Al Agnew

What Gavin said. And...while the river flows within the boundaries of the national forest, there is very little public land that actually adjoins the river. A couple of forest service accesses, and that's about it. When looking for gravel bars to camp on, I usually make sure that there is no obvious signs of the landowner using the gravel bar, like lanes leading onto it or picnic tables and other semi-permanent stuff on or next to it. No sense in ticking off a landowner who happens to want to use his own gravel bar at the same time you're there. Most Ozark streams have plenty of little-used gravel bars.

Anybody see the PBS Frontline special on global warming the other night? Best program I've ever seen on what we can, could, might maybe do about it. The real upshot was...it's going to be very difficult to do anything really meaningful without changing a whole lot of things about our lifestyles, which probably ain't gonna happen. I had already pretty much decided that. The American people, and the people in developing countries, just aren't going to be willing to do everything it would take to reduce carbon emissions 75-80% by 2050. And some of the technologies that are supposed to help just aren't nearly as ready to do so as we'd like to think. But while some may think it's Chicken Little to worry about it, I still say it all ties in with our energy and economic security. Reduce our dependence upon fossil fuels and you reduce CO2 emissions. Note that I didn't say "reduce our dependence upon foreign oil", which is still pretty much of a pipe dream even if the Republicans win and we drill baby drill. Just because some don't think global warming is real doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing everything we can to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. There are so many other good reasons to do so that it is just plain stupid not to do all we can to make it happen as soon as possible. One unfortunate consequence of our current economic woes is that it makes it more difficult to get started doing anything about it. For one thing, the dropping price of oil, and thus gasoline, means there isn't as much pressure to develop more energy efficient vehicles--don't get me wrong, I'm not too sorry about cheaper gas. And, the economy tanking means there just isn't going to be the money available to invest in developing technologies.

I walked in the door a bit before 6 PM, and my wife Mary looked up in surprise. I was supposed to be fishing, and she knows not to expect me back from a fishing trip before dark-thirty. "You're home early. How was the trip?" That was kind of like asking the Chicago Cubs how their play-off games went. In the beginning, I saw no indication that I was about to enter the Twilight Zone of angling. There should have been an eerie, ominous fog over Bismarck Lake when I arrived, or at least a moaning wind. But it was just a quiet, hazy late June afternoon. I slid the canoe into the water and loaded my gear and three fishing rods. Remember those three rods--they are an integral part of the story. I paddled across the lake to begin fishing. I didn't really have high expectations; Bismarck was known at the time for big bass, but not large numbers. If I caught one or two nice fish I'd be satisfied. I fished for an hour or so without a strike before things started happening. Eerie things. Ominous things. But at first it just seemed like normal bad luck. I hung my lure on some piece of the brush, logs, old duck blinds, and assorted sections of 20 pound test monofilament that pave the bottom of the lake. The lure was down about five feet, and I stuck the rod tip underwater, reeled down until I snugged it up against the lure, and jiggled to free it. But the rod tip got entangled somehow and broke off as I pulled the lure loose. "It wasn't my rod, was it?" Mary interrupted. I often use her outfit when she isn't with me. It was my own best handmade rod, but no problem. I could fix it easily, and I still had two rods available. About 10 minutes later I got snagged again. This time I was using a reel with 20 pound test braid, and I thought I could pull the lure loose by, as my mom used to say, "main strength and awkwardness". I leaned back on it and nearly fell out of the canoe when the rod snapped near the butt. "Was that one my rod?" Mary wanted to know. I was my oldest hand-made rod. As if that wasn't enough, I was unable to free the lure, which happened to be one of my last two models of that particular bait, and no longer commercially available. I decided that crankbait fishing wasn't working anyway, so I'd try the lily pads. Mary's rod, the only intact one I had left, wasn't well-suited to the rigors of pad fishing, so I jammed the tip guide back onto the end of the first broken rod, and crimped it tight by laying it on the gunwale of the canoe and banging on it with my pocketknife handle. I tied on a lure I had devised myself for fishing the pads, which just happened to be the only prototype I had with me. On about the fifth cast I had my first strike of the day, an explosion that blew a 3 foot wide hole in the pads. I missed the fish. Three casts later I got my second strike and first fish, a three-pounder. Two casts after that, the lure picked up a bit of a dead pad. I reeled it in and jiggled my rod tip violently to get rid of the debris. Too violently. The line snapped and my lure--a sinking model, of course--went sailing into the only piece of open water in the midst of a huge cluster of lilies. So much for pad fishing. I decided to paddle over to a part of the lake I seldom fished. I figured things couldn't get much worse. Actually, for a while things got better. Using another of my home-made lures, a shallow-running wobbler, I caught a couple of small bass and another three pounder. But then I approached this big pile of brush. There should have been rumblings of doom at this point. I fished the brushpile thoroughly, hung up in it, paddled the canoe over and freed my lure. With the canoe wedged against the brush pile, I made a cast into open water and my lure was engulfed by a very big bass. The fish immediately charged straight toward me, dove headlong into the brush pile, tied a couple of boy scout knots around a limb, and broke free. Not only that, but the shock was too much for my hastily repaired rod tip, and it came loose and slid down the free end of the line into the murky water. So now I was down to Mary's rod and another of my handmade lures. I had, however, discovered a real infestation of good bass, and I quickly caught a 4 pounder and another that was slightly smaller. It seemed to be turning into a great day, in spite of the various mishaps. But I wasn't out of the Twilight Zone yet, and Mary's rod wasn't safe. Another real lunker took the lure just as it dipped beneath the surface, and I set the hooks with lightning reflexes. Unfortunately, my thumb somehow touched the free-spool button on Mary's reel as I reared back on the rod with all my might. FZZZZZZZZ!!!! and I was staring stupidly at a bird's nest a bald eagle would have been proud to use, while the big bass leaped on slack line and tossed the lure back in my lap. I took stock of my equipment. Mary's reel was a hopeless case, but her rod was still intact. I still had two other good reels; all I had to do was transfer one of them to her rod... But her reel had somehow gotten screwed down so tightly onto the rod that it would take a pair of pliers to get it loose. You guessed it. No pliers. As I drove home, I kept looking for the black cloud that had to be following me.

