By the same logic, Obama should have decided not to run. Besides, you know absolutely nothing about him.
Obviously, both Obama and McCain chose vice-president candidates from mainly populist reasons. Reasonably, one can argue that Obama may have considered practical reasons and administrative strengths to his candidacy, while McCain obviously considered mainly the emotional issues and especially concern for conservative values. I think this is the bare essence of the choice for both of them.
Nice try. Here's what I know. Many key democrats have wholeheartledly endorsed Obama AFTER they got to know him and where he stands. The Republicans were sandbagged by McCain with Palin and scurried to circle their wagons. They were cheering BEFORE they knew anything of consequence about her. Which endorsement strikes you as the more genuine?
Yours, which borders ours and accounts for almost 90% of our exports. Yeah, it's kinda important to us, too, that you guys fare well.
Couldn't disagree with you more - either on the grounds of science and mathematical logic or according to my religion, Christianity. From a human perspective, something is either true or false, equal or not equal, good or evil (according to one's definition of good), etc etc. This duality is then taken over by true monotheistic religion, but let's not go there now. Yes, we, being human, can consider intermediate states, like "I don't know" or "almost equal" or "not too bad" but these are constructs of indecision, lack of information, or opportunity, inferior to the truth to which they ultimately yield. Btw, my religion (and all of the great ones, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc) is not authoritative or controlling - that's a total misunderstanding of what the great religions of the world stand for. They aspire to be maps to personal fulfilment, that's all. If someone on the road tells you that the next gas station is 10 miles away, is he controlling you or is he trying to help you with the truth as he knows it?
Yannis, I won't push you on what you mean about "truth", since the last thread on that got deleted even here - which is pretty rare for this forum... However, on bivalence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_bivalence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat And then on the gas-station example ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism#Criticisms_of_consequentialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(social_sciences) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#Criticism_and_defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox I really couldn't say as to the motives of the stranger... could you? (Yannis, please don't chicken out of answering this.)