2008.08.31
Discuss Saturday and Sunday's local commentary
Our votes will matter
By Churchill Robison
Robison of Roanoke has worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Now that the Olympics are over, we can focus on our own political domestic Olympics, otherwise known as the presidential race, which, like the Olympics, we hold every four years. But with the prelude of the presidential primaries, the race seems never ending, perhaps explaining why most of us slept during this year's marathon, now in the home stretch between John McCain and Barack Obama. However, with the Democratic convention over and the Republican convention starting, the sprint to the finish is about to begin.
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How will you spend your retirement?
By Helen Ardan
Ardan provides life-planning seminars to assist people who are planning for retirement. She lives in Roanoke.
The Roanoke Times has presented a comprehensive review of the second stage of retirement, the years when illness and worn-out bodies or minds begin to have a major impact on independence and vitality (Beth Macy's occasional series "Age of Uncertainty"). It is scary and depressing. None of us want to burden our children or spouses with having to go through this.
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A Regular Joe found in Biden
By Bill Larson
Larson, of Rockbridge Baths, is a first-year law student and 2008 graduate of Washington and Lee. He was on the steering committee for the 2008 Mock Convention.
Sen. Joseph Biden is a Regular Joe. Thirty-five years as senator have prepared Biden to be vice president and familiarized him with Washington, but Biden has never forgotten the people back home. The Obama campaign will tell, and the media will repeat, the story that Biden returns home every night from Washington and that he knows the names of the conductors and ticket takers on the Amtrak trains.
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AIDS prevention depends on knowing who has it
Pam Meador
Meador is the director of the Drop-In Center, a program of the Council of Community Services in Roanoke.
Every 12 seconds another person contracts HIV.
Every 16 seconds another person dies from AIDS.
Read more.
Read Sunday's letters here.
Read Saturday's letters here.
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Biden,(see Mackensie in todays Times Dispatch):
The National Journal, a liberal group, listed Obama the senate's No. 1 liberal senator, Kennedy No. 2, and Biden No. 3.
Biden is just another "inside-the-Beltway" politician.
In 1991, Biden voted against the war to remove Hussein from Kuwait. In 2002, he voted for the resolution for the 2003 invasion of Iraq which Obama says he would have voted against.
Biden and Obama opposed the surge and refuse to admit that it has worked.
Biden and Obama oppose offshore drilling to help achieve independence from foreign oil.
If Obama wanted a VP with ties to Pennsylvania's small town voters who Obama disdained as "clinging to guns and religion," he should have picked the senator who won the PA primary, Hillary Clinton.
Biden is a plagiarist. In law school he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote. In 1988, he plagiarized a speech by British Labor Party MP Neil Kinnock.
Biden quotes:
"Obama is not ready to be president."
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."
"... you cannot go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."
Regarding John Bolton's nomination as undersecretary of State: "My problem with you, over the years, has been you're too competent. I mean, I would rather you be stupid and not very effective."
Upon withdrawing from the nomination race after gettng less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, Biden said: "This is about celebrity. You've never given any of us a chance. You know in your heart I'm more qualified than any of these guys up top."
Comment by John R — August 31, 2008 @ 1:16 pm