perform its proper regulatory functions. Again, this culture was incubated well below the level of the President, and was nurtured over a long, long time. 

How many other shoes do we have to wait for to drop? Do we have to keep waiting for the Gulf Oil Spill, or Katrina, or 9/11, or Three Mile Island to expose the flaws in our systems?

I've championed on many threads here a book by Stephen Flynn called The Edge of Distaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation. If I could shove a book into the hands of everyone running for office, this would be the one.

In light of the current problem, there's another book I read a few years ago which is most appropriate: Flirting With Disaster: Why Accidents are Rarely Accidental by Marc Gerstein with a foreword and afterword by Daniel Ellsberg (you know, the Pentagon Papers). BP is featured in that book from an earlier disaster, by the way.

We need cheap oil for our SUVs!

We have to let the free market handle it!

Seriously, at this point, I can not understand how any thinking rational person can support Republican party line anymore.

More off current topic but on point:

We are approaching a milestone, one which will very likely be hit before the end this year.

According to iCasualty.org, 1086 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. If we break that out by Presidential term, that's 630 American deaths under Bush (2001-2008) and 456 American deaths under Obama (2009- )*.

At the current casualty rate and with no near-term signs of a lessening of hostilities, American deaths in Afghanistan under Obama (2 years) should exceed those under Bush (8 years) by mid-December.

As the war in Iraq has been substantially wound down -- only 179 American fatalities during the Obama term versus 4221 during the Bush term -- and the military focus now on Afghanistan, it gives rise to some questions:

1. Given the policy in favour of an Afghan surge, at what point does Afghanistan become "Obama's War" (in the respect that Vietnam became "Nixon's War" after the Cambodia carpet bombing)?

2. Seeing that no one is taking to the streets in protest of the war -- or perhaps more fairly, there's no media attention paid to those protests if they are occurring -- is Afghanistan perceived as the good war compared to Iraq and not subject to protest? Or are 300 deaths per year acceptable or below the radar number versus the 850 per year at the height of Iraq?

3. Perhaps the worst question, the possible answer to which makes the previous two superfluous: Given the poor economy, the high unemployment and the other pressing domestic issues, do we as a general population just not care what happens overseas anymore?

My personal assessment is the forthcoming pullout in Iraq is giving Obama cover in Afghanistan.because the combined Iraq-Afghan military deaths are lower than the 2004-07 peak years. But with most of the allies set to pull out of Afghanistan before the end of this year, the US is potentially in a go-it-alone situation, which means more troops and more casualties. That 2011-12 timeframe may prove to be a very challenging time for the President.

* - In the interests of accuracy, I know that President Obama's term did not start until 1pm ET on January 20, 2009. There are 25 casualties in January 2009 that I don't have a daily breakdown to apportion. I will strive to get a more refined number.