Coldwaterfisher, I like that "new" access at hwy. 21, but they shouldn't have put a boat ramp in, because that stretch of river is simply too small for safe jetboat use, not to mention that it's too small to take a lot of jetboat wakes. I don't run marginal jetboat water, and at normal summer water levels that stretch isn't even marginal. My boat has a 40/30 hp motor, and I definitely wouldn't want much more power than that...I don't need to get anywhere that fast, and I wouldn't have wanted to be going any faster when I hit that rock.

Monday my dad, brother, and I took the jetboat on the lower Meramec. The riffle right below the access is a hairy one with lots of big rocks and not much of a well-defined channel, but I ran it easily going downstream as we started. We fished all morning down below, then motored back up, planning to fish a bit above the access before calling it quits. Coming back upstream, when we reached that riffle it looked different from running it downstream. The approach to the only possible channel, far to the right, had a gravel bar covering most of it that was at most barely deep enough to run, and for some reason while I'd gone over it with no problems going down, I just couldn't hit it at the same place coming back up. But I made it over the shoal with only a slight tick of the gravel, got into the channel, and was feeling pretty good about things... But for some reason, brain fade or whatever, when I reached the top of the riffle I cut toward the middle of the river a little bit too soon. There was this one big rock in the flat glide at the top of the riffle that I just didn't see. It couldn't have been more than an inch or two underwater, but a light wind was putting just enough chop on the water to obscure the evidence of it. I hit it going nearly full speed. The impact threw me out of the seat (kill switches are a good thing!), threw my dad from the seat next to me into a seat I had set up just in front of him atop the live well, and threw my brother from the edge of the front deck into the pedestal of the front butt seat. Dad was okay except for a bruise and scrape on his hand. Brother was okay but for a bruised jaw where it hit the pedestal. I ended up with a bruised hip and elbow from hitting the floor of the boat. Not only that, but the impact also threw one of my loose fitting sandals off, and as I stood up I stepped on a lure and stuck a hook in well past the barb in my big toe. I had to use the rope trick to get it out, using one of my brother's shoe laces. We started up the motor after collecting our wits and nerves, and run on upstream to continue fishing. Everything seemed alright with the boat and motor. When we finished and loaded the boat on the trailer, I checked out the motor...nothing. Then I looked underneath the boat... There was a huge dent, a good two feet across, damaged three of the strakes and indented them about one and a half inches, with the flat bottom of the boat between them indented over a half inch. One strake was pretty well crushed and the aluminum scraped severely. But no holes. The dent was underneath the rear seat, and the rib at the back of the rear seat apparently stopped the rock and made the boat hop on over it. I called the guys at Ernie's where I bought the boat. He said they could beat the dent out, but if it wasn't affecting the performance of the boat I could just let it go. He said they saw boats with worse dents all the time. The boat is a Blazer 1652. Motor is a 40/30 Evinrude. That might give you an idea of how fast I was going wide open. It might also give you a good indication of how tough Blazer boats are! Just a good reason to realize that running Ozark rivers in a jetboat is not the easiest nor the safest thing in the world to do! After owning the boat 2.5 years, this was my first real accident, and it could have been a lot worse.

