"As for that I don’t feel Obama sucks as a choice."

Ok all jokes aside. I have not seen much of anything in his record as a politician to get me remotely excited (I don't care about personal matters in politics)

Can anyone list things about Obama that should be the top reasons someone should vote for him?
(And don’t waste the bandwidth on “because McCain this or Bush that..” as I already know a lot about McCain and I don't like him)

I’m really undecided and nothing has come across from his Campaign to make me think he is the one.

One may say that "Nader cost us Gore as a president." This assumes that Nader voters would have voted for Gore if Nader weren't on the ballot -- quite an assumption. It has been pointed out that that slim margin in Florida in 2000 would have tipped the other way if the voters for one of the few socialist parties had all voted Democrat in Florida instead.
I read something in a book written by an economist. It is so obvious, I felt foolish not having thought of it myself. Your chance of deciding an election is comparable to that of winning a lottery. You've decided an election if your candidate wins or loses by one vote. Otherwise your vote is futile and meaningless. Before you send me an angry reply, dear climber/voter, I'll state that I'll foolishly continue to vote anyway.

Figures a statistician would write something like that and a science guy like you would swallow it whole…

i can't figure out if you're being serious or not. Would Gore having been pres been a good thing? i think not.

my biggest problems with the candidates are these:

I am a devout atheist. I think religion is foolish. I have a lot of problems with the religious right. Abortion should be a woman's right. No one else but a woman and her doctor should be involved. As hard as it is to say, not even the father.

I think we need to be aggressive in hunting the evil of the world on their territory. but we've been doing it all wrong. we need to transfor a good portion of our military in equipment, ideology, and man power. (interesting book on force transformation, The Pentagon's New Map, by Thomas PM Barnett)


i am against the war on drugs. its obviously not working. legalize and tax.

i am against social welfare programs. i have to work to pay for my health insurance, why does some mexican immigrant get the same level of care in the same emergency room, and not have to pay a damn dime? and food stamps? what happened to the work for food programs? i see people every day buying groceries with EBT and WIC, and then using CASH to buy CRAP.

i want my borders secure, and all illegals tracked, and taxed, just like me. i want a national ID card. not an RFID implant. just a card, like a drivers license. every citizen gets one, you're not supposed to be here? GET OUT NOW.

I want lower taxes. i want to keep some of what little money i make.

and jesus, would standardizing healthcare forms be so complex? thats it, just everyone use the same damn forms.

there. i said it.
now someone please help me pick a candidate.
or i'm writing in Mickey Mouse.
and when I'm 35 I'm Running.

To be correct the above would needs to be stated as:

You've decided an election if and only if your candidate wins or loses by one vote, and you vote was the last vote counted.

And if Gore had simply won New Hampshire, Florida wouldn't have mattered. The fact is, Gore ran a shockingly ineffective campaign, unable to even win his home state. Sure, Nader didn't help at all, and if all the Nader voters had indeed voted for Gore (say, instead of staying home), maybe Gore would have won, but he does deserve to share the blame in his loss.

Empicard, here's a sleazy answer to your question.
(Please let us know the result.)

You've decided an election if and only if your candidate wins or loses by one vote, and you vote was the last vote counted.

No, order doesn't count. In the event that a candidate wins by one vote, every one who voted for him/her can be proud of making the difference.

After my accident, it was the private health insurance which enabled me to transfer from the local ER to Columbia Presbyterian in NYC. Without the insurance, the ER staff told us they would have just amputated my leg so as not to waste money.

Same level of care? Maybe if you're getting stitches or an emergency appendectomy. But for more serious things, private insurance certainly does make a difference. All told it cost more than $250K (in 1994, about $375K now) to fix the leg.

I doubt I'd have gotten the same level of care under any universal health care plan though, that's a lot of money that could be better spent providing basic care to many others.

QtM, fair enough. having good health insurance allows people to do things like going to a doc for regular checkups, not just the emergency bypass surgery.

as for the find your candidate thing, it gave me John McCain as my choice. 57.69% for McCain. but also 57.69% for both Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin.