Election Night - Part 5 - 11:00 hour

- 11:00PM: Well, ABC just said they are projecting Barack Obama to be the winner and will be the next President of the United States. YEAH! YAHOO!!!! Great job, America! I'm so proud of this country right now!

- 11: 03PM: ABC is projecting California, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii to Obama and that's how they can project Obama's win. He would have 284 with all of those wins. YEAH!

- 11:05PM: ABC also added Virginia to Obama's column. He has 297 now.

- 11:14PM: Colorado has also gone to Obama. He's over 300 at 306.

- 11:16PM: Obama has also won Florida. That's 27 more votes. He's up to 336. It's officially a rout. Maybe the Republicans will get that the rest of the country thinks that they don't get it? Thank GOD Sarah Palin can just go back to Alaska now...

- 11:18PM: John McCain is giving his concession speech right now. Thank GOD this is over... but he's being very gracious right now, as you would expect. Kudos to you John... although your crowd is being rather rude, booing him whenever he mentions Obama and Biden. I think he's been prepared for this for a while as he made this long speech rather soon after the race was decided.

- 11:36PM: Nevada has joined the parade. The total is now 341.

- 11:38PM: The only states not called so far are North Carolina, Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, and Montana. It doesn't matter. It's over. Obama won. I'm happy. :D

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So there you have it everyone. Our next President will be Barack Obama. I know there are McCain supporters out there who won't be happy about this but I truly believe this was the right decision for America. So if you are scared, angry, confused, or depressed, don't be. Things are going to be good now. And if they're not, we'll vote the bum out in 4 years. ;)

CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA!

Election Night - Part 4 - 10:00 hour

- 10:01PM: ABC is projecting Obama to win Iowa and McCain for Utah (no surprise). It's 207 to 135. If you add California's 55 votes, Obama would have 262. He's very close...

- 10:15PM: Obama is now leading in close races in Indiana and Virginia. Woo hoo!

- 10:28PM: Not much happening right now...

- 10:40PM: McCain gets South Dakota. That's 3 votes. He also picked up 5 votes somewhere at it's now 207 to 141. I'm guessing he got Nebraska as well. Or maybe that was adding West Virginia...

- 10:44PM: No specifics were given, but it's being reported that the Democrats will maintain control in the House of Representatives. With the expected majority to be on the Dems side in the Senate as well, this bodes very well for Obama and the Democrats. They're going to have full control for a while.

- 10:59PM: This hour is ending with not much happening...

Election Night - Part 3 - 9:00 hour

- 9:00PM: Obama wins New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. McCain gets Kansas, North Dakota, Georgia, and Wyoming. The tally is now 174 to 76 in Obama's favor. Less than 100 electoral votes to go...

- 9:13PM: Maine divides up it's Congressional votes based on who wins each precinct. Obama won all four.

- 9:14PM: Wow. Virginia is a battle. Only 30,000 votes are currently separating McCain and Obama with McCain currently leading. But there are a lot of important districts who have not reported yet that could swing things Obama's way. Stay tuned!...

- 9:18PM: Obama is still leading in Florida. That's a huge one. Lots of electoral votes to be won there.

- 9:24PM: Looking at things, ... if things keep going the way they look now and Obama wins California (almost a given), Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio ... that's 117 electoral votes. Say hello President Obama!

- 9:25PM: MSNBC just projected Obama to win Ohio. That's pretty much a given sign that he's going to win. I'm getting giddy!

- 9:26PM: It's now 195 to 76 in Obama's favor. This is turning into a runaway...

- 9:34PM: So let's look at things... right now Obama has 195 electoral votes. He's definitely going to win California, which is 55 votes, which would give him 250. That means he would only need 20 more to win the election. He's leading in Florida (28) and North Carolina (15). He's expected to do well in Oregon (7), Washington (11), Nevada (5), and Colorado (9). He has many different paths to victory... which seems almost certain now.

- 9:37PM: Obama is projected to win New Mexico, adding 10 more votes and taking him to 200, making it 200 to 90.

- 9:39PM: McCain just added a bunch of states: Texas and West Virginia. It's 200 to 124, Obama.

- 9:52PM: McCain gets Mississippi. That's 6 votes.

- 9:54PM: McCain also picked up Louisiana. 200 to 139...

- 9:59PM: Moving to the 10:00 hour...

Election Night - Part 2 - 8:00 hour

- 8:00PM: OK, a bunch of projections are just coming in. Obama has won Pennsylvania (way to go!), New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, and Illinois. McCain has won Oklahoma, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The count on ABC has changed to Obama's advantage, 102 to 34. Woo hoo! We're on our way...

- 8:03PM: Obama is currently leading in Florida, which is HUGE! He's also leading large in North Carolina. Yes!

- 8:06PM: ABC is talking about how the PA win is so big for Obama and a big disappointment for McCain. How wonderful. Thank you, Pennsylvania! I knew you wouldn't let me down!

- 8:09PM: On CNN.com, they currently have Obama up HUGE in Ohio. That's ENORMOUS. Yes!

- 8:31PM: McCain is picking up Alabama and Arkansas. Score is now 102 to 49, advantage Obama.

- 8:33PM: Elizabeth Dole has lost her Senate seat in North Carolina. Serves her right for calling her opponent "Godless".

- 8:53PM: Not much has been happening this hour... zzzzzzzzzzz....

- 8:54PM: A lot of states are closing coming up at 9:00. We should have a lot of results soon...

Election Night - Part 1 - 7:00 hour

- 7:14PM: ABC is projecting Vermont for Obama and Kentucky for McCain. So far it's 8 Electoral Votes for McCain, 3 for Obama. Not a great start, but those results were expected. Hopefully things stay as they were expected.

- 7:18PM: The Democrats picked up a seat in Virginia. They are in the +1 column for Senate seats so far tonight.

- 7:22PM: Obama is down in Virginia right now, 47% to 53%. I hope it doesn't stay that way...

- 7:36PM: Obama is currently leading in the popular vote by about 100,000. Keep it going!...

- 7:54PM: McCain is projected to win South Carolina. He's up 16 to 3 right now on Obama. That's another state that's not a suprise. But come on...

Election Night Coverage

I just got home from a dinner out. I'm watching Election Coverage on ABC tonight and I'll be switching around occasionally to see what's going on the on the other channels. So stay tuned! I'll try to post every hour to update things.

My final arguments... a summary of my thoughts...

Here we are. One day away from selecting the 44th President of the United States of America. We've come a LOOOOOOONG way.

I started this blog two months ago. My reason: I was hearing and seeing a lot of things that concerned me that I was seeing happening in the election with regards to false statements and flat out lies. I wanted to try to do something to point out what was going on and make sure people were aware.

My intention was to point out the bad form of both sides, but the more I watched and read and researched, the more it became clear to me that the majority of the offenses were from the Republican side. I had been pretty sure I was voting for Barack Obama but seeing and hearing all of this just cemented my position and put me in the mind set that I had to try to do something to get Obama elected. I'm hoping this blog has helped somehow.

So it comes down to this. Tomorrow is Election Day. This is my last shot to try to write something compelling to convince any final undecideds that Obama is the right person for the job of President this election cycle. So that's what I'm going to try to do.

Here's my arguments:

• Obama wants to lower middle-class taxes for almost everyone in the country. McCain wants to lower taxes for the most wealthy Americans. So Obama is looking out for the majority of Americans, McCain is only looking out for the wealthy minority.
  
  Unless you are making more than $250,000 a year, and just about everyone who is reading this post does not make that much, you should want to vote for Obama. It will save you a lot of money in taxes every year.
  
• Obama wants to setup a health care system that will help almost all Americans get coverage. He mandates coverage for children and wants to prevent health insurance companies from being able to reject applicants because of past illnesses.
  