I've seen wild horses on the Current. I'll preface this by saying that I don't particularly like horses. But as long as they are kept as a relatively small population, I don't have much of a problem with them. The minute, however, that there are enough of them that they start causing problems, I'll be the first to advocate culling them. The feral hogs are definitely much worse at this point. Not only would I like to totally eliminate them, I'd like to eliminate the dimwits that illegally stocked them in several parts of the Ozarks.

There have been spotted bass in Tavern Creek for many years. Chances are that if they haven't colonized the upper reaches by now, they probably won't. On all these smaller streams where spotted bass were not originally native but have invaded, there seems to be a point past which the stream is too clear, too fast, too cool, or something, for them to do well. Below that point they are common, above it they are rare or nearly non-existent. They try to colonize it...in high water periods they will move upstream many miles. But they just don't seem to stick. On the larger rivers it's sometimes a bit different. They tend to take over the lower sections, and the population in the upper sections varies from year to year. But on the Bourbeuse and Big River, the habitat is good for them almost to the headwaters, and they have gradually colonized much of those rivers.

Well, that comes with the territory on the Bourbeuse. It's one of the slowest Ozark rivers, if not THE slowest. Every stretch seems to have some long, dead pools. There's a pool on the Reikers Ford to Mayer's Landing float that is two miles long! And those long, dead pools never seem to produce anything but a few small largemouths.

Phil, while I don't agree with a goodly percentage of what you said, you said it well. If you are a dyed in the wool conservative, you ain't gonna vote for Obama. If you're a dyed in the wool liberal, you ain't gonna vote for McCain. Most people aren't so radically conservative or liberal that they like or hate EVERYTHING about a given candidate, and it becomes a question of which of their stands are most important to you. I've said it before...I THINK I can live with the things I don't agree with about Obama's positions, in order to see the things I DO agree with have a possibility of coming to pass. Maybe I'm wrong. And actually, there is only a LITTLE less that I like about McCain's positions...but some of the stuff I dislike about his stances are a bit more important to ME. And the truth is that I liked him more before he picked Palin, who I absolutely don't like. But we truly are not being well served either by the media or the candidates. The last "debate" was a joke. Nothing substantial said by either candidate, just the simplistic talking points and attacks on the other one. Do they not HAVE any substantial ideas? Does the ridiculously short attention span and fascination with trivia of the American people insure they don't go in depth about anything? Or have elections become nothing but personality contests? We are also not being well served by the internet and by the talk shows, which promulgate lies and half-truths such as many that have cropped up in this election cycle. I've read Obama's book, and I see nothing in the actual words (as opposed to the snippets taken out of context) that indicate he has a problem with white people, for instance. Taxes...nobody likes to pay them. But the fact is, that even with the growth in revenue that we saw with (or in spite of) the Bush tax cuts, we have been running major deficits. It's real easy to say that there is too much wasteful spending, but without looking up the budget figures (I've done it before and it isn't easy to wade through) I believe that TOTAL discretionary spending (not entitlements, military spending, and payment on the debt) equals only about 25 or 30% of the total budget. That included EVERYTHING else, such as spending on national parks, spending on research into alternative energy, and a whole host of other spending on infrastructure and other stuff that most of us would agree is a good thing. So...if you pare that spending to the bone, you STILL don't get to a balanced budget, and the only other thing you can do is cut the military, cut entitlements, or raise taxes. Given that Obama's plan is to raise taxes on people making more than a quarter-million dollars, the theory is that they can absorb the extra taxes and still buy all those durable goods. I'm not sure that's the right cut-off point, especially given the present economic melt-down, but I suspect there IS a cut-off point where that is a reasonable assumption. I'm also not sure that raising taxes on ANYBODY at this point is a good idea with the current economic crisis, and I would hope that if Obama gets into office he and the Democrats will examine the changed situation before following through with their tax plan, and change or postpone it if necessary. I believe, and HOPE, that whoever the next president is, they will listen to smart people and do what is best for ALL Americans. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but the alternative is despair, because things are getting more serious all the time.

