Hold on a second. I checked into that and Obama was not a professor. He was a part-time lecturer. You only need a master's degree for that and they are VERY easy to get. I should know, I am a lecturer at a major university. PT lecturers are there to fill in and teach extra sections of classes or those annoying basic 1st year classes crammed with hundreds of students that professors who make $150,000 a year don't want to deal with.

Anyway, I must disagree with you. Obama has a low degree of issue knowledge. Just reference his debates when his handlers are not near. He can't answer policy questions without speaking like a preacher with emotion that lacks substance. WE ALL want change and a better America! Obama says it, Clinton says it, McCain says it, Huckabee says it, everyone says it. But nobody ever does anything about it. It's just political fluff that Obama does better than the others. What stands is a record. Obama just doesn't have much of one and what there is isn't impressive to me.

What somewhat impresses me is that McCain stood up to the radical right-wing of the Republican Party time and time again. That is a VERY hard thing to do, especially from 2000-04 when Republicans controlled the House and Senate.

Ron Paul is the only good candidate. Ron Paul for President!

I agree, Ron Paul would be a good president, but he's not corrupt enough. You must have a high level of "friendliness" to lobbyists, party overlords, and special interests to even get close to the White House. Perhaps he could become Governor of Texas and turn that backwards state around. Although, the problem with Texas is that it's full of Texans.

As far as records, I'm not sure where you're getting data from. According to govtrack.us: Barack Obama missed 185 of 1098 votes (17%) since Jan 6, 2005 (Extremely Poor relative to peers). Obama has sponsored 129 bills since Jan 4, 2005, of which 120 haven't made it out of committee (Poor) and 1 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Obama has co-sponsored 545 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).

His record in the Illinois Senate is worse. There he commonly said he hit the wrong button when voting to appease both sides of controversial issues and had one of the highest abstention/not-present rates.

But what troubles me more than anything is that Ann Coulter endorsed him. For those that don't know she is one of the most radical conservatives in America who looks like this: She says thing like "we should invade Islamic countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." and "Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave." So when I see Coulter supporting him, I'm worried that Obama is just as much as a Christian fundamentalist as Bush.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a McCain supporter, and Hillary is no better. I'm a moderate centrist who has a problem with all the hype over Obama and I encourage people to look through his utopian propaganda and investigate deeper into who he is. I've found quite troubling things about him after doing that.

This is what it feels like to vote in America:

She supported Clinton as well.

She supported Clinton as well.

Yet another reason to vote for McCain!

He also just came out and said that the US does torture prisoners but that he will end that when he becomes president. Being that he was tortured in Vietnam, I believe he would keep that promise. I must say he is really telling the cold hard truth about things. The same like in Detroit when he told them they must face the fact that the auto industry and heavy manufacturing will never come back in America and they should retrain. I’m just not seeing this level of honesty from Clinton or Obama.

In Richard Dawkin's very good book "The God Delusion" [German: Der Gotteswahn] he shows the results of a 1999 research of Gallup-Institute:
They asked US-citizens whether they would vote for a qualified candidate that is:
- a woman (96%)
- a catholic (94%)
- a jew (92%)
- black (92%)
- a Mormon (79%)
- a homosexual (79%)
- an atheist (49%)

An atheist would win no election, even if he was clearly the best for that job. That's hard!

Very true and very sad. The US is fanatically Christian, just the same as Islamic countries. The only difference is that the US government hides it better. It's also regional as the South and Central parts of the country are extremely religious, while the Northeast is moderately, and the West Coast is very little (another reason why California should secede!).

Religious individuals also have an advantage in church as it’s a system of advertising. In fact, priests will commonly tell their members to vote for a particular candidate in church and it's their Christian duty to do so. Many voting stations are also located in churches which have an unfair influence. You can also see the effect of Bush who has always said he was chosen by god to lead America. Just look at our money; we put "In God We Trust" on every dollar and coin in the 1950’s due to increasing religious zealotry.

I’m just glad I live in California where we are fairly free of religious domination and control. Maybe in another 20 or 30 years we’ll actually see atheist or agonistic candidates win elections. Just look at McCain, he’s religious, but not fanatical, which is a major change for Republicans. In fact a Democrat, Obama, is more religious than McCain which is very unusual.

By the way, that's an excellent book!

Obama's strength lies in the fact that he speaks about "hope" and "change." But never exactly says what hope or change is actually going to bring about. That leaves his supporters filling in the blanks with what ever their personal imagination dreams up.

Sadly, race is going to be part of the campaign from this point forward. While Obama didn't campaign on his race; that is he didn't campaign as a black candidate; his ties to Reverend Jeremiah Wright who many consider to be racist, the endorsement of the New Black Panther Party (an overtly racist and anti-semetic group), and the attempts of his opponents to tie him to other Black extremists keep bringing race back into the election.

Take this for what it is worth, but many Jews are saying they will vote Republican if Obama is the candidate, and there are some serious concerns whether Obama can win in Hispanic districts. McCain, who will be the Republican nominee, has taken pro-immigration stances and Obama would have a hard time competing just on the issue even without the fact that many Hispanics harbor ill feelings towards Obama because of his ethnic background.

While Obama getting as far as he has may symbolize "the audacity of hope" that anyone can become president, his campaign has also shown that racial and ethnic fizzures still exist in the electorate.

McCain took a pro-immigration stance?

in the sense of getting more illegalized workers who can be exploited without any concern for the laws? in the sense of more legal security for the immigrants? or just saying vague things like "the economy needs immigration"?

McCain co-sponsored the bill which would have legalized the status of illegal immigrants as well as changing the visa laws to allow more immigrants to come into the US for the express purpose of working in the economy. Whether or not that is exploitation is another question. But the proposal was hugely popular among hispanics; many of whom vote even if they are not legally entitled to. It isn't that difficult to get a drivers license and then to register to vote.