  McCain wants to tax employee based health care for the first time in American history. Then he wants to give a $5000 tax credit to families to buy health insurance but the average health plan costs $12000 a year. Which means if you try to buy family health insurance, you'll be responsible for covering almost $600 a month to pay for it. Can you afford that? I know I can't.
  
  In other words, while Obama wants to lower costs and help everyone get coverage, McCain wants to make it more difficult and complicated and far more expensive.
  
• McCain calls Obama a socialist for offering tax cuts to people, which makes no sense to me. How is providing a tax cut to working Americans socialism? Another example of how McCain just doesn't get it. This can only help the economy because it put money back in the pockets of consumers to help them spend it and help struggling businesses. Why do you think so many businesses are struggling these days? Because no one has money to spend.
  
  McCain also says we shouldn't be raising any taxes right now, referring to Obama's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire and allow the tax rates for the wealthiest 2% of Americans to go back to where they were before the cuts were implemented. (Although the Republicans would have you believe that Obama plans to raise everyone's taxes, which is just not true.) But then McCain's going to tax all of our health benefits for the first time in American history. Anyone see a contradiction here?
  
• Obama wants to responsibly end the Iraq War for two reasons: 1. to focus on Afghanistan where the terrorists really are and 2. to stop spending BILLIONS of American tax dollars in Iraq and start spending them here in America! Even the Iraqis want us to plan to leave and Bush and Rice are working with them to establish a plan.
  
  McCain has no plans to leave Iraq and has said he'd be happy to stay there for 100 years.
  
  The war in Iraq needs to end. There is so much that we could be doing with the money being spent there to create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, and help the people in THIS country. I do not believe Obama will just abandon the Iraqis at the end of some pre-determined date. He will do it responsibly (he has said so) and will let conditions dictate how we leave. But McCain would just have us stay there forever. Want to know why our economy sucks? Spending billions in Iraq is a major reason.
  
• Sarah Palin.
  
  What can I say about this woman that I haven't already?
  
  You can read my posts about here by clicking the links below:
  - http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/09/palin-backstabber.html
  - http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-want-to-get-back-to-original-point-of.html
  - http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/palin-is-bad-mom.html
  
  Those are a few of the things I've written about her. You can search through my posts if you'd like to see more details of what I think about Sarah Palin.
  
  But what it comes down to is that Palin is not ready to be President if called upon to do so. People say they like her because she's one of us. Would you want your neighbor to be President? Do you think they'd be ready to deal with the problems our country faces and deal with international issues? Do you trust this woman to do what's best for everyone or just what she thinks based on her own super-religious views? (And that's not a knock on religion. But I believe politicians' decisions should not be based solely on religion as not everyone is religious. And too many of her views and statements are based in her religion. Ever hear of separation of church and state?)
  
  This is a woman who could not tell you what newspapers she reads, name a Supreme Court verdict, back her running mate up by giving one example of when McCain fought for more regulation, and thinks Alaska's proximity to Russia makes her experienced in foreign affairs. She does a great job of bashing Obama but really can't tell you anything positive she and McCain would do for the country (this is all she's been doing for weeks). She also says some of the most ridiculous things you could imagine (Obama's a socialist, hangs with terrorists, etc.)
  
  At the VP debate, she avoided half of the questions by spewing rhetoric and bringing up topics unrelated to the questions. Is this how she would deal with foreign dignitaries? What would she do when she has to deal with real problems and can't just give some talking points some campaign staffer wrote for her? She couldn't handle Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. And they wouldn't let her talk to Brian Williams for more than 10 minutes alone. For most of the campaign she avoided reporters and still has not given a press conference on the eve of Election Day. If she can't deal with reporters, how can you possibly believe she can deal with real issues, real problems?
  
  The possibility of this woman being President (not too unrealistic given McCain's age and health history) scares me to death. She cannot be put into this position.
  
  This is the type of person McCain picked as his first decision for a major cabinet position. Who else would he put into important cabinet positions? This shows extreme bad judgement.
  
• For all of the talk of Obama's supposed illicit relationships, none of them have been proven to be of any substance. It's all pretty much speculation, nothing proven and nothing to show that any of these relationships have had any negative impact or influence on Obama and his mindset.
  
  On the other hand, McCain and Palin have had many more troubling and direct connections to shady characters.
  - Charles Keating was a close friend of McCain's and was convicted of defrauding investors of millions. McCain even went to bat for him to try to ward off investigators.
  - Phil Gramm is McCain's close friend and economic advisor. He was directly responsible for our current economic crisis by pushing through legislation that deregulated the financial and banking industries.
  - Todd Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, an organization that wanted to secede from the United States. Sarah addressed and attended meetings for this organization on several occasions.
  
  You can read more about both of their troubling associations here http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-lets-talk-about-mccains-staff.html and here http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/obamas-character.html.
  
  So while Obama's supposed controversial associations are not proven to be anything more than speculation, McCain's and Palin's are proven to be much more troubling and real.
  
• John McCain has proven himself to be erratic, indecisive, and to have poor judgement. He "suspended" his campaign to deal with the financial crisis, did nothing to help it, attended the first debate after he said he wouldn't if the financial package was not approved (which it wasn't at the time), and then never said that he was restarting his campaign. He's changed his positions several times. He's always been a de-regulator but has now been pushing for regulation of the financial industries. He's always believed in allowing businesses to fend for themselves but now wants to push through a plan to buy bad mortgages to help banks and lenders at the taxpayers expense.
  
  (Let me talk about that last sentence for a minute. Do you understand what he wants to do here? Buy up bad mortgages, allow homeowners to refinance at current home values, and have taxpayers pay for the difference. Do you want to pay for someone else's mortgage while you are stuck paying your own mortgage at full price because you did the right thing? Read more about this here: http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/mccains-housing-plan-urgh.html. If you are someone who has a fixed interest rate loan and bought a house within your means as opposed to some big status symbol with a sub-prime loan, you should be outraged by this plan.)
  
  In the meantime, Obama has been cool, calm, and collected. He's shown a steadiness and level-headedness we need right now. He's contemplative, thoughtful, and has shown a composed temperament. He's not quick to react without thinking about a problem and considering alternatives, unlike McCain, who has stated himself that he usually reacts to a problem without thinking about it. Is that the type of leadership we need? Isn't that what we've had for the past eight years?
  
• Just look at the country right now. A sinking economy, millions losing their homes and jobs, a never ending war in Iraq where we are spending billions of dollars, unemployment rising, businesses closing or doing poorly, health care costs rising for those lucky enough to have it, poor perception of our country internationally, ... never has this country been in such doldrums. And do people really want more of this? Because the Bush Administration has governed over this mess and John McCain has voted for many of Bush's poor policies (90%, by his own words) and wants to continue them. Don't we need a change in direction instead of more of the same? Obama will give this to us the change we need.
  
• John McCain has run an increasingly negative, vicious campaign that has incited hatred at Republican rallies and has caused more divisiveness in this country. He and Palin have spent MUCH more time bashing Obama than talking about how they are going to help people.
  
  In the meantime, Barack Obama has been talking of nothing but how he's going to help people and bring everyone together. Don't we deserve a President who is focused on helping our country as opposed to someone who's more focused on causing dissension and issues that are not important right now?
  
• Finally, let's talk about the candidates themselves.
  
  John McCain is quick to anger, makes bad, rash, uninformed decisions (suspending his campaign, first he's a de-regulator, now he's a regulator, Sarah Palin), and is not focused on the issues. I look at the Republican ticket and fear for our country's and my family's future if McCain were to win the election. He'd just be more of the same of what we have now and look where we are now. And heaven forbid anything ever happen to him and we have President Palin! That boggles my mind!
  
  Barack Obama gives me hope for this future. He's inspiring to me. He's a true leader, a uniter. He's shown great poise and eloquence throughout this whole election process. He's shown he's ready to lead our country to new heights, to new, refound respect in the world, and I look forward to our country's future if he's elected President.