Okay, guys, I think we've all done about enough name-calling. I ain't a moderator, but have a little respect for Phil and company and don't give them heartburn. And by the way, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, gotta live with each other after this election is over, and gotta pull together to solve the messes we're in. For better or worse, the two candidates are what we got. Doesn't matter if either of them did something years ago that might have been somewhat distasteful. You can dredge up lots of dirt that has NOTHING to do with their ability to govern and their ideas about present issues, but it shouldn't matter unless you CAN show that first, it's true, and second, that it has a direct bearing on their ability to be the President. McCain's military record 25-35 years ago, and Obama's ties to a guy that was a "terrorist" back when Obama was in grade school, and has been a person who both Republicans and Democrats have worked with and agreed is doing good work in recent years--neither has any bearing on what they believe now, or how fit they are to govern now. Qualifications and stances on the issues are what you should be voting on, and I see plenty of good points and bad points in both of them. Whichever of them wins is going to need a LOT of support to solve our problems.

Polls showing the national results don't mean a thing, since you can win the popular vote and lose the election (Bush vs. Gore comes to mind). The only polls that mean anything are the state by state polls, and the last one I saw shows Obama with a lead over McCain in just about every "battleground" state, in the neighborhood of 5-8 points. I also am looking at polls this year with even more skepticism than usual, because I really believe that there are quite a few people out there who say they are for Obama but in the end won't be able to cast a vote for a black person. And I won't trust the exit polls during the election for the same reason...people who don't want to admit they didn't vote for the black candidate. I'm still thinking it's going to be VERY close.

The "ALL the Appalachians and half the West" was a bit of obvious hyperbole, but right now, enough mountains have been torn down in mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia to equal more than one whole WV county just in the actual land area of the mines, not to mention the streams buried. In the West, it isn't such a huge percentage of total land area, but landscape alterations there are even more obvious. And true clean coal technology is probably going to be expensive. It makes little sense to depend upon fossil fuels unless there is no other way to get the energy we need...no matter what, it's either dirty or it's expensive when we clean it. I'm just danged glad the Ozarks aren't full of coal deposits.

Thing is, the carbon restrictions and meat restrictions not only won't work well, but are not the only choice. The only real choice is to get off the fossil fuel economy by developing other sources of energy, as soon as possible. As for cow farts, I look upon that as more of the "background" greenhouse gas sources. Before there were however many cows in North America that we have now, there was a pretty significant number of bison and other ungulates producing methane. Bison and elk were found all over the U.S. I think we're going to gradually see a reduction in meat production as lifestyles change, but I don't want nor expect there to be mandatory controls on it. I think that's just a scare tactic. I see nuclear power as one part of the solution, hopefully a fairly short term one unless the waste problem can really be solved. The environmentalists who are opposed to nuclear power have valid concerns about the transport and disposal of waste, but personally I think it may be a gamble we have to take. Clean coal also has some promise to be a part of the solution short term, although I'd sure like to see a way to obtain the coal without tearing down ALL of the Appalachians and half of the West.

It will work with the Zebco, but the biggest drawback to the 33 is that it is so slow on the retrieve. In fishing any topwater lure, you want to work the lure through the strike zone, but then reel it back in as quickly as possible once you are through the fish-holding area. Seldom will you actually work the lure more than halfway back through the length of your cast. The trick with walk-the-dog lures is to keep a bit of slack in your line as you twitch the rod tip. Larry's advice is right on, but when you take up the slack line between jerks of the rod, don't take up quite all of it. After each jerk of the rod, the lure should be turned far to one side or the other, and if you take up so much slack that you start to straighten it out, it won't walk right. Once you get the knack of it, you can vary the speed of retrieve from jerk-pause various lengths of time--jerk, to jerk--jerk--jerk as fast as possible. Often, I jerk it on a cadence as fast as two times a second. You can also vary the length and violence of your jerks, from a hard jerk that makes the lure glide several inches off center, to short, gentle jerks that make it zig zag without actually moving sideways. And once you're REALLY good at it, you can alternate hard--soft--hard--soft, which makes the lure go several inches sideways on the zig and only pivot on the zag, which allows it to actually veer far to one side or the other during the retrieve. You can walk it right under an overhanging limb, or around an emerging snag that way. Fun and effective lure to fish, but can be frustrating because some days you'll get a lot of blow-ups on it and few fish hooked, no matter whether you wait to feel them before setting the hook or not. Lots of walk-the-dog lures available these days...you can go high dollar and get some Lucky Craft Sammies or Megabass Dog-Xs, go a little less high dollar and get lures in a whole lot of shapes and sizes that all walk-the-dog. I tend to stick mostly with Sammies these days, but also use the Super Spook Jr. and a couple of older wooden lures. Each makes a different sound. The Spook Jr. has a very loud, hard, knocking rattle, the Sammies have more of a swishing rattle, the wooden ones don't rattle. Some days it makes a difference, other days it doesn't.

