A recent poll here in Australia has Obama winning at 4 to 1 [80% of the vote].

Now that's not necessarily indicative of fiscal policy differences...or what 'trade name' his political partly likes to call itself to differentiate from the 'other one' but if it's an International public perception then he MUST be doing something right that McCain isn't.

What the world gets to hear of Palin's faux pas may be part of it, of course....afterall her only apparent 'positive characteristic' is that she looks like Tina Fey....who's a great comedic actor/writer.

Maybe it really is 'all about change'....because lately the US has had a pretty darn poor excuse for a leader, only matched by our own in embarassing ineptitude [but we got rid of ours]....

I hate to tell you but Buchanan will hold that title for a long time.  Since you did not get the part when i said read your history, so let me tell it to you.

James Buchanan refused to challenge the spread of slavery or the growing number of states that soon started to unite and begin to form itself into the Confederacy.  His inability to act caused what led us into America’s bloodiest war in which nearly 700,000 American lives were lost.  The only thing Bush did was make other people mad at us and put us into dept.  That’s a far cry from being the worst.  There are many other Presidents’ that have fared worse than Bush. 

Umm… no I voted for bush because the alternative was a whole hell of a lot scarier.  And in all reality I do not support what Bush has done, though I think Kerry and/or Bush would have screwed us up far worse. Not in the same way but in a different way and the result would have more impact on me and you.  I believe the war in Iraq was a huge mistake and think it was a personal vendetta.  But you know what? Your elected officials let him do it.  Which in turn brings it down to our fault, we could have easily taken the necessary steps to contact our Congressmen, rally our neighbors or incite a riot. 

I guess I don’t need to touch on this one anymore.  I couldn’t have asked a better question.

Free tax giveaway???  Free nothing, I paid my taxes, Clinton saved it all up and Bush gave it back to the people who Clinton took it from in the first place.  And yes I did earn them because it was my hard work that helped put that money there in the first place.

Yeah right, this coming from the party who has the greater disregard for the constitution.  It has been the Democrats that have been quicker to chip away at the constitution.

Clinton boom my foot, Clinton had nothing to do with, the Democrat party had nothing to do with it, Congress had nothing to do with it, The Supreme Court had nothing to do with it.  The credit goes to the private sector and to the private sector only.  But if you must credit a politician for the success of America, then you need to credit Reagan for fixing carters screw-ups and allowing the private sector to flourish.

I agree with you to a point on this.  Though there are some things I have a real problem with.  Take for instance the national healthcare program.  First, could you imagine your Insurance Company being run like the DMV?  Second, I grew up getting my medical care from VA hospitals, because my father was a Vietnam vet.  I wouldn’t want take my kids there, the only reason why we went was because it was free. Third, I would foresee a rationalization of medical services and then on top of that prioritization.

Universal Healthcare would be great for basic and minor services, but what about the big ones.  What am I going to do when I have a brain tumor, or if I need a new lung or a new heart?  What about psychiatric care?  And worst of all, what about long term care.  If I have cancer, I do not want to be treated like a number.  Concerning terminal illnesses, quality of life become my priority.  Can the DMC (Department of Medical Care) provide me a comfortable death?

Have you ever had to deal with the local health department?  When my children were young and I was a working student, I had very little money and had to utilize the local health department for my children’s healthcare.  What a horrible experience.  I would hate for that to become our standard. 

Another problem I have are the programs for the poor to keep them poor.  Welfare needs to be reformed and we all know the democrats will not fix it.  The democrats will not fix the poverty issue because if they do they know they will lose their votes. 

What I do support is either; Universal Healthcare for children or the government giving me 10,000 a year to pick my own medical insurance.  Since we know the Uncle Sam isn’t going to shell out 72,000,000,000 dollars per year I guess I pick the latter.

ignored again..........nothing on this part............

exactly..........and it's still more dangerous for Americans (i assume you meant the US when you said "we" even tho you're Canadian)

plus large populated parts of Illinois are not that bad.....the area Obama's from is the worst

on top of that........that was 2007....murder is up 18% this year in Chicago

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/25/spiraling-murder-rate-sparking-political-spats/

my favorite quote "It's fair to say that violent crime in Chicago is out of control," Mr. Blagojevich said recently. "In certain communities in the city of Chicago, it is reaching epidemic proportions."

but hey....lets bring this guy to the White House so we can all enjoy the same benefits he's brought his home town.

What do you think that trillion dollars would have been used for , if you hadn't invaded Iraq cause 'God' told Bush to do it. And of course I'll choose to believe you made a mistake and ignored the tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties since 2003 and not think you're a racist for thinking only American lives matter in Iraq

so then YOU believe that throwing money at the problems will fix them........

then how does..... Cook County ( Chicago ) sales tax 10.25% highest in country = Chicago school system rated one of the worst in the country

or

2nd highest taxed state in the U.S. = State pension fund $44 Billion in debt, worst in country

far as the war is concerned.....although Congress went along with it.......it was only Bush per the left.

Please remind me of the last Popular war..........at the time it was fought.........

Here we go, the ole race card. You libs always fall back to that. American is not a race and Iraqi is not a race. Better luck next time(not).

So Buchanan maintained a status quo of all other Presidents and you're going to pin the entire Civil War on him?  Nice try.

Bush has ordered the needless deaths of more Americans than bin Laden and caused the deaths of upwards of a half a million innocent Iraqi civilians (the numbers are debatable because the dead can't speak up).