So there you have it. I truly believe Barack Obama is the right candidate for our country at this time. We need someone with the vision, temperament, thoughtfulness, and care that he has at this time. He is down to earth, truly understands what the middle class is going through, and wants to help them.

I hope you'll join me in voting for Barack Obama on Tuesday and allow him to lead our country into a bright new future. He IS the change we need.

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Thanks for reading this. If you've been reading the whole time, thanks again. I hope my writings have been helpful to you in making your decision for who to vote for as President. I'd love to know who's been reading and you can do so just by leaving a quick comment using the link at the bottom of this post.

Tomorrow is Election Day. I'll be doing my best to follow along with the election tomorrow night and keeping a running blog as the night unfolds. But I have a complication: Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary and I'm not sure right now how much focus on the election I'm going to be able to get away with. But I'll do my best.

In any case, I'll post SOMETHING tomorrow night with some final comments on Wednesday. I hope you'll all check in with me one final time (or two final times). I'll either be celebrating or wondering how it all went wrong and drowning in my sorrows.

Thanks.

I've been busy... again...

Hi everyone.

Man, I've had ZERO time for this blog in the past few days. Between the Phillies winning the World Series, their parade, Halloween, then a wedding this past weekend, I just have not been able to post anything. And again tonight I've had no time.

BUT! Coming tomorrow night, my final thoughts and reasons to vote for Barack Obama. My personal final arguments. So look for it!

Good night...

This is where it falls apart...

... for the Republicans! :D

- OK, I'm a little nervous now. Polls are showing a tightening in the race. That apparently happens as you get closer to Election Day. But I can't say that doesn't make me a little nervous.

Of course, from things I've been reading, historically, whoever has been leading in the polls at this point usually wins. God, I hope so.

I can't wait until this over.

- The blame game is starting for the Republicans.

New England's lone House Republican, Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, is losing in his race for re-election and is saying John McCain is basically going to lose because of the campaign he has run: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/29/shays-takes-swipe-at-mccain/

- It looks like the Republicans are trying another meaningless association to paint Obama in a negative light with questionable associates.

Now they are bringing up someone named Rashid Khalidi. He is a scholar at Columbia University in New York, where he is director of the Middle East Institute. He's been accused in the past, 30 years ago, of working for the PLO, which he has denied and has never been proven. He apparently does have pro-Palestinian views, but Obama has said he does not share those views and denounced them.

But that doesn't stop the Republicans from trying to bring it up!

At a rally, Palin said Barack Obama "spent a lot of time with" Rashid Khalidi. "Rashid Khalidi, he, in addition to being a political ally of Barack Obama, he's a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization."

Does this never end?

From CNN, here's the fact check about this, saying it was misleading as there is no evidence that they have a continuing political relationship: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/29/is-columbia-professor-khalidi-a-political-ally-of-barack-obama/

Amazing how they can't focus on real issues, huh?

- I thought this was interesting, from factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_welfare.html

I've been saying this the whole time: Why are Obama's tax cuts considered by the Republicans to be welfare and their own are considered reform?

And why do they keep talking about Obama raising taxes? I don't understand how they are able to continually lie about that. MOST PEOPLE WILL NOT SEE THEIR TAXES RAISED UNDER OBAMA!!!!! Do you hear that, people?

- Here's an analysis that says Obama's going to win: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081029/ap_on_el_pr/road_to270;_ylt=AuYbMHPIgDbLQJtKEhjMRT9snwcF

- Here are two stories analyzing how Obama's and McCain's health plans would work using real, in-use examples:

Obama's plan: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27428669

McCain's plan: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27428664/

The results? Up in Massachusetts, a program very similar to what Obama is proposing is working pretty well.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, it's not working quite so well at all.

Does that surprise anyone? If McCain wins, get ready for real financial pain from his health plan.

- Finally, here's an article regarding Palin's religious beliefs. This is pretty scary: http://www.newsweek.com/id/166215?GT1=43002

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want someone making decisions for our country based on what God tells him or her. I want them made based on what the people are saying to him or her. I don't what this extreme religious whack-a-do anywhere NEAR the White House. I seriously do not understand how anyone can look at this woman and want her in such a severe position of power. It would be the worst thing for this country. Her decisions would be based on HER views, not the views of the people. That's scary.

------------------------------------
OK, that's enough for tonight. The Phillies just won the World Series, the first championship for Philadelphia in 25 years and I need to celebrate.

I don't know how much I'll get to post in the next couple of days as I have a lot going on with Halloween and a wedding this weekend. However, I'm going to start working on my final arguments/statements. I'll have that up by Monday at the latest.

Good night all and CONGRATULATIONS PHILLIES!

One week to go!

Thank goodness this election is almost over. Then maybe I can get back to a normal life.

Just a few stories and thoughts to share tonight.

- All is well!

John McCain says there's no friction in the GOP ticket as has been reported: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/mccain-don%e2%80%99t-buy-reports-of-gop-ticket-friction/

McCain says: “By the way, when two mavericks get together, you don’t agree on everything – but that’s fun!”

Yeah, that will be fun IF they win and the two of them have to deal with each other in the White House on a constant basis.

- Sarah the Wealth Spreading Hypocrite?

For all of Palin's talk calling Obama a socialist, it seems that Sarah doesn't have any problem spreading the wealth to Alaskans: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/27/palin-shares-wealth/

- That's all I have tonight. I need to keep it short because I've been very busy lately and need to spend some time with the wife.

Go Phillies and go Obama!

The cable news shows

We are down to single digits! Yesterday was nine days to go until the election next Tuesday. Yea!

- The Cable News Channels

So where do I get all of my wonderful information? Primarily from the Internet but I also have been watching the cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. I think they are fairly valuable resources for information so I thought I would give you a review of the shows and encourage you to watch them if you can over the last week of the election to try to inform yourself of what's going on in the final week.

- The first show I want to talk about is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. This program is on weeknights at 8:00 (repeated at 10:00 and 1:00) on MSNBC.

I have to say it: I think I have a man-crush on Keith Olbermann. OK, I'm kidding, but I do love his show.

I've been a fan of Olbermann's back from his ESPN Sportscenter days. I always loved him and Dan Patrick. I was disappointed when he left ESPN and I had not seen any of his work since he left until a little over a month ago when I found a clip of him on Youtube.com. Since then his show has become almost religious viewing for me.

Olbermann is unapologetically anti-McCain... and Palin. His show is basically a nightly recap of all the dumb things the Republicans have said and done over the previous 24 hours. OK, maybe I'm being a little unfair there saying they do "dumb" things. But Olbermann sure makes it seem that way!

Here's what I really like about this show.

First, I agree with most of what Olbermann says. What can I say? I'm pro-Obama here so if Olbermann is going to point out all of the idiocy of the McCain campaign and the Republicans, I'm sure to agree with it. And make no mistake about it... Olbermann is doing all he can to make the Republicans look foolish. And not just foolish but at times mean, insensitive, boorish, and down-right ignorant.

But here's what I really like about this show: While Olbermann's tone is unmistakably snarky and at times arrogant, if he's saying something negative about the Republicans, he usually has a quote, record, or video to back up what he saying. He's not just spouting off at the mouth (like Sean Hannity, who I'll get to) ... he's backing up what he's saying with facts. And that's what I like about it. There are times when he gives opinions and makes snide remarks (which are usually funny) but the most important thing about this show is that it is both entertaining and informative. I highly suggest it to anyone who is interested in finding what's happening with the election... and maybe have a few laughs at he expense of the Republicans. :D

Here's a great clip of Olbermann giving a "Special Comment" on the McCain campaign using divisive tactics and dangerously inciting crowds while doing nothing about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL0XgB8vYiw

- Following Countdown is The Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel's new to the channel. She's definitely more low key than Olbermann but is most certainly on the Liberal side of things. She does a lot of the same things Olbermann does... pointing out what's going on with those silly Republicans. But I think she's a LITTLE more respectful. Pat Buchanan is a regular guest on her show to give the Conservative point of view. An interesting, informative show, but no where near as entertaining at Olbermann.

