Scripture says “Judge not…” but it also says, “You will judge…”

I hope you’ll ask God to show you that evil. I have an idea, if your prayer is answered, you won’t need medication any more.

May God bless and keep you.

If you look at the matter from my religious standpoint the longest term and ultimate result of all Obama’s actions, good or ill, will be his to manage on his own. We call that karma, cause, and effect.

If you look at it from your standpoint, God will judge his heart as he will ours, and we personally will neither gain nor lose for exercising our judgment honestly, since in the face of God’s judgments, our own are trivial.

And if you must vote against Obama, you must perforce vote for McCain, as I voted for John Kerry despite having no better opinion of his brains than of his opponent’s. Though since I judged Bush on what I thought [and still think] to be the soundness of his words and the true effect of his deeds, rather than trying to judge the good or evil in his heart, I have no regret about that vote. His words and deeds will last. He will be taking his heart back to Crawford, Texas.

But it repels me that your candidates of choice either cannot or will not openly put into words that all can understand what they want for this country.

More importantly, it saddens me that no one who writes articles here, or who shares the politics of those who write articles here, thinks it worth demanding from their own candidates.

And because of this I think Conservatism is bankrupt. In my youth, most thought Barry Goldwater dangerous for saying “extremism in defence of liberty is no vice”, but no one disrespected him for it, or thought the less of him as a man. I still think the stand of Ronald Reagan against the Soviet Union was admirable, though I still believe he bought it at too high a price for the well being of our own citizens.

But what have I to respect about Sarah Palin and John McCain? More importantly, what do you have to respect about them? More importantly than that, why doesn’t that question seem to bother anyone here?

And yet after stating that, you only concern yourself with what your candidate has said. Or worry yourself about what the other candidate hasn’t said. Consider their actions — what they’ve done. And the character and judgment they might reveal about the man. For me, it’s no contest.

I had hoped that I’d pointed out to you how a man’s word – especially your candidate’s – can’t be trusted. (BTW, consider the MOTIVATION behind what a man says and does – especially if it conflicts with earlier words or actions. For BO, it’s almost without exception, a narcissistic self-interest. NOT a good thing for a parent, much less the leader of the free world!

Regarding his attempt to delay troop withdrawal, consider this: if they’re withdrawn during this administration, he can’t later claim credit for bringing them out – and he’s additionally denied a point to pursue with his antiwar base. Moreover, his interference some pointed out would have ultimately delayed their withdrawal by many months – how incredibly selfish and irresponsible is that!)

Instead, the past ACTIONS of the man should be considered. Candidates can SAY anything in order to be elected – and most usually do.

How you can consider your candidate anything but unfit to lead America considering his associates and his ‘achievements’ while working in concert with them, is beyond me. I think you choose to close your eyes to the truth. (Much as you have about the truth of the world beyond this one, I might add. It’s seemed to me, usually one deception is in concert with the other.)

What has he accomplished in Chicago over the past two decades? See any improvement there? If you’re honest, not a thing. He’s partnered with radicals and crooks and left his victims worse off than before. This is why he fights – using intimidation tactics when he has to – to keep the public from learning the full truth. I don’t see you commenting on other articles – like Clarice Feldman’s – that expose BO for who he is.

You might not be a Christian, but I am. And the vilest thing he has done is bring his Alinsky methodology into the church. He sat in the pews of TUCC — bringing his own young children to have those teachings inflicted on them too — for two decades and allowed a pastor to spew hate-filled lies to a vulnerable congregation.

He’s devisive. Duplicitous. Manipulative. And if you can’t see that everything he’s touched — from his political party to the streets of his Chicago — has been poisoned by his failure to recognize evil, or reject it, then you are in worse shape than you can imagine.

I don’t want the miserable state Chicago’s in to be replicated around the rest of the country. All we have to do is open our eyes to what he’s done there to see he’s not good for America.

None knows for sure what is in any man’s heart. We make our guesses, shrewd or not, based on what they say or do.

Or at least we should, if it is a matter of our country’s future. All I have asked it that we make these judgments based on what is definite and real, what the candidates say when they speak for themselves, just like you or I would want to be judged on what we say or do, rather than on second hand opinion.

Obama has said clearly what he wants to do. It is quite clear that he wants us to know where he would try to lead us, given the chance, and that he is confident in being judged by it. It may be bad or good, he may have trouble doing it or not, he may not quite be able to tell us how he would get it done, but it’s real, its definite, we can both read it and agree on what he said and what might happen if he did it, even if we don’t agree whether Obama should be President or not.