I also listed his litany of ultra-screwups earlier.  In short there isn't an aspect of what makes this country great that Bush hasn't ravaged and savaged.  That makes him by FAR the worst ever and history will judge him harshly for it.

That is an utter hypothetical and was NOT born out of even an objective comparison of the two men at the time of the election.  You're just backpedalling your ideology to fill in a gap in your judgement at the time.

And we agree on these points, sir.

Indeed I was.  And, in fact, I know President Carter.  And he's a better man than you or I will ever hope to be.  He gets stuck paying the check for Nixon's war and people still blame him for that.  Ridiculous.

If you are in the upper echelon of tax brackets, you paid less than you should have.  There is no free ride.  If you aren't very well off, then you're arguing an irrelevant point here.

The facts of the past 8 years demonstrably counter your position.  You're going to need to provide some facts here.

The Canadian, British, and French systems work better in every way than our own does.  Period.  I can state that because I have had personal experience with the American, Canadian, and British systems and there is no comparison.  Ours is a racket, theirs are about helping the nation's citizens.

The only people filibustering and vetoing such legislation has always been the Republicans.  To say otherwise defies all credibility here.

Which is PRECISELY what the HMOs want you to do.  Let's have the taxpayers now pay THEIR profits for doing a job they created out of thin air in the 70's, just to screw us over in the first place. It's the same scam they pulled on us with the RX drug bill, which just socialized the profits of Big Pharma at the expense of the taxpayers.  Every other country gets the same medicines for less, using a system similar to what Wal-Mart is doing, for example.

Regardless, the ONLY real way to fix our health system is to kill the HMOs outright.  Private insurance for those who can afford it works in Britain, Canada, etc.  and it can work here.  There is no need to lose the coverage you have now as an additional rider to your baseline Universal Healthcare coverage provided to all citizens.  You lose nothing except the fear of never being covered, or dying of a catastrophic illness because you are in between jobs...ahem.

The ONLY thing holding us back is the insurance/HMO lobby, since it means that, quite rightly, they will be out of business.

They are leeches on this country.  They serve no purpose whatsoever.

And you apparently choose to ignore the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost during Saddam's dictatorship, the tens of thousands likely spared since Saddam was overthrown, and the fact that the vast majority of Iraqi casualties since 2003 were inflicted by Iraqis, Iranians & other foreign agitators.

The racial slur showed us who you are.  You just did your "side" a grave disservice.  You might just want to move on now.

Um, we CREATED Saddam.  Bush SR. Rumsfeld and Cheney.  When we lost our proxy in the region, the Shah of Iran, the US needed a puppet to "maintain balance in the region".  We backed Saddam's rise to power, gave him the technology, and the chemical weapons to fight the Iran-Iraq war.  Those chemical agents he used on the Iranians...and then on his own Kurds...came from us.  So, yeah, it turns out some of the same administration douches who keep showing up every 10 years are responsible for every step of this insanity.

You can't prove a hypothetical.  Next...

Incorrect, we have carpet-bombed more innocent civilians to death in Iraq than all of the car bombs and ethnic cleansing combined.  Regardless, we're still responsible for those, since we broke the de facto truce between the three regions in Iraq by preemptively invading their country.  The British had the same problem in the early 1900's when they artificially created Iraq.  The British ran away with their tails between their legs.  The Iraqis remember.  We chose to ignore the lessons of history.

I'm not saying Saddam wasn't scum.  After all, we Americans only hire and train the best...Noriega, Saddam, and Bin Laden, all brought to you by our own CIA and covert funding.  And all directly linkable to...George Herbert Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld. 

It's all public record and well documented history, folks.  And I'm not letting them off the hook for any of it.

I'm so sick of this blame game. At this point, I don't gives a rats a** who did what. Should we not be more concerned with what the plans are going to be to get us out of this mess?

Something we can & do agree on.

LoL! Please prove this.

Wow...I really wish a lot of this aggression was channeled at the right people...the ones running this country into the ground. If we as Americans don't wake the hell up and stop fighting amongst ourselves with all this chest beating the idiots in government will just keep robbing us blind. We seriously need to get F'n pissed off at the right people. And when it comes down to it we are just as much to blame as them for letting them get away with everything they have done and are doing. They need to be held accountable. This is suppose to be OUR government...for the people and by the people...but it seems more and more like we're they're piggy bank and nothing we say really matters.

Personally, I'd love to see everyone just not show up at the polls and just tell them NO...both of you are lying your asses off to us and we've had enough of this childishness already! We don't want to keep hearing who did what...we we're there...we know...we're feeling the effects of it now...and we've had enough. NOW, you either find someone that actually cares about this country and has a stake in the future rather than big business or oil and start running this country responsibly or your ALL out of here!

Growing up I used to be proud of this Country and to say I was an American...but I can't tell you how sorry I am that I can't say that anymore. What happened to the days when people were actually passionate enough about this country and what it stood for to go out and physically protest? Remember that freedom? How many people actually write to congressmen anymore? I see a lot of passion here and saber rattling...but it should be directed at the ones that are doing the most damage to this country.We're ALL Americans first and foremost...and we really need to take this country back and restore it to it's former glory and throw these bums out on their collective ears...otherwise we are in for more of the same irresponsible government. This election is looking more and more like a circus than anything else.

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government."

That is not what you said:

You honestly think the vast majority of the American public (you know, the ones voting for Obama next week)

And perhaps they are smarter than you and realize that GWB <> McCain.

And dont get your undies in a bunch, but others dont believe either clown.  Perhaps you were referring to that Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that made up the Lewinsky affair?  About as credible as that claim.