Maddow's show is on at 9:00 (with repeats at 11:00 and 2:00) weeknights on MSNBC following Countdown.

- Before Countdown is Hardball with Chris Matthews. This show is on at 7:00 weeknights on MSNBC (with a repeat at 12:00).

Matthews is more serious about things than Olbermann and does not suffer a fool. Last week he had on Nancy Pfotenhauer, an advisor for John McCain, to talk about Palin's comments about the role of the Vice President. The woman could not convincingly defend Palin's remarks and would not stick to that topic and Matthews kept calling her on it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI6WRYFesTw) He's definitely a smart guy. I recommend his show for a more even handed look at things than you'll get from Olbermann or Maddow on MSNBC.

- Moving over to Fox News (I just had a chill...) first will talk about their star attraction, Hannity & Colmes.

I have watched this show a few times but I have a hard time stomaching it. Sean Hannity is so pompous and unapologetically conservative it's not even funny. This guy just takes anything the Republicans say as fact and spits it out over and over again. His unremorseful pro-Republican position make him almost impossible for me to watch. There's not a thing the Republicans can say that he would question while he questions everything about the Democrats.

But the one thing that this show has over the other's I've mentioned so far is Alan Colmes. At least on this show you do get both sides of the argument, although Hannity's personality is so overwhelming it tends to drown Colmes out. But Colmes will question the things from the Liberal side. If Hannity has on a guest, Colmes will question him hard from the opposite perspective when he gets his chance. And that's generally how they work it. They usually get equal time with their guests, although Hannity has no problem interjecting when Colmes is trying to conduct his interview. Sometimes when I watch this I kind of wish Colmes was a little more of a blowhard and more forceful like Hannity but he does get his points in. Like recently when Joe the Plumber visited. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_txkO5eOIc)

If you can stomach Hannity, I would recommend this show. I tend to ignore or roll my eyes when Hannity talks but do watch it to try to get a better understanding of the Republican perspective. And, man, is it messed up.

Hannity & Colmes is on Fox News, 9:00 weeknights.

(PS. If you have a chance, here's a CLASSIC clip of Obama staffer Robert Gibbs on the show following the second debate calling Hannity on the carpet after he had an anti-Semite on his show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF858s-JPEY)

- I haven't watched the O'Reilly Factor much (8:00 weeknights on Fox News). I personally find Bill O'Reilly a bully, a blowhard, and pretty insufferable. Plus he's on the same time as Olbermann and I'd rather watch him. I've only seen clips of him and guys is just obnoxious. If he has a Republican on, he's respectful, accommodating, and is willing to have a polite conversation with the person. If he has on a Democrat, he's rude, boorish, and interrupts frequently, not allowing the person to speak freely. He also has no problems with blaming others for his problems. Like recently when it was shown that MSNBC's ratings have been improving recently, O'Reilly said that couldn't possibly be true and blamed the media and the ratings systems.

Here's a perfect O'Reilly example when he recently had on Democrat Barney Frank (thankfully Frank wouldn't just sit there and take O'Reilly's crap): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijtBkKQwY8

I can't highly recommend this show because I personally can't stand O'Reilly. But if you can, have at it.

- The other show on Fox News is On The Record with Gretta Van Susteren at 10:00. I have to admit I've never watched it so I cannot say one way or the other what this show is like. I'll try to see if I can fit it in in the next week or so. But don't count on it.

- Finally, let's move over to CNN.

First there's Election Center with Campbell Brown at 8:00.

I generally find CNN to be more even than MSNBC or Fox News. I tend to see CNN as more the moderate ground, somewhere in the middle. This show is somewhere around there.

I have only watched a few times but Brown is quite capable. She doesn't get into the one-sided histrionics of Olbermann and Hannity. The whole tone, to me, is more subdued and more informative. Of course, normally they are talking about McCain because that's where most of the news and controversy seems to be these days.

I like Brown. I think she does a good job on this show and if you want a more moderate POV, you can't go wrong here.

- Next on CNN would be Larry King. I've seen King's show a few times but must admit I haven't watched it much recently. I've been watching the other shows. But I'm sure most of you know about Larry King and don't need me to tell you about him.

- Finally at 10:00 is AC360 with Anderson Cooper.

I think Cooper is a very smart guy and quite fair. He doesn't seem to have an agenda for either side and calls things as he sees them. I quite like this show. He usually gets a variety of experts on his show to get opinions from both sides and non-partisan experts. This is probably the most even-keel information possible. Much to recommend here.

------------------------------------

So there you go. A look at the cable news shows. I generally try to watch Olbermann nightly at some time (although I'm not always successful). I watch the other shows when I can, but that's been hard lately when I'm trying to catch up on my Tivo and watch the World Series, too. (Go Phils!) If I had to set the ideal lineup, I'd advise watching Countdown at 8:00, Hannity & Colmes at 9:00, and Anderson Cooper at 10:00. That way you can get the opinions from both sides and then see it all more or less filtered out afterwards.

Just a few things tonight

Hey there.

Not a whole lot to say tonight... I think. I'm watching the World Series right now (go Phillies!) and just wanted to make sure I got something up here tonight as I didn't last night. We'll see where this goes as I start typing and see what pops into my head and out to my keyboard.

- I Lost My Way

First, I have to get something off my chest.

I kind of have lost my way on this blog.

Obviously if you read my first post or the initial email I sent out to a lot of people, I've been pro-Obama from the beginning. However, my intention was not just to point out the faults of the McCain campaign. I really wanted to be as even keel as possible and make sure people got the arguments from both sides.

However, something happened along the way: I just couldn't do it any more. The more I dug into things, the more I read the plans, the more I listened to what was being said, the more I heard the hypocrisy and down-right lies coming from the Republican campaign, ... well, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't do something that would give any credence to what the Republicans have been doing. I had to do what I could to show why the McCain ticket would be wrong for this country and why Obama would be right. So that's what has happened.

I will also say this: At the beginning of this blog I challenged anyone to give me information from the Republican side of things that would show me I was wrong. To show my why McCain would be better, to show me proof that what Obama's been saying is not true, to give me anything that would seriously make me have to reconsider my stance. It hasn't been done. I don't think it CAN be done. I just can't see it.

So, anyway, if you came here looking for unbiased commentary and a bi-partisan look at things, I'm sorry. I tried. I really did. But the more I looked I just have not been able to agree with almost anything the McCain campaign has done. Maybe we'll try that again in 4 years.

- Cracks In The Armor

So as things have started to go down hill for the Republicans, the infighting has started.

- First there's McCain taking a bunch of shots at President Bush from CNN: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/23/mccain-lashes-out-at-bushs-record/

I love this. McCain votes with Bush 90% of the time, basically saying he supports almost all of Bush's policies, but then wants to act like he was against them all along.

Of course, Obama had a lot of fun with those comments. He said:

"He denounced the President for letting things get completely out of hand–that's what he said," Obama told a crowd in Reno. "In fact, John McCain is so opposed to George Bush's policies, that he voted with him 90 percent of the time for the first eight years. That's right, he decided to really stick it to George Bush - 10 percent of the time."

"So, let's be clear. John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy. What Joe Biden says - it's like Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger." (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/25/obama-again-mocks-mccain-over-ties-to-bush/)

Hee hee!

- Then there's also talk of infighting now in the McCain campaign as staffers feel that Sarah Palin is only starting to look out for her best interests. McCain aids suggest Palin is "going rogue": http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html

Here's another story about how she's doing things her own way now: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081025/pl_politico/14929;_ylt=Ak21P0PnHrYJoTTcR2EONP5snwcF

Why should this surprise anyone? Palin has a history of turning against people in her own party and the people who work for her for any reason she wants (or no reason) if it will help further her agenda or career.

