I DO believe many people vote for reasons totally irrelevent to the job up for grabs, such as race, gender, family, compelling story...The politicians on both sides realize that and they use it to their advantage and actually focus on it like it is what really matters. That is real frustrating. I guess to a certain extent, if people are ignorant enough to vote based on that, then why should the candidates not milk them for it? I dont think they should.

You mention the issues, well I understand Palin wants to teach Creationism in schools. I say hold the phone, this country was founded because of freedom of religion. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom of forcing Christianity in our face, it means any religion, or the choice not to subscribe to any religion and rather to uphold morals and values without personifying those values with 'historical figures' and 'historial events' that have no proof. It is a good idea to study the history of all religions but not if she plans to call religion historical fact or call a certain religion the correct one. Religion is not about being correct, and in fact it is impossible for them to be correct since they so drastically differ from eachother and from prooven scientific facts. She needs to be very careful how she proceeds with that objective.

Dave