>>>>>Well that's true - everyone makes verbal gaffes. But that doesn't change the fact that Palin is simply stupid...or at least to dumb to lead a country like the USA. Palin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho. Obama went to Harvard and led the Harvard Legal Review....hmmm the distinguished Harvard grad vs the country bumpikn from Idaho. Come on dude! Really ???
>>>>>
>>>>>You are confusing education with intelligence here.
>>>>
>>>>"....>Anyway, the school from which one graduates has very little to do with how well educated one is."
>>>>
>>>>OMG your're kidding right? You're argument is now that schools have little to do with educating someone?
>>>>
>>>>>I know lots of people with college degrees and 8th grade educations.
>>>>
>>>>Then I'd say they went to a really crappy college - which either was not accredited or shouldn't be if it is.
>>>>
>>>>>Surely you cannot really be as shallow as this post indicates.
>>>>
>>>>I didn't think I was being shallow??? Harvard > University of Idaho. Leader of Harvard Legal Review > B.S. degree in journalism. I don't consider that shallow - just a fact.
>>>
>>>
>>>They you can't call gw dumb... He graduated from Yale with is just as prestigious as Harvard....
>>
>>As a legacy, which probably didn't hurt. If his name had been George W. Smith I suspect he would have had a hard time getting in.
>>
>>Which is not to say he's a dummy. I agree with whoever said in this thread that the media overplayed his gaffes.
>
>and if nobama wasn't black he'd have never gone to harvard...

You're walking pretty close to the line there, John. And I don't mean political correctness, I mean ordinary human decency. Respect for the other man unless he gives you reason not to respect him.

IMO affirmative action has had a lot of good outcomes. It has also had the unintended consequence of causing some to assume that any black or hispanic who goes to college and does well would not have done so if not for the color of his or her skin. That is a premise I reject completely.

This is not coming from some wild eyed liberal agenda, a pigeonhole I seem to have been put into by some here. As one example, I roll my eyes at lawsuits seeking reparations for things that happened generations ago. Those people really are looking for a free handout. Unlike the high percentage of welfare recipients who don't like it, who hope no one is looking when they slide their benefits card through the card reader at the grocery store, but take it because they need to.

What is really at issue here, and this will be the key issue in the 2012 election in addition to jobs, is whether we want to cut the government safety net. There seems to be a growing view that every American can and should fend for him/herself. Just look at Bill Gates and Meg Whitman! (billg, no news here, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth). And so should their kids. That's the part that gets my goat. Are we really at the point in our history that young children and children yet unborn are cast into Dickensian circumstances? That is not a cloak any of us should wear lightly, regardless of the selfish motives we all understandably share.

The next election isn't a referendum on Barack Obama. It's a referendum on what kind of country we want to be.