• Here's an article from when she first became mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and she asked all of the city's top managers to resign: http://www.mceades.com/graphics/palin_article1.jpg
  
• Here's an article about how she fired Wasilla's librarian and police chief, although the librarian later got her job back: http://www.adn.com/sarahpalin/story/510219.html
  
• She turned against the fellow members of her own party in Alaska: http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/elections/story/8337406p-8233470c.html
  

(These three references come from her Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin)

• Here's an article from the New York Times that talks all about "Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

You get what you ask for. You ask someone like Sarah Palin to join your ticket, you get someone who is only out for herself and her interests, as her history has shown. Is this someone we want in a position to run our country? I think not.

- Here's another article about how things are going, people are infighting, and starting to try to jump ship and place blame: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081024/pl_politico/14891;_ylt=Ard93VR93veUd1I21AUetTJsnwcF

- In trying to research Palin's history as a turncoat, I found this article on the Huffington Post (admitted: very pro-Liberal) about how anti-women's issues Sarah Palin is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/manisha-sinha/sarah-palin-and-the-betra_b_126213.html

I've said it before and I'll say it again: It baffles me that women who were pro-Hillary Clinton would now be pro-Palin. They couldn't be more opposites.

- Well, well, well! Here's an interesting article. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081026/ap_on_el_pr/palin_pipeline;_ylt=AiUKBgS6UuCUmoF6nOvXMRpsnwcF

So the big natural gas pipeline that Sarah Palin has been touting as one of her major accomplishments? Yeah... The Associated Press did some investigating into that and it turns out that the company that won the bid, TransCanada Corp., was given a lot of special incentives and that the bidding process was maneuvered in such a way to allow them to win over bigger, more well know companies. AND the leader of Palin's team had been a partner at a lobbying firm that worked for TransCanada Corp. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.

So how about that? Miss Reformer, Miss Maverick working the system to get things done how she wanted them. Nice!

- Things are looking good...

So let's talk about McCain's staff...

So after I posted last night, my plan for tonight was to get back into the issues some more. But NOT NOW!

Today I received an email (from someone who will remain nameless) about three people associated with Fannie Mae that are now supposedly working as advisors to Barack Obama. (Imagine it is written in large text and in multiple colors, which is how I got it):

Here is a quick look into THREE former Fannie Mae executives
who have helped bring down Wall Street, AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING
TODAY.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie
Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing
discovered severe irregulaties in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. At the
time of his departure (Wednesday, Dec.22, 2004) The Wall Street Journal noted, '

Raines, who long defended the company's accounting despite mounting evidence
that it wasn't proper, issued a statement late Tuesday (Dec. 21, 2004) conceding
that 'mistakes were made' and saying he would assume responsibility as he
had earlier promised. News reports indicate the company was under growing
pressure from regulators to shake up its management in the wake of findings
that the company's books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting
principles for four years.' Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9
billion.

Raines left with a 'golden parachute' valued at $240 Million.

The government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the
accounting scandal became clear.
See: http://housingdoom.com/2006/12/18/fannie-charges/
The government noted, 'The 101 charges reveal how the individuals
improperly manipulated earnings to maximize their bonuses, while knowingly
neglecting accounting systems and internal controls, misapplying over twenty
accounting principles and misleading the regulator and the public. The notice
explains how they submitted six years of misleading and inaccurate accounting
statements and inaccurate capital reports that enabled them to grow Fannie
Mae in an unsafe and unsound manner.' These charges were made in 2006. The
Court ordered Raines to return $50 million dollars he received in bonuses
based on the miss-stated Fannie Mae profits.

Tim Howard was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard 'was a
strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a
'stable pattern of earnings' at Fannie. In everyday English - he was cooking the
books. The government investigation determined that, 'Chief Financial Officer,
Tim Howard, failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting
functions within Fannie Mae,'

On June 16, 2006, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., asked the Justice
Department to investigate his allegations that two former Fannie Mae executives
lied to Congress in October 2004 when they denied manipulating the
mortgage-finance giant's income statement to achieve management pay bonuses..
Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since
concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses.
Raines and Howard left Fannie Mae under pressure in December 2004. Raines's
departure was structured as an early retirement. Howard resigned.

Howard's 'Golden Parachute' was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson is a former executive at Lehman Brothers who was
later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. A look at the Office of
Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and
corruption inside Fannie Mae, and you'll see some interesting things about
Johnson. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial
amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was
between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million. Johnson
is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide
while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae.

Johnson's 'Golden Parachute' was estimated at $28 Million.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES?

Raines works for the Obama Campaign as a Chief Economic
Advisor

TIM HOWARD?

Howard is also a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama

JIM JOHNSON?

Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor
and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search
Committee

IF OBAMA PLANS ON CLEANING UP
THE MESS - HIS ADVISORS HAVE
THE EXPERTISE - THEY MADE
THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Would you trust the men who tore the 'old'
Wall Street down to build the New Wall
Street?

POSTSCRIPT:
And please pay attention to FOX NEWS in the next few days
and find out WHO the Senators were, in the Democratic Party,
that these three guys were working with.
You will love this.... It just gets better and better... IS THIS
CHANGE???

Obviously the point of this email is to show that Obama has some relations with people who were involved in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapse.

Guess what? I was easily able to debunk this by going to snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp

Here's what it says:

Origins: When one of the hottest issues of a presidential campaign is the meltdown of the mortgage lending industry and the collapse of the economy, a candidate's having economic advisors on his staff who are
strongly associated with the system and practices that helped create the current
mess likely wouldn't sit well with the public. That's the premise of this
above-quoted e-mail, which claims that three men formerly associated with the
Federal National Mortgage Association (commonly known as "Fannie Mae") are now
serving as "chief economic advisors" with the presidential campaign of Barack
Obama. However, although at least some of these men have had connections to the
Obama campaign at one time or another, none of them has ongoing roles with that
campaign as chief economic advisors.

Franklin Raines, who formerly headed the budget office for the Clinton administration, became the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company when he took over at Fannie Mae" in 1999. Raines, who had earned $20 million in salary and bonuses from Fannie Mae in 2003, resigned from his CEO position in 2004 after regulators determined that the company had violated accounting rules and created an illusory $9 billion in past profit.

Raines has had some dealings with the Obama campaign, but he never held any actual position within the campaign, and his involvement with it was not nearly as substantial as implied here. As the Washington Post reported when a McCain campaign commercial attempted to link Raines with the
Democratic candidate, the whole substance of the connection between the two men
was that Raines "had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign" in which
they talked about "general housing and economy issues."

Franklin Raines' predecessor, James A. Johnson, (former chief of staff to Vice President Walter F. Mondale), was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998. After Johnson left the company, regulators later discovered that Fannie Mae had engaged in fraudulent
accounting practices in 1998 which manipulated its earnings so that executives
could earn performance bonuses (up to $1.9 million in Johnson's
case) they would not otherwise have been entitled to.

In May 2008, Senator Obama tapped James Johnson to be one member of a three-person panel tasked with vetting potential vice-presidential running mates. Johnson (who was
not serving as an economic advisor to the Obama campaign) resigned from that
position a month later after news accounts surfaced that he had received more
than $2 million in home loans at below average market rates from
Countrywide Financial (a partner of Fannie Mae).

Tim Howard, the former CFO (chief financial officer) of Fannie Mae, was caught up in the same accounting scandal that undid Franklin Raines, and (like Raines) resigned from the company in 2004. We haven't yet found any substantive connection between Tim
Howard and the Obama campaign, however, much less any information supporting the
claim that Howard is (or was) a "Chief Economic Advisor to Obama."