Spreading either human waste or animal waste on fields can be a good, reasonably safe use for it...IF done in moderation. But ask the smallmouth anglers on the Shenandoah River in VA what happens when too much of it is spread on river bottom fields. Multiple major fish kills when rain makes it run off into the river. Even if it doesn't kill fish, it contributes to overfertilization of the stream if there is any erosion. So it can be done safely but it takes care and oversight.

Yep, population is the root cause of most environmental problems...that and greed. But I'm not sure we have to be doomed to mining and stripping and wearing out every bit of available resources to feed the hungry maw of an ever-increasing population. TRUE COSTS. If you compute the true costs of everything we do and every product we buy, you'd soon find that a serious effort at recycling would lessen the pressure to mine every available place. However, like I said in another thread, as long as the consumer only pays the sticker price and somebody else, or all of us, pay for the pollution and clean up costs and health costs and loss of salmon runs cost, mining new resources will always trump recycling the same resources. It always seems to me that the farther one gets from a wonderful piece of the world like Alaska, the more they treasure it. The majority of the people who live up there seem to still have the "frontier" mentality, even if they live in Anchorage and their only foray into the wilds outside the city limits is to go moose hunting once a year and snag salmon on the Kenai. "Heck, the resources and wild country up here are unlimited, so let's get every bit of "good" out of it all that we can." They seem to be willing to trade what makes their land unique and intrinsically valuable for whatever short term gain they can get. While those of us who visit the place from ANYWHERE else in the U.S. really see how great it is and what a shame it is to take the chance of wrecking it. It's like a lot of Ozark people who are all for gravel mining and otherwise using the streams any way they see fit. They are too familiar with the rivers and don't see their slow decline, while those who only get on a given river a few times a year can see the changes and treasure the river for what it is, not what it can do to make them money. I've often said that I wish we could temporarily transplant that type of Ozarker to some benighted place like central Kansas for a year or two...I think they'd come back with more appreciation of what we have here. And I wish we could transplant a bunch of Alaskans to...say, Mississippi for a year or two and maybe they'd change their outlook.

Plain white marabou crappie jig. Lots of lures will occasionally catch offbeat species, but the crappie jig will REGULARLY catch anything that eats baitfish, and often stuff you wouldn't THINK would eat baitfish. Here is a list of the species I have actually caught on a marabou jig... smallmouth bass largemouth bass spotted bass rock bass (actually all three species of Ozark rock bass) green sunfish longear sunfish bluegill pumpkinseed black crappie white crappie white bass walleye yellow perch logperch (you might not even know what that is) grass pickerel northern pike channel catfish flathead catfish longnose gar rainbow trout cutthroat trout brown trout creek chub bleeding shiner common shiner carp redhorse sucker and probably a few I'm forgetting.

Bigredbirdfan, about a flat tax... I have no problem with it. I'm not a big fan of our present tax system. It would be interesting to see what kind of percentage the flat tax would be to make it revenue neutral. However, personally I'd prefer a national sales and consumption tax.

It's about 7.5 miles from the bridge on the gravel road that's a quartermile west of the Hwy. 8 bridge to the MDC access at Leadwood. That section suffers from serious livestock overfertilization and subsequent aquatic weed growth, but other than the weeds choking parts of it, the fishing is okay. From the Leadwood Access, it's 2.5 miles to the county landfill access of Hwy. P at the outskirts of Desloge, and another 5 miles to the old Hwy. 67 bridge at Desloge, kinda behind the Wal-mart near the intersection of Hwy. 8 and Hwy. 67. That section suffers the worst from the mine waste.

