Anton, I think you may be a bit overly enthusiastic re Obama in predicting a 65 to 70% return. The McCain VP choice sets up a whole new ballgame. As an independent, albeit right of center, I appreciate the dramatic energy injected into the Republican camp. I think you're wrong about the size of victory, but could very well be right about the winner. It's now a very interesting race in that the winning duo will be historic.

LOOK OUT!! Anton's making (and drinking) the blueberry moonshine, AGAIN!! You would think with his Daniel Boone backwards hunting and trapping logic, he would fall "lockstep" in with McCain's woman! She even owns and flies a floatplane! Anybody who could fall for the BS Mr Obama is putting out, has to be either into recreational drug use or drinking some home made brew!! Look very close and you can see the strings attached to the "half & half" candidate! He's no more a black candidate, than the Iltus Indian. Heck, he don't even have any "slave blood" in him!! Well maybe the State of Minnehaha, will fall for his rhetoric, since they already have a Muslim in Office. And good ole Joe Biden is up there on stage pretending to love every minute with Obama. He should be put in for an Oscar, at the least. You know he resents the fact that it is not him in the #1 spot, and he has to take a 2nd bananna role to the man with the Kenya roots. You Demonrats timed the Hurricane just right, though! But McCain and his #2 will fly in on her float plane, and roll up their sleeves, and show the country they can take charge. The heck with a big drunk fest in St Paul...., let's skip that and start to work on the gulf coast. I think with McCain's pick of a woman for #2, it will turn Minnesota into a "red state" this time around. Obama may give y'all a new motto, "the land of 10,000 votes"!! I'm currently up in the hills of Tennessee, and I was just at the Elks Club, and could not find an Obama voter in the whole crowd. Go figure!!

Well roj2000 based on the above post, you either need more to do or get a life! Very SAD!!

sker, right on... took the words right out of my mouth. Obviously, roj2000 has not moved away from the Falls - he spends most of his waking hours blogging on this site - and dreaming of moving back here. If he could just keep to the point and not show his phobias so much he might be contributing something useful to this site.

TLJ, I agree that the benefit of a calm and orderly discussion of sensitive issues is very beneficial and desired. We both may be rather centrist.

However, I do feel that your inflammatory adjectives like "the lying and cheating" in describing Newt Gingrich are a prime example of stepping away from 'calm and orderly' and unnecessary, unless of course your prime objective is to denigrate and jab the person. Lying and cheating could be applied to probably hundreds (at least) of politicians. Openly questioning their decisions and objectives without inserting flaming accusatory arrows in the sentence is quite different, isn't it?

Keep Well

"Goback Homebama!"

I made that up; I think I'm quite clever.

Regardless, we are all defying the Constitution so many of us swore to protect, BEFORE we swore to protect the chain of command. We now have no 4th Amendment, a 150+ page addendum to the 2nd, "free speech zones" for free speech, and during all of this, the President answers no questions.

We are all traitors. Long live jungle law.

I too, have enjoyed the various blogs made by the various astute and capable writers. Factual, courteous, to the point and with arguments well made and logical, even intellectual comments that were very well worded and organized. I even wish I were capable of being able to "keep up" with all the previous writers.

In the end, for myself, I am limited to only a few
things to actually concern myself with. Am I cold, am I hungrey, am I always broke and do I feel safe and secure. I always seem to feel the need to want to relate to these things "at my level" not on the National or International level. I guess its just the way I am, well traveled, moderately educated but just a simple country boy inside. For me its just the simple country boy inside that counts the most. Like one writer has said, I am thinking about how much firewood to barter for 100 pounds of smoked whitefish and not doing to much thinking on all these other "worldly" matters. Not that these other matters are not important to somebody or to the world, when the rubber meets the road, they just are not at the top of my list of things to control what I want for my fish in International Falls, Minnesota. After all, I just live in a shack built in 1904, in a small town in northern Minnesota and in the cold of winter up here, I have somewhat limited abilities to control the on-slaught of Mother Nature.

You folks have aptly put it in better verbage then myself... the choice is a "senior citizen with an Alaskan moose hunter for an assistant" or a "very inexpierenced" gentleman from the south side of Chicago with an assisrtant that has an extremly ambitious ego that controls his every thought and action. You choose what makes you feel warm and cozy, a nice man who barely has reached manhood, to run the country, or a senior citizen with a military career and a long history of Federal, National and Internation expierence. For me, being a country boy, the choice is easy. Anybody that can gut a moose and lift nets and feel comfortable with a Nam POW, counts more then a guy who sells cell phones and runs around with a guy who's only expierence is as an alderman from the "south ward" of Chicago. I swear, I don't know much, but there is not one drop of oil to be found in the cambrian or pre-cambrian rock formations of the area so oil is not my big concern, except for its transportaion up here in the dead of winter from someplace else. We already get our natuaral gas from Alberta so as long as it keeps on coming, I am happy. If it does not keep on coming, then you all are going to pay me more wood for my fish.

P.S. I am building a bridge to no-where also. It will go from Kabetogama to Rainy Lake. Well thats almost to nowhere! I know, I know, its just "pork barrel" spending but you all will be able to get your whitefish faster and with the local economy as it is, the construction of this bridge will help our locals meet the challenges of heating their homes and feeding their families this winter, so what difference does it matter that the idiots that prefer to live in New Orleans are complaining about our good fortune???

False modesty will get you nowhere Mr. City-slicker. If all it takes is the ability to gut a moose, you should be on someone's national ticket. Last time I looked, Ron Paul was looking for a running mate. Of course, in the vetting process, it would come out that your gutting prowess included a poke in the eye with a very sharp knife at a very young age.
In any case, we are talking about amateur hour when we get to American politics and this will turn out to be the amateur hour of all amateur hours. Time for me to start thinking about returning to the country Angela Merkel is running. Competently. And roj, she happens to be a pro-business pro-American conservative, who, like the rest of us, is wondering whatever would cause Americans to return a party as disastrous as that of GWB to the White House. Easy answer: we are looking for an old man and a woman from the sticks who barks like a dog -- in lipstick. So there you have it, my intellectual take on the election of 2008, the worst one since 1972. The sort of election where there will only be losers.

When it comes to presidential reputations, there are some who do great things out of the office that enhance their reputations in office -- John Quincy Adams, for example. The Mt. Rushmore four were great presidents in office. Reagan was a solid president but he is given credit for things that actually happened during the time of his successor, Bush 41. The first Gulf War, which wasn't a six year quagmire and the end of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany -- Merkel would be an East German without re-unification. Your W will go down in history as a very unpopular President who was an ineffective leader and a terrible statesman who lost control of the federal budget and left a legacy of mediocrity. And I have a hard time imagining that he will be some sort of respected senior statesman in his post-presidency. He'll be on the ranch clearing brush and building that library in Austin to house his one-page briefs and comic book collection. As the lasting memory of Roosevelt is the fireside chat, the lasting image of Bush may well be his tongue-tied silence in that Florida school on September 11, 2001. Sad picture.

Okay, enough! Enough! Joe Biden will decide to bow out as the veep canadate. Hillary will replace him. The 2008 presidential race will actually be between Palin and Clinton. If this happens, Obamabinladen will take the White House. He will not be the pres for long though. If Biden remains the veep canadate, McCain will be elected but not finish his first term either. How do I know all of this stuff . . .

Hey dudes and dudesses, Ognom's back. He's hip. He's cool and mad as a hatter. He reads the entrails of Haitian chickens and tells me the future. "Bones tell all . . ."