I also found this on About.com: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/a/wall_street.htm

Here's what is says:

Comments: While the above litany of charges against former Fannie Mae executives Franklin Raines, Tim Howard, and Jim Johnson matches up pretty closely with what has been reported in legitimate news sources, it is not true that any of these gentlemen went on to serve as "chief economic adviser" or "senior financial adviser" to the Barack Obama campaign.

Franklin Raines - The Washington Post reported in July 2008 that Franklin Raines had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters." Though the unsourced statement was not questioned at the time, the Obama campaign later denied that Franklin Raines had advised the candidate in any capacity, and Raines himself issued a statement saying, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."

Whatever the case, "taking calls" on mortgage and housing questions from a presidential campaign does not constitute acting as a "chief economic adviser."

Tim Howard, former Fannie Mae Chief Financial Officer, has no evident connection to the Barack Obama campaign at all, let alone as a "chief economic adviser."

Jim Johnson, who was CEO of Fannie Mae between 1991 and 1998, is the only one of these three men to have a documented connection to the Obama campaign. He served briefly as a member of Obama's vice-presidential vetting committee before stepping down amid allegations that he received below-market-rate mortgage loans from Countrywide Bank, one of the institutions involved in the subprime mortgage crisis. So far as can be determined from published sources, at no time has Johnson acted as a "senior financial adviser"
to the campaign.

So this email was obviously sent to me to try to get me to go, "OH MY GOD! Look at Obama's associations! He's a terrible person! I can't vote for him!" But with the email being debunked by Snopes, I don't think I have to worry about that.

In any case, since we're talking about the candidates associates, let's take a look at who is working with John McCain, who his advisors are, and his campaign staff...

Let's start with Phil Gramm!

Phil Gramm - The crux of that email was that Obama is working with people who were at the heart of the economic collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That has been shown to not be true.

However, what IS true is that Phil Gramm is very close friends with John McCain and an economic advisor of his. He was the Senior Economic Advisor to McCain until July when he resigned after saying that America is not in a recession and that Americans are a bunch of whiners. Here's the quotes:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession." He
added, "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant
whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in
decline." (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/09/mccain-adviser-addresses-mental-recession/)

These comments became a political issue for McCain and Gramm was forced to resign.

BUT!... regardless of this, ... why is the fact that Phil Gramm was McCain's Senior Economic Advisor and is still a very close friend of his? Because Phil Gramm is the GODFATHER OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS WE ARE NOW IN!

Here's an article all about him and his Senatorial financial career: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html

Gramm was the king of deregulation. In 1999 he helped get passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which deregulated the financial industry and put us in the situation we are into today with the economy. He was very proud of this legislation.

And even though he's not officially a part of McCain's campaign, there's evidence that he's still involved.

• He called Ron Paul to try to get him to support McCain (Paul rejected him): http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/paul-rejects-gr.html
  
• He's attending campaign briefings: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/14/phil-gramm-attends-mccain-campaign-briefing/
  
• There's even talk that he might be considered to be McCain's Treasury Secretary: http://crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/mccain-spokesman-refuses-to-say-gramm-wont-be-treasury-secretary/

Do we want the Godfather of our economic collapse to be our Treasury Secretary?!?!?!

So as opposed to the made up association between Obama and three Fannie Mae execs, here's a REAL association between McCain and someone directly responsible for our economic crisis.

Now that I've hit the worst person in McCain's brain trust, I'm going to keep the others a little shorter for time sake...

Rick Davis: He is McCain's campaign manager. From the New York Times:

"Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say." (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin)

Here's another article about it WITH VIDEO!: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/24/on-davis-s-ties-to-freddie-mac-mccain-gets-boomeranged.aspx

This article says Davis's lobbying firm was paid by Freddie Mac until August of this year: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/us/politics/24davis.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1222284238-V7i00WGuim4UgPJpSsdLDg

Wouldn't you say, if he was part of a group that lobbied for deregulation for Fannie and Freddie, that maybe he's part of the problem? A direct link for McCain to the financial crisis? Not exactly the type of person you want as part of your campaign, let alone your campaign manager?

But that's not all! No, no, no! That's not all!

According to the Washington Post, in 2006 Davis also setup a meeting between McCain and a Russian billionaire. Davis was working for a lobbying firm that Here's the first two paragraphs of that article:

"A top political adviser in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign helped arrange an introduction in 2006 between McCain and a Russian billionaire whose suspected links to anti-democratic and organized-crime figures are so controversial that the U.S. government revoked his visa.

Rick Davis, who is now McCain's campaign manager, helped set up the encounter between McCain and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska in Switzerland during an international economic conference. At the time, Davis was working for a lobbying firm and seeking to do business with the billionaire. " (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/25/ST2008012500226.html)

Those two key people in McCain's organization with rather shady pasts. PROVEN pasts, not made up.

Here's some more! These are not all about Freddie and Fannie, but are some guys that have lobbied for some bad things:

Charlie Black: McCain's campaign chairman, Moveon.org says "he once ran a lobbying firm that represented brutal dictators like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire." (This is from a email from Moveon.org: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/13/moveon_targets_mccain_aides_lo.html... but I also found this link that gives you 10 things to know about Charlie Black: http://www.alternet.org/election08/89835/)

Thomas Loeffler: Loeffler had to resign from McCain's campaign in May due to his role as a Lobbyist. His clients included Saudi Arabia.

Peter Madigan: a leading McCain fundraiser, lobbies on behalf of the king of Dubai.

(Here's a fact sheet about Black, Loeffler, and Madigan: http://www.firethelobbyists.com/images/fire_the_lobbyists.pdf)

Here's an article from February all about the lobbyists that have worked for McCain: http://mediamatters.org/items/200802280001

Here's a WHOLE LIST of 133 lobbyists who have worked or are working for McCain: http://mccainsource.com/corruption?id=0006 (I wanted to paste the whole list here, but thought that was too much. You can click the link to see the whole list.)

Here's a list of 22 McCain staffers who have lobbied for Big Oil companies: http://mccainsource.com/corruption?id=0014


As you can see, there's plenty of evidence to show that the people who are working for and with and advising McCain are people to worry about more than those who are working and advising Obama. Especially when McCain says he's running against corruption, lobbying, and wants reform. How can you believe that stuff when you look at who his advisers are and who is running and working for his campaign? Can you imagine Phil Gramm, the architect of our financial collapes, being Treasury Secretary?

So while a lying email sends out fake information regarding Obama's ties that don't exist, I've just given you loads of true information that shows real connections for John McCain to lobbyists, corruption, and some people responsible for our current financial crisis.

How do you like that boomerrang? :D

Republicans vs Democrats

I found this one the web today. I thought it was rather amusing... and somewhat true...

The Double-Standard of American Politics

• If a black Democratic presidential candidate was an affirmative action selection (akin to the legacy selection for McCain) at the Naval Academy and graduated 894 out of 899, Fox News and the conservative right would push this story as the basis for his disqualification for the nation's highest office. The rest of the media would then be forced to report on it, giving the story wide exposure.
  
• If a white Republican presidential candidate graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, he would be celebrated as an intellectual giant ready to lead the country in bold new directions. But since we are talking Obama here, his education fits into the "uppity" and presumptuous narrative.
  
• If you're a Harvard and Princeton-educated black woman married for years before having your first child, Fox labels you a "Baby Mama."
  
• If you are a white woman who eloped and had a baby eight months later, you are Sarah Palin
  
• If you have studied international affairs for several decades, you're inexperienced at foreign affairs
  
• If you live in a state that is geographically near a foreign country, you have foreign policy expertise
  
• If you both write and present your own words, you just give good speeches. If you read someone else's words from the teleprompter a superstar is born.
  
• If you are Obama, your greatness must be measured by what you've done and its NEVER enough, NOT by any of the profound speeches you wrote yourself, or the repeated grillings you've taken in the press.
  