John McCain has said little to nothing about what he wants to do. Sarah Palin has said absolutely nothing about what she wants to do. And it is clear that the managers of these candidates really don’t want them to.

Every effort is being made to keep Palin from saying anything at all and to keep McCain from saying anything of substance.

They want us to judge these people on second hand sources only, on spin, on hype, on rumor, on official announcements by the campaign spokesperson, on everything that you read, over and over, in the same stale language in virtually every writer on PJM–none of it definite, none of it real, all of it pure projective fantasy: “experience!” “leadership!” “values!” “character!” “small-town virtues!” “hockey mom good sense!” “mavericks!” “crusaders!”–pure contentless abstractions, a set of fill-in-the-blanks by whatever emotions make us feel warm and secure and safe. Even if you have something to put in the blanks with no relation at all to what I would put there.

On anything and everything but what they actually want to do once elected to office.

Why doesn’t anybody want us to know what they want to do?

Why doesn’t anybody here at PJM want to know it?

It seems a simple question to me. It seems a genuine question to me. And it’s certainly an important question to me.

Why? Why won’t they tell us? Why won’t they speak to us?

My candidate of chioce will.

I do not have any use for Sen. Obama. I believe him to be an enemy of my country. He means us naught but ill. Everything in his background points to this. He’s narcissistic and Marxist. Yes, it is a good thing to take the High Road when your opponent is basically an honorable man. I can disagree with a man and not hate him, but a snake has to be crushed mercilessly.

As to the Dems and their policies, I can tolerate some things. I may only disagree on the how. O’Reilly had a guy on, Dr. Frank Luntz, who polls people with a machine. When the pollees watch an ad, they move a dial in accordance with their response. It was interesting to watch one particular demonstration. The ad being watched got into promises of government goodies. The Dems’ responses went way up, and the Repubs’ responses went way down.

If you think about it, it’s amazing. The goodies were offered, and the Dems got excited. They were ready to take the cash. The Repubs were exactly opposite. They were not interested in the siren song of the free lunch! Every election seems to be the same theme. The Dems promise a chicken in every pot, and the Repubs try to talk sense to people. The elections get tighter every year, because the demographics are changing, with more minorities, who generally vote Dem, looking for the free lunch. (McCain may have done more than he knows with the pick of Palin, as getting the women over to the Repub side may be the only thing that can right the longer-term balance.)

I don’t think of the Dems as my enemy, just lacking common sense, that is, lacking the wisdom and character to turn down the free lunch. But I honestly believe that some of them on the far-left are simply in it for the money and power. Some, indeed, are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Others are just plain evil. They actively work against America. Their activities reveal them. Examples are: the covert smear campaigns; Hacking Palin’s e-mail; Intimidating the protest groups at the UN; Flooding the talk show call-in lines to suppress opposition; The most vile rumors; Just any underhanded trick in the Saul Alinsky book; Hate America messages; Damning our activities, while lauding those of our enemies; Undermining our education system and our media; and the list goes on.

So, you’re well read. I ask you, how can you countenance all this and support Obama? You don’t really require no specifics plans of action, just ideas, do you? How can right and wrong not play into your decision? Does a man’s character mean nothing? Does yours?

I’m sorry, too, if my words have been hurtful. I hope only the best for you in the future.

We can agree that we both want what’s best for our country. It’s just too bad we view our choices – and the history of each – so differently.

You misread. In the context of I was clearly referring to Obama – NOT you. So your “coherence” insult was unwarranted.

Let’s take this little fragment and use it as a starting point for the issue of character. One of the constant drumbeats over here is about the success of the “surge” in Iraq. Obama thought it wouldn’t work, I thought it wouldn’t work. We both were wrong.

I just admitted it. So chalk one up for me and my character. So did Obama. But he didn’t do just that. He chose to be interviewed first by Bill O’Reily on Fox News to do it. I can’t think of a more politically hostile interviewer he could have chosen for this admission, can you?

This got lost in the shuffle because it occurred in the midst of the RNC, and people also really don’t realize what an extraordinary thing it was. It would be exactly like George W. Bush choosing to be interviewed first by Keith Oberman about the failure to find WMD’s in Iraq.

I’m not sure I could have done it. Casting my mind back over nearly 50 years of watching politicians on television, there are virtually none I can remember, Democrat or Republican, who would have done it. The only possible exception I can think of would be Barry Goldwater. He might have done it, if there had been any instance where he thought himself proved wrong.

