Questions from the Carpool

I have a 90 minute total commute to drop off my son at childcare/preschool. In that time, I get to 'surf' the morning political talk shows. Here are a few questions about the current political races and campaigns.

1. John McCain encouraged an audience at Annapolis to get more involved. However, wasn't it he who created and passed the largest curbing of free speech via the McCain/Feingold bill?

2. At the average American high school, only 50% of students actually graduate with a diploma. Two questions: 1) where are all those kids going, working, living? and 2) where are the Congressional hearings into this national tragedy? (Tammy Bruce, on the Laura Ingraham Show this morning put it far more eloquently than I, "If the Superintendents of all the Districts were taking steroids or were doused in oil, maybe we would have hearings on the Hill.")

3. We actually get only 13% of our oil from arab nations. The largest percentage (nearly 48%) is from Canada. So does true energy independence mean putting our neighbor (and arguably the 52nd state) into an economic disaster? Why are we the only nation, yes kids, the only nation to not significantly drill within our own borders or on our shores? China drills off our gulf coast. We don't. They don't care about the species of fish potentially harmed. Frankly, neither do I.

4. Rep. Cleaver is quoted as saying white people are voting for Obama because he is articulate. “I think for many white Americans, they are looking at Barack Obama and saying ‘This is our chance to demonstrate that we have been able to get this boogeyman called race behind us,’” Cleaver said. “And so they are going to vote for him, whether he has credentials or not, whether he has any experience — I think all that’s out the window.” Are white people so eager to have race no longer be a factor in public discourse that they would elect someone with less than in depth credentials? Having race not be a factor, isn't that at the heart of the civil rights movement?

5. At the brilliant blog vehementlydeny.blogspot.com (check it out regularly for a dash o' random brilliance), there is a post Everyone Should Have A Say about the silence at a party relating to the fight between Clinton and Obama. To comment is to risk being viewed as racist or sexist. So instead, there is silence. My question is this, would Hilary Clinton be where she is if she were Bob Smith? Would Barack Obama be where he is if he were John Smith, a white, junior Senator from Illinois?

6. What's the point?