• If you are Palin, your greatness is measured by just one speech, written by Bush IIs speechwriter, and you will not take any questions from the press.
  
• If you attend two of the top ivy leagues schools in the country, you are surprisingly articulate. If it takes you several colleges to graduate and you deliver a speech with the phonetic new-clear on the teleprompter, you're a poised and eloquent speaker.
  
• If your staff is so dumb they mix up Walter Reed Middle School for Walter Reed Medical Center in your conventions big night, it’s because you wanted to focus on education & it would have been political to use the soldiers in that format.
  
• If Obama had done that, he would be eviscerated for not knowing the difference between the two, hating the troops/America & would be dangerously unqualified to be CinC.
  
• If you’re a liberal mayor and you ask for government financing, you’re a fan of big, tax and spend, corrupt government.
  
• If you're a conservative mayor and wind up on John McCain's worst pork list in 2001, you are disgusted that small towns like yours are dependent on earmarks, even if your town had no earmarks before you became mayor.
  
• A white woman talkin' tough is an advocate of women's rights, a black woman is angry and bitter. A white man talkin' tough is a straight shooter and a conservative, a black man is a angry gangsta rapper.
  
• If you're a GOPer you naturally wouldn't see what the problem with any of this was, even if you slept for 20 years on a dictionary opened to the word hypocrisy.
  
• If you're a Republican and you talk to America’s enemies, its diplomacy.
  
• If you're a Democrat and you talk to America’s enemies, its appeasement.
  
• If you're a Republican, you swear Jesus is a registered member of your party.
  
• If you're a Democrat, you appreciate that Jesus was a community organizer.
  
• If you're a Republican and you wind up on the cover of People magazine, it's because you're a regular American.
  
• If you're a Democrat and you wind up on the cover of People magazine, it’s because you're a celebrity.
  
• If you're a black Democratic man who can fill a stadium with 18,000 people (or worse, a German atrium with 200,000), you're a vapid celebrity. If you're a white Republican woman who can get a room full of fire breathing evangelical right wingers to holler, you're a star
  
• If you are a Democrat, the days are counted down since the last time you have been to Iraq .
  
• If you are a Republican, you have all the foreign policy experience you need because your state is close to Russia.
  
• If you're a black woman, with advanced academic degrees, and you have children while married, you're a baby mama
  
• If you're a white woman who barely graduated from college, and you get knocked up and then get married after you're pregnant, you're a "Super Mom"
  
• If you are black and your daughter is pregnant, unmarried and has an uninvolved baby daddy, you are a statistic, but if you're a white and your daughters baby's daddy has an explicit MY Space page where, in between four-letter words, he exclaims "he don't want no kids," you get to run for Veep.
  
• If you're a black presidential candidate that has wide appeal and the ability to motivate over two million Americans to re-engage in the political process you're an egomaniac with a messiah complex seeking the spotlight.
  
• However, if you're a right wing conservative - you're applauded for your likeability and called a unifier for the Republican base
  
• If you're white, win a beauty contest, attended 5-6 colleges before finally graduating, join the PTA, are voted to be mayor by 1000 people, govern a sparsely populated state for a almost two years now, and randomly get chosen at the last minute to be VP, you've lived the American dream, she's every American.
  
• But if you're black, raised by a single mother, lived on food stamps, help the community, get into Harvard, become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, build a great campaign organization from scratch, and are voted to be the presidential nominee by millions of people, you are just uppity.
  
• If you are a democratic candidate and people around you complain about the MSM vitriol toward you, you're a whiner.
  
• If you are a republican candidate and you won’t answer the questions the MSM attempts to ask about your qualifications for the second highest office in the land, you're being victimized.
  
• If you are a white republican mom with a special-needs baby, you are suddenly the advocate of all special needs families in the US.
  
• If you are an Alaskan democrat mom with a special-needs baby, you just saw state funding cut for programs like special-ed. You're "on your own."
  
• If you are a black democrat homeowner that was preyed upon by mortgage companies and your house is in foreclosure, you made bad choices and don't deserve a house.
  
• If you an older white republican who can't keep track of how many houses he has, then he deserves another one.

Just one more thing...

Keith Olbermann ran Obama's meeting with Joe the plumber tonight. It shows most of it with a few short edits, but watching the whole meeting with Joe puts a different light to it.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yeTnOrUvB0

Obama does a fantastic job of explaining his plan to Joe and making it make total sense... even pointing out to Joe that he might even do BETTER under his plan.

How anyone can look at Obama's plan versus McCain's and think you'd do better under McCain's is beyond me. You just won't.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/?postversion=2008061113

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1031268,CST-NWS-tax30.article

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/altss/printstory/opinion/88118

http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/080612/68/4h34w.html

I'm Andy the Engineer

I don't know where to start tonight. So I'll just start. I have a number of things to comment on...



- The first thing I want to talk about is Joe the Plumber.



McCain, Palin, and anyone else associated with their campaign love to keep bringing up Joe the plumber. They keep talking about him and Obama's comments about "spread the wealth". They keep talking about how they want to help people keep their wealth.



Well here's my problem: For all the talk about how they want to help the middle class by helping them keep their wealth, NOTHING in their economic plans does anything to help the middle class. It only helps the wealthy! It gives rich people and big corporation major tax cuts to save them thousands apon thousands, if not millions, of dollars. In the mean time, the middle class get a pittance in tax cuts while the poor get almost nothing.



There's a calculator on Obama's website that will show you how much you will save in taxes with Obama's tax plan versus McCain's tax plan. You can find it and figure out what you would save yourself under both plans here: http://taxcut.barackobama.com/



Now, granted, this is from Barack Obama's website, but from what I've seen on other sites, I believe the calculation I got to be pretty accurate. Anyway, the results are that I would save TEN TIMES as much in taxes with Obama's plan than I would with McCain's tax plan. And I have almost no doubt that is pretty close to being true.



McCain is for the rich. He may say otherwise but the proof is in his plans. He's not doing anything to help the middle class or poor. He says he is by helping providing companies the chance to provide more jobs but the truth is companies have had the chance to do that all through the Bush era and what did they do? They got greedy. They did what they could to keep the money for themselves. They did what they could with the help of deregulation to make as much money as they could for themselves and left everyone else out to dry. Oil companies, the financial industry, the lending and housing industries, numerous companies who paid their executives millions of dollars and handed out multi-million dollar golden parachutes and bonuses like they were going out of style while their companies failed and people's retirement accounts dwindled... and McCain wants to keep that plan going. He wants to make it worse by giving these companies even BIGGER tax cuts.



The truth is it's the middle class that needs the help. Why? Well, we're the ones who support all of these companies. They need us. And it's showing right now.



The middle class is taking a financial hit right now, they don't have the money to spend, and companies are suffering for it. If your average American doesn't have the money to spend on products and goods, the companies are not making money. By giving money back to the people, by giving them a tax cuts, as Obama wants to do, they'll have more available to spend to help these companies bottom lines. And then they'll make money and have money available to create jobs. Because the truth is if the people of this country, you and me, don't support these companies by buying what they are selling, they can't survive. Look at the auto industry right now. Look at how many people are losing their jobs right now. It's because people are not buying!



McCain and Palin keep talking about how Obama's plan is socialism. Since when is a tax cut socialism? That's a ridiculous claim and desperate. It again shows how they don't care about the middle-class.



This whole situation shows how out of touch McCain really is. Obama is trying to help the middle class and poor and the Republicans call it socialism. It's the average American who is suffering in this country right now, not the rich, but McCain is talking about huge tax cuts for the wealthy while doing almost nothing for the middle-class. Then he also wants to tax your health benefits or take them away on top of that. And also make taxpayer pay to bailout banks and people who took on bad house loans. I don't want to pay for someone else's mortgage problems. I have my own mortgage to take care of. Jeesh!