Also, as an aside, Believer, “delaying” something is not the same as not wanting to do it. Lots of times I have to delay taking a leak until I can find a Men’s Room, but that doesn’t impact my desire to do it in the least.

I don’t think Obama has been inconsistent about what he wants to accomplish: take the troops from Iraq, put them in Afganistan, and stop Iran from going nuclear. That is not a commitment to do all of this absolutely no later than 3 weeks into an Obama Administration. This is exactly what I meant by responding to the twists and turns of fate.

Now I also use another test to evaluate a person’s character: how they treat their opponents. I have never seen Obama say anything bad about John McCain except that his views are wrong or that his understanding of an issue is inadequate. Not once.

This character test is called the Golden Rule. I think he passes.

One thing that amazes me about American politics is about how nobody who is a Democratic candidate for office ever seems to have “character”. Indeed, nobody who votes regularly for them seems to have “character” either. Forty-nine percent of the country are brainless, spineless louts, baby killers, sinister charlatans, and religious hypocrites in the bargain.

No wonder the good old US of A is so bad off!

Now I wouldn’t even bring this up, Ed, except for the fact that you have suggested that my current political views stem from personal cowardice. But, on the matter of incoherence and overemotivity of political followers, it seems to me that your coherence could use a little tuning up and your emotivity could use a little toning down.

I have voted largely Democratic since being first able to vote in the early 1970′s. My belief in the general point of view of the Democratic Party began as early as John Kennedy’s inauguration speech–which I actually saw live on television–in the same year that my parents gave me the great gift of an Encyclopedia Britanica and started a life long love affair with learning. The learning has fleshed out and tempered my belief, but it never substantially altered them.

The fact that in the 21st century I have succumbed to a bipolar psychosis that has turned me into a semi-recluse in need of a certain amount of care, medication, and help, has not altered my political views or my reasons for them in the least. Any more than it has altered my religion or my faith in it.

It has also given me a certain amount of personal expertese [from my bad days] with incoherence and overemotivity.

But bipolarity is a mood disorder, not a brains disorder or a guts disorder.

My brains and my guts are doing just fine, thank you.

And I sincerely wish and hope that no one else who writes here is ever put through the gut check of being an undiagnosed, unhelped, or unmedicated bipolar. I have been all three.

I had to fight four years for a diagnosis, help, and medication in a life that was like trying to manage a small sailboat in a hurricane. I lost a career, an automobile, a house, an inheritance, and my credit rating in the bargain.

And all that kept me from suicide through those four years were my brains and my guts. I still have to fight, and am still fighting, for some of it, on at least a monthly basis.

But I am medicated, diagnosed, and helped. So my guts and my brains are not in constant use in a fight for survival.

I can still get to both of them if, and when, I need them, however.

You reasonably mention some differences between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch (your words, the “what” and “how”…I’m paraphrasing).

All well and good. HOWEVER…

…the “how” DOES matter GREATLY (also as related to “Believer’s” 1:33am comment).
PLEASE SEE at least the first video here:

http://mkfreeberg.webloggin.com/individualism-and-collectivism/

regarding “Individualism versus Collectivism.” BOTH sides want “peace” or “fairness” or “justice,” but the HOW of it all MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE between FREEDOM and TYRANNY.

With Zerobama, the “what” changes with the direction of the wind; that is not populism, that is cowardice and inexperience. A mature, responsible person can say, “I made an error and I’m doing it differently now.” This is in no way a description of Zerobama.

The “how” of Zerobama is AT BEST CHICAGO MACHINE THUGGERY. Directly attributable examples: the organized (ha!) blocking of callers to two radio shows featuring conservative guests, the mass mailing of letters threatening being investigated by the IRS (similar vis a vis Palin not speaking at the Jewish group’s A’jad protest). Relalted examples: ACORN voting fraud, fake grassroots support (whether Axelrod Astroturfers or not) in newspapers and YouTube.

Not a criticism, Mr. M, but moreso a question: Perhaps you are rationalizing/justifying/making excuses – maybe out of fear? – the reasons as to “why” at this stage in your life you desire/need the helping hand as “promised” (echo: HA!) by Zerobama more than that provided through either genuine charity or brotherhood in your community. What Zerobama offers is an ersatz “warm and fuzzy blanket” covering a straightjacket. In reality, his offers none of the genuine comfort you seem to seek.