Sounds good to me, Mark...phone Mary and me.

St. Louis TV weather just said there could be up to 9 inches of rain across much of the area south of St. Louis, Wednesday evening through Friday.

thanks for the info on the issue of gay marriage, Dano...which, of course, shows another outright fallacy in those talking points. Seems to me that way too many people only get their information from a source they already agree with, and take propaganda as truth without doing any digging on their own. Bigredbirdfan...I hadn't really decided before it came down to Obama and Clinton. I liked Biden's intelligence on substantive issues the few times I heard him speak, and I think he might have made my first choice had he survived the early primaries. I think Hillary might have actually made the best President, but I knew she'd probably be too divisive just because of all the people who hate the very name Clinton. Obama was probably third on my list. Obama impressed me in one big way, however. That ability to inspire. To give you a sports analogy, it's one of those "intangibles". Guy might not be the best athlete, but has some quality that makes him succeed. Sure, I'm not happy with Obama's lack of experience. However, there have been some other Presidents with little real experience throughout history...some turned out well, others didn't. Just as some of the Presidents with all kinds of military, legislative, and executive experience did well, others didn't. In my opinion, there is NO prior experience that can prepare you for the unique job of the Presidency. (Of all the early candidates, Hillary probably had the most valuable experience because she had already spent 8 years in the White House and would know exactly how things worked.) It really depends upon the people you surround yourself with, and how willing you are to listen to all the experts and all the viewpoints, and then come to an intelligent decision. Other than that, there are a lot of issues upon which the President can have a direct effect, but a lot of others where a President has to have the people and the legislature behind him to get it done. A successful leader is one who can inspire people to do what he thinks needs to be done, and sway them to his viewpoint. Whichever of these men that wins, he's going to have to get people to work together to solve the pressing problems we have. Party ideology just doesn't help. McCain HAS worked "across the aisles", so it would be interesting to see if he kind of pulls back from the hard-core conservatives if elected and shows that ability. Obama, I think, has the potential to do so--whether he actually would once elected is, as with McCain, a gamble. As for the old history about Bill Clinton that jd brought up...after I found out that Clinton lied, yes, I had much less respect for him as a man. But, here's a thought...from pretty much the time he first took office, there were elements of the "opposition" who were out to damage him in any way they could. First it was an old real estate deal, then it morphed through several configurations and finally ended up investigating his...sex life? Please, tell me exactly WHY the country ended up spending millions on investigating this? In my opinion, investigating a sitting President for things having nothing to do with his present job, unless they are so obviously criminal that they really COULD make a huge difference in how he governs the country, shows little regard for the welfare of the country. All it does is weaken and distract the President from doing his job. Do you think it might have made a difference in how Clinton reacted to the early actions of bin Laden and company had he not been both distracted by all the investigations AND lacking the support of the vast majority of people in the country at that point on that issue. Do you honestly think that Clinton could have REALLY done what was necessary to get bin Laden...send in an invasion force into a sovereign country or at least seriously bomb the heck out of a sovereign country, without getting crucified by the public, the media, and the Republicans? It took 9-11 to show the public the true threat. Up until then, it was some ragheads on some far shore blowing up some people in the eyes of many. And no, I was not in favor of investigating President Bush for anything not directly related to his actions and job performance as President, either.

The simplest way to do it is to go to the Missouri DNR webpage, click on "divisions and programs", on that page click on "water pollution control branch", and on that page click on "report an environmental problem". There is a form to fill out there to report it. It would help if you can get several other people to do the same thing...the more reports they get, the more likely they are to inspect it. Understand the DNR is badly understaffed with inspectors, so it is far from certain that they'll actually investigate anything.

And I agree with Dano. You will not see me calling McCain anything but McCain if not Sen. McCain. You will have never seen me call President Bush anything but that, or occasionally just "Bush" for shorthand, even though I think his policies have been wrong many, many times and his prosecution of the war in Iraq has been incompetent at times. As candidates for President, McCain and Obama both deserve respect, and whichever one gets into office also deserves respect for the man and the office. You can vehemently disagree on policies and actions, but in my opinion the personal attacks on the President weakens the country. And no, I too do not think Obama is the best thing since sliced bread. Nor do I think McCain would be the worst thing to happen. Truth is, Obama was not my first choice among Democrats, and McCain WAS my first choice among Republicans. It's just that on the issues that matter to me, the Democrats are closer to my views on more of them than the Republicans are, and I also don't like the way McCain has pandered to the strongly conservative base of his party since this election cycle started, when before he really was somewhat at odds with them and deserved his reputation as a maverick.

