Scary Stuff...

The Bay of Pigs was a real piece of work, too. The Iranians are nothing like Cubans, and don't need Russian backing. (Sometime during the last year or two Israel had recently approached Bush with concerns and a plan to "deal with Iran", but Bush told them he was having nothing to do with it. This means that, because Israel cannot ignore the problem of a country that wants them to disappear, whomever becomes POTUS will be forced to deal with the problem. I expect Obama to stick to his word of "aggressive diplomacy" in the region.)

Nixon only got caught with the phonetapping and recording, but Kennedy had done it as well.

Seamaiden said:

What was JFK most famous for? How he inspired people. We've grown up, those of us born in the 60s, with this image of this great man who could do no wrong. Yet, nothing could have been further from the truth, from phone/wiretapping to getting us into wars and conflicts we had no business engaging in.

This was my effort to keep it succinct. How'd I do?

Does "community service" equal "charity", though? I mean, sure, at first blush one might assume so. But for me, upon closer inspection, this is not a necessary part of the construct. It's "service to the community". As for making it mandatory... I like it for criminal sentencing purposes, I'd have to chew on the concept for those taking grant monies, say, because I think that what might result of their education or whatever they do with those monies would be the repayment itself. Hm, so far, not lookin' so good.

Click to expand...

Nice and to the point, but I don't expect people to be succinct if they are explaining something, especially when I'm generally interested. Think I can convince you to send me a more detailed description of JFKs flaws in a PM?

As far as the comments on the "Community service" verse "Charity" thing. Yeah, you are probably right on the two things being separate, but can we really expect people that back Obama to view them as separate? Aren't they already trying to make paying taxes look like charity look like helping the community? Never mind that they still have yet to come up with a solid logical explanation as to how they propose fo taxes to really help the community if the money they take in taxes is spent in Washington D.C. (which hasn't helped Washington D.C.) or outside of the communites where it is taken.

Though, I think you are dead on about questioning the validity of having community service as requirement for accepting federal grants. In some public schools and private schools the grant money really isn't sufficient to cover the tuition, and thus it is necessary for the student to work while going to school, and then there's the burden of homework. So when is the student going to do this community service? When they are sleeping?