Having a candidate you can really identify with is quite difficult. One will never be satisfy 100% with the decisions his candidate will take.

When I had to vote for the last Presidential election, I read carefully what they proposed, knowing that a big shunk of the proposals may not made it for various reasons. So at the end, I voted ( for the first round ) for the one who was closest to my interests ( a strong one was the free scholarship for overseas French kids  ) then , when he wasn't elected, I voted for the one ( second round ) I thought and still think would do a great job. The thing is the first one is from one side ( Left center ),  kinda the Democrats for you if I try to simplify. And the second one is from the right, a republican ( again to simplify ).

I didn't vote for the socialist candidate who was at the second round because her records were crap. She was the kind of person who proved in the past that she will work very hard to be at a place, and when there would do nothing ( a little bit like what happened to Jacques Chirac, former President on his second mandate ). I have no problem with a Female French President, but I don't elect someone because of the gender or the skin, I vote for someone who I think will do a good job for the country and its citizens.

So when I read in a precedent post that some people will vote for a candidate because her daughter is hot or just because she is a woman, well, I understand why a lot of things are wrong in your country.

And in the current situation, I really cannot see how people can think that Mc Cain is going to solve the problems after 8 years of Republicans in the White House and all the screw-up from GWB.

At the opposite, I would really give a chance to Obama. He may have less experience, but he is young and can probably learn very fast how to handle potential troubles, because force is not always the best solution to a problem.

Good Luck to the World !

How can you argue with this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI5Eo9OMSgU

How can you argue with this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI5Eo9OMSgU

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I could be wrong, but it seems like there's someone in the crowd repeatedly distracting him. His mic doesn't pick it up, but he says 'hold on, I can't hear myself.' Or someone is telling him something in an ear-piece or it's picking up some static? Or he's forgotten his lines.

Daniel you forgot President Kennedy's Voter Education Project and CORE , The Congress of Racial Equality, those students that were involved in that, were mostly democrats. The 3 civil rights workers that were killed were CORE members. You leave out a lot in your historical reporting. You attribute personal racism, with the times that those men grew up.

Interesting article:

Negotiations for the meeting [between King and] Kennedy had been going on for weeks, with one complication after another. King had a larger personal following than any other Negro leader and could reach the mass of Negro voters as no one else then could. ("Black" was not yet the acceptable term.)

We in the Civil Rights Section of the [Kennedy] campaign wanted somehow to demonstrate Kennedy's support for King and King's respect for Kennedy, and thought a well-publicized meeting of the two would help. We thought it would add important momentum to the campaign, and help counteract the anti-Catholic mood of many deeply Protestant Negro clergymen. King's own father, a Baptist minister, had signed a newspaper advertisement for Nixon, solely on religious grounds.

[Later in the campaign, intervention from the Kennedys helped get King released from jail.] Outside the prison, King said, "I am deeply indebted to Senator Kennedy, who served as a great force in making my release possible."

While he did not endorse Kennedy outright, the Atlanta Journal reported, "He did just about everything short of it." To the congregation [at a service that night] he said, "I never intend to be a religious bigot. I never intend to reject a man running for President of the United States just because he is a Catholic. Religious bigotry is as immoral, undemocratic, un-American and un-Christian as racial bigotry."

Dr. King, Sr. chose that evening to make his public announcement:

"I had expected to vote against Senator Kennedy because of his religion. But now he can be my President, Catholic or whatever he is. It took courage to call my daughter-in-law at a time like this. He has the moral courage to stand up for what he know is right. I've got all my votes and I've got a suitcase and I'm going to take them up there and dump them in his lap."

[Shortly before Election Day, Wofford was alone with Kennedy.] I walked with him out on the runway to his plane, the Caroline. He was carrying his three-year-old daughter on his back, and my five-year-old son, Daniel, was on mine. The sun was shining and his gaiety that day had the air of victory about it.

Then, in the only reference I ever heard him make to the King affair, he asked, "Did you see what Martin's father said? He was going to vote against me because I was a Catholic, but since I called his daughter-in-law, he will vote for me. That was a hell of a bigoted statement, wasn't it? Imagine Martin Luther King having a bigot for a father!"

He said it lightly, and as we parted, he grinned and added, "Well, we all have fathers, don't we?"

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/136/story_13621_1.html   (link to source)

I got to meet Bobby Kennedy and to paint him as a racist is completely false, he was very pro equal rights. The FBI was ran by J. Edgar Hoover and it was he who had it in for King, Hoover also could not stand the Kennedys.

Here is a part of a larger article:

  On October 18, 1963, the FBI distributed a different kind of memorandum on King, not only to the Justice Department, but to officials at the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Defense Department intelligence agencies. It summarized the bureau's Communist party charges against King and went much further. According to - Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, it was a personal diatribe . . . a personal attack without evidentiary support on the character, the moral character and person of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it was only peripherally related to anything substantive, like whether or not there was Communist infiltration or influence on the civil rights movement.... It was a personal attack on the man and went far afield from the charges [of possible Communist influence].

The attorney general was outraged and demanded that Hoover seek the return of the report. By October 28, all copies were returned. This was the first-and last-official action to deter Hoover's vendetta against King.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NSA/Vendetta_MLK_LS.html

Rich is right, it was the southern democrats that were the problem not the northern democrats. The Southern Democrats left us and joined the republican party. George Wallace, Jessie Helms and others like them, said what those people wanted to hear.

LBJ was a democrat and a very proactive civil rights supporter. And Rich was right, his actions lost us the south.

First 40 minutes thought it was horrible, the man should NEVER smile, it's scary.

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Agreed.

And guilty as charged.  I have the most insincere looking smile in the world.  I can't help it.  I'm sure I have a natural smile in me somewhere, but my smiles-upon-demand look like my lips have crawled off my face, leaving me with my teeth protruding like the inner jaws of Giger's Alien.