Okay, let's examine that stuff a little more closely. Obama opposes off-shore drilling in principle but would consider allowing it if that is what it takes to get a comprehensive energy plan passed that stresses the development of alternative, sustainable energy sources. McCain was against it until the recent gasoline price increases, which convinced (wrongly) the majority of people in this country that more drilling would equal low gasoline prices. Which stance seems more intelligent? Appointing judges...that's so subjective and simplistic it's laughable. Funny how whenever judges make a ruling that goes against what you want them to rule, they are legislating from the bench. Funny that our present Supreme Court, which now leans toward the conservative side, made a single ruling that conservatives didn't like, suddenly THEY were legislating from the bench, even though in the previous few rulings they had all garnered praise from conservatives for strictly following the Constitution. You might as well say what you're REALLY concerned about when it comes to the court...McCain will attempt to appoint judges that will overturn Roe v. Wade, Obama won't. One served in the armed forces, the other didn't. That might make a difference in how they lead, might not. You might as well throw in McCain's POW experience, which certainly shows him to be courageous and deserves great respect, but I agee with whoever it was who said that it doesn't in itself qualify him to be President. Time served in Senate. Hmm...it certainly points out the legislative experience or lack of same. But it's funny how, whenever somebody from the party you don't like served a long time in the Senate, it's a bad thing because they are part of the good ol' boy network, etc. Socialized health care plan--"socialized" is another buzzword that means little or nothing...I bet most people couldn't even define it other than that it's bad. Study the specifics of both candidate's proposals, ask yourself which one will accomplish the most, and make an informed decision. Abortion--like it or not, this isn't a black and white issue except to the fringes on both sides. If the vast majority of the people felt the same about it, it wouldn't be an issue. But as Lilley said, it's a deal maker to some. If you're very strongly anti-abortion, you'll vote for McCain, period. Pulling troops out...Funny how our current President's ideas on the subject are starting to look a bit more like Obama's, and Obama's a bit more like McCain's. The realities of the situation, including the views of the current Iraqi government, are such that it's looking more and more like we've done about all we can in Iraq and even the "good" Iraqis are wanting us to start pulling out. The reality also is that we CAN'T pull out immediately (and even Obama didn't say immediately--he wouldn't and couldn't pull all the troops out the day after he took the oath of office). (In my opinion, the reality also is that it's questionable just how long we can remain at anything like current levels in Iraq, on both a purely economic note and an armed forces note. The billions per day we're spending in Iraq simply cannot be kept up indefinitely withour raising the deficit so far through the roof our grandchildren will still be paying it off. And to put it bluntly, we're wearing our army out. I don't like to see us leave with Iraq still in its present state, but you just gotta wonder whether we CAN turn Iraq into a stable government that won't be an enemy in the near future.) Gun ownership rights--a simple "no" adjacent to Obama is patently ridiculous. Obama came out in favor of the recent Supreme Court decision that did a lot to affirm the second amendment. While he sees a need for restrictions on guns in urban areas, he has said that such restrictions aren't needed in rural areas. Personally, I don't see what can really be done in urban areas to curtail the availability of firearms beyond what is already being done, without seriously affecting non-criminal gun owners. So I don't totally agree with Obama's viewpoint, but again, it's not as clear-cut and bad as "no". Supports homosexual marriage--in some ways this is semantics. I admit I don't really know exactly what each candidate believes or how they have voted, and since this is an issue that is so far down the list of importance to me, I don't care how they voted. My own viewpoint is that it's neither productive nor desirable to allow gays to "marry" in the traditional sense, church sanctioned, etc. And no church should ever be required to "marry" them, although if a church wants to for purely symbolic purposes, they should be allowed to. But commited gay couples should be allowed to enjoy the civil privileges that marriage bestows on hetero couples, so some sort of secular union should be available to them. Just don't call it marriage. Proposed programs will require a huge tax increase...not so simple. But see taxes below. The last two, I don't know the validity of. Taxes--I would refer you to the Snopes link from Okieflyfisher in the Obama born in Kenya? thread. Suffice it to say that there are some serious distortions in the figures listed for taxes, and that if you make less than something like 200 grand a year, Obama's plan WON'T raise your taxes.