http://www.asq.org/learn-about-quality/decision-making-tools/overview/decision-matrix.html
free trade, taxes, government spending, government intervention, foreign policy, health care were listed originally as criteria for voting.
I would add:
Apparently a lot of people care about America’s image in foreign countries, I don’t have a clue about what other countries think about McCain.

Health care; neither candidates seems to care about controlling health costs, only making sure that no matter the cost people get some kind of support so they can afford it.

Can the candidate represent my viewpoint:  I have extreme doubts about McCain, and I liked very much what Obama said about personal repsonbibilties early in the campaign, although it pretty much disappeared in the campaign.  Leaders in the black community were extremly uncomfortable with it, and I suspect that the view is not representative of a pretty large swath of teh black community, who I expect to vote nearly uniformly for Obama because he’s black.  Obama’s committment to the campaign when the financial crisis erupted indicates that his priorities are not mine.  Obama’s history of association with persons who are actively engaged against my priorities is not a good sign.

re: "utter disillusionment with the Bush administration and the war," apprvoal ratings for Congress are lower than Bush’s and yet it appears that there is not going to be a change in Congressional leadership.  Ignoring the black factor is dumb.  Clearly a very large fraction of voters are goign to vote for Obama just because he’s black.

Crap, it’s all over. 500 electoral votes for Obama, 59% of the popular vote, Dems pick up 30 seats in the Senate and 100 in the House.

Damn you Dick Morris!

In neither case did they have any real air force or leadership.  A reference as simple as Wikipedia will make this clear.  For more detail, I would recommend Victor Hanson.

just as a note. USSR industries were beyond the Ural mountains – out of range for any plane of period departing – let say fr Berlin (round trip w/o refuel)

Not insurmountable if we held airfields in Prague, Warsaw or points east.  Also, that distance is a much bigger problem for the Soviets than for the West in our putative war– that’s a hugely extended supply line and our aircraft would have made resupply very, very painful even before they started demolishing their factories.  Their tanks would be immobilized.

Syria is Baas party controlled – secular and semi socialist – definitely anti-fundamentalist, anti Al Qaeda…

Yet strangely enough, not sufficiently anti-AQ to stop the flow of jihadis into Iraq.  They seem to feel the enemy of their enemy is, at least, worthy of turning a blind eye.

I heard the same argument made endlessly re Iraq, but people seem to forget Saddam offered bin Laden asylum.

One thing that I should clear out is that both China and Vietnam were indigenous movements

No, definitely not.  In both cases, as with Korea, there was critical support from other Communists, and of course the philosophy was not native to either country, any more than liberal democracy was to the many places it has spread.  Communism was always an international movement, never indigenous (outside of Russia, of course), and always backed by force, not consent of the governed.  No country has ever voluntarily voted in a Communist majority government, though some elected significant pluralities.

i don’t have it but i know it is available
enjoy

Syria is Baas party controlled – secular and semi socialist – definitely anti-fundamentalist, anti Al Qaeda…we should try to cultivate their cooperation

McCain, I fear, will continue the same "shoot from the hip" foreign policy until one day he gets us in a really big mess with somebody of our size…

Scott…the last pitch is on tuesday. until then nothing is certain

Obama/Biden 2008!!!!

Damn.

;)

just as a note. USSR industries were beyond the Ural mountains – out of range for any plane of period departing – let say fr Berlin (round trip w/o refuel)

One thing that I should clear out is that both China and Vietnam were indigenous movements – they were not caused by the USSR although from some point on the USSR supported them morally and some with some arms. But the Chinese Communists first took in an immense arsenal when Japan surrendered its forces in China and later on, as the civil war progressed, captured/bought a lot materiel we had given to Chiang’s army.

The French maintained some balance in Indochina until 1950 but once China began helping the VietMinh, things went downhill. But the Soviets had very little involvement. Most of the aid came from China and the VietMinh "heavy" divisions trained in Yunan. The artillery used by the VM at Dien Bien Phu was made in the USA. NV got more Soviet aid in their war against us.

I loved Saigon…that bend of the Mekong is so beautiful…

I think you fall in the rather common thing of underestimating nations that we don’t see as equal to us. Serious mistake. I mean your closing dream is good but just that…a dream

Again, people have this strange idea that Stalin was negotiating in good faith.  This is the same thinking that led to Neville Chamberlain handing over Czechoslovakia and declaring peace in our time.

Stalin had no intention of getting along. Just like Hitler his plan was always to seize everything he could.  Negotiation was only employed when he was too weak to attack, and he never lived up to any agreement where it was inconvenient.

The Russians had faced and defeated almost 200. Their armor was vast and infinitely superior to ours

Russian competence is another strangely enduring myth.  It’s true the T-34 was a good tank (probably the best in the world) and they had many of them, but nevertheless even in victory they lost many times more tanks and men than the Germans.  They were poorly led due to Stalin’s purges, poorly disciplined, had little to no unit-level initiative, and their logistics were a nightmare.  Something like 2/3 of their six-wheel trucks were actually made and provided by America.  They had no air force to speak of.

A tank is only useful as long as it can be supplied with fuel and fire at enemies on the ground.

Had it come to war, our attack planes would have decimated their armor and supply lines from the sky while our bombers devastated their industrial base, just as happened in Japan and Germany.  It might have been very difficult, but Russia could not have hoped to win such a conflict — and you can be sure if they thought otherwise they would have tried to march straight to the Atlantic. 

And if all else failed, we had nuclear weapons and they didn’t.

Barbarossa proved the Russians’ only real quality, aside from tanks, was quantity.

We handed them Poland and Czechoslovakia when we probably could have held them without open war. At the very least, we could have forced them to hold free elections, which would have ratified their Western alignment.

Now consider what the last 60 years would look like with no Soviet Union, or at least a very weakened Soviet state. Eastern Europe free, China never falls to Communism, no Vietnam War, no Korean War, no Communist Cuba, no Communist efforts in Central America, no mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan and later becoming Al Qaeda… I don’t know if we should ahve invaded the Soviet Union in 1945, but clealy things might have been a lot better in the 20th if we had.

First off, much of Eastern Europe was not part of the Soviet Union in 1945.  Had Patton been allowed to get to Prague, it would have created facts on the ground before the Iron Curtain fell.

Ah, I see. You are talking about the restraints imposed at Yalta, not about Patton’s idea re: rearming the Wermacht and attacking the Soviet Union which seems to come up when the final days of the war are discussed.

Had Patton surged ahead, all it would have done would be to further antagonize Stalin in an already tense situation, and Patton would have had to retreat to the agreed upon line anyway.

Secondly, it’s fair to say the Soviet Union attacked the western Alllies in 1945 (and quite successfully).  Remember, the war started over Britain’s pledge to defend Poland; they were the original Allied nations.  Stalin promised free elections in Poland, which would have allowed them to align with the West (where they wanted to be), but reneged on that promise and essentially took Poland from the Allies by force.

Looked at in a skewed way, that might be true. But it is completely irrelevant. Europe in 1945 was a good example of realpolitick, and if the Soviet Union wanted Poland, well, it pretty much got it.You didn’t really answer the question though. Let’s put it this way: are you one of those people who thinks that the West should have either risked, or entered war with the Soviet Union in 1945?