But going back to Joe the plumber... the average plumber salary in Ohio is $20 an hour. If he worked 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, he's make $60000 a year before taxes. And this is a high estimate by me, not really what he earns, which is probably less. Now, unless he's saved a TON of money over the years, can someone tell me how he could afford to buy a company that would give him a salary of $250,000 a year? Are you kidding me? How much would that cost to buy? And even if you taxed him at 40% on that $250,000, are you going to tell me that he wouldn't be better off bringing home $150,000 after taxes than $60,000 before taxes? Plus with tax loopholes and deductions, you know he could bring home a lot more than that $150,000. The guy's a farce. The arguments for this guys are a farce. The guy is a registered Republican and brought a scenario to Obama just to get the reaction he got and help John McCain. And everyone is buying it.



Here's an article about how Obama's, NOT McCain's, tax plan would actually be BETTER for Joe: http://www.mainstreet.com/article/lifestyle/entertainment/joe-plumber-numbers



So the summary of all of this is that, regardless of what McCain and Joe the plumber think and say, Obama's tax plan is actually the plan that would do more for Joe and the majority of small business owners in this country, not McCain's.



And unless you are making more than $250,000 a year, Obama's plan is better for you, too.



And if Joe ever did actually get himself into a position where he's making more that quarter of a million dollars a year, I'm not going to feel too sorry for him about his tax situation because he'll be bringing home a LOT more money than he makes now and the tax increase Obama is proposing is only 3%... not much more than what Joe would have to pay now making that much money.



- Next there's the cockiness of John McCain to say that US foes wouldn't dare challenge him in his first six months in office, as Joe Biden said would happen if Obama is elected.



Here's what McCain said on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/22/mccain.blitzer/index.html):



"And the thing that probably may encourage them a little is that Sen. Obama has been wrong," McCain said in an interview to be aired on CNN's "The Situation Room" at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday.


"He was wrong about the surge in Iraq. He still fails to acknowledge that he was wrong. I mean, remarkable," the Republican presidential nominee continued.


"He was wrong when he said Georgia should show restraint. He was wrong when he said he would sit down across the table from Ahmadinejad, Chavez and the Castro brothers. He was wrong about those. So I can understand why the American people might be concerned."


Enemies would not similarly challenge McCain, he said, because he's already been tried.


"They know I've been tested," he said. "They know I've been tested. I've been tested many times."



First of all, why he thinks he's so untouchable that it wouldn't dare happen to him is beyond me. Biden's point was that either candidate is likely to be tested. It's just as likely to happen to him.



Next, McCain's still stating that Obama has not said the surge worked. He has! Here it is: http://mediamatters.org/items/200809060004



Then McCain is saying that Obama said Georgia should show restraint when they were fighting with Russia a few months ago. This is SO wrong. He said both countries should show restraint. Here's what he said (http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSWBT00953020080808):



"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict," Obama said in a statement. "Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full-scale war. Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected."



And finally, McCain's talking about meeting with foreign leaders again and no pre-conditions. Again, I agree with Obama on this. You need to take steps and extend an olive branch if you are ever going to cease strained relationships with these countries.



So more false, misleading statements and out of date opinions from McCain.



- Next there are reports about the Republicans and Sarah Palin wasting taxpayers money.



First there's a report that the RNC has spent $150,000... ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS... on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin and her family during shopping sprees at stores like Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, and Saks Fifth Avenue. And this is in only a little over one and half months! http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14805.html



..........................



That's stunned silence.



$150,000!!!! Are you kidding me? That's more than double what I make in salary every year and Palin and her family spent that on clothes, hair, and makeup in a month. This is the woman who came into this race bragging about being a soccer mom. And now she's spending more than what most families make in a year to make themselves look pretty.



They couldn't have spent half that money? Maybe get something nice from Sears or JCPenney instead? I'm sure there are stores she could have gone to that weren't designer labels and still looked nice. I'm sure $4,716.49 on hair and makeup were not completely necessary.



To me this shows a real lack of understanding about the value of money and how important it is to keep expenses down in a time of need. It would have been possible to make Palin and her family (although I don't understand why her family gets into this as well) for a lot less than this. This was extravagant.



And so was this...



Apparently Palin has been charging Alaskan taxpayer thousands of dollars in expenses for her kids to fly around the country with her. Supposedly on official state business.



What possible official state business could Palin's children have? If you or I were to travel on business, do we get to take our kids with us and then charge our companies for it? I don't think so.



Here's a story about it: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/21/palin.travel.ap/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail



And this is the woman who is the supposed fiscal reformer. Uh huh.



- One other question: Why aren't Palin's kids in school? They're travelling all over the country with her all the time. Don't these kids have school? What kind of parenting is that?



- Further proof that John McCain just doesn't get it: He's saying he's "amazed" by the treatment Palin has been receiving: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081022/pl_politico/14820



Does he not realize what's going on within his own campaign? Does he not realize how what they have been doing could come across to people? Can he not see how her inability or refusal to answer standard questions my make her less than prepared to be VP in the view of many people's eyes?



There's so many negative things that I could say about Palin and have said (only just yesterday: http://pickingapresident.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-to-talk-about-tonight.html) that I find it hard to believe that McCain can't see any of it himself. I just further goes to show that he's out of touch with what's going on in our country, what we need, and why he should not be elected President in less than two weeks.



- For all of Cindy McCain's proclamations that Obama's running a negative campaign, there's this story that says it's McCain running the negative campaign: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081022/pl_politico/14829;_ylt=AlXK.FyVzAny3ltvWKBxXOJsnwcF



- I just wanted to post this right up here. This is McCain's views on the economy. Here's the link where you can find the original article: http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/mccain_economy.cfm



ON THE ECONOMY


John McCain said it in his own words: He just doesn’t understand the economy. His economic plan would give big tax breaks to corporations and tax workers’ health care benefits. We call on McCain to help turn around America, not choose corporations over working families.


McCAIN ATTACKED MEDICARE


McCain: I Never Really Understood Economics. McCain said, “The issue of economics is something that I’ve really never understood as well as I should.” (Boston Globe, 12/18/07)


McCain: Americans Have Seen Great Economic Progress Since Bush Took Office. Since President Bush took office, “I think if you look at the overall record and millions of jobs have been created… you can make an argument that there’s been great progress economically over that period of time,” McCain said. (“Money & Politics,” Bloomberg, 4/17/08)


HERE’S WHAT WORKING FAMILIES UNDERSTAND

• Median family income has been falling for seven years now, when adjusted for inflation. (“A Feeble Recovery,” Economic Policy Institute, 5/1/08)
  


• The number of unemployed workers rose by 11.7 percent over the past year, an increase of 797,000 people. We’ve lost more than 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2001, and millions more are vulnerable. Between December 2007 and March 2008, the U.S. lost a net 240,000 jobs. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5/2/08; Robert Scott, Economic Policy Institute, 3/29/08)
  


• Premium costs for employer-based health care are rising 10 times faster than incomes. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 4/29/08)

McCain Says We’re NOT Headed Into a Recession. McCain said, “I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession. I believe the fundamentals of this economy are strong, and I believe they will remain strong.” (GOP Debate, Myrtle Beach, FNC, 1/10/08)


81 Percent of the Public Says We’re Already There. (NBC/WSJ Survey, 4/24-28/08)


McCain Dismissed Concerns on Mortgage Crisis and Economy. While campaigning in Florida, McCain dismissed concerns about the economy. “Even if the economy is the, quote, No. 1 issue, the real issue will remain America’s security,” McCain said. “And if they choose to say, ‘Look, I do not need this guy because he’s not as good on home loan mortgages or whatever it is, I understand about that, I will accept that verdict. I am running because of the transcendental challenge of the 21st century, which is radical Islamic extremism.” (The New York Times, 1/28/08)


But Economic Issues Top Working Family Concerns. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, the price of gasoline is the number one concern for the public. In second and third place are finding a good job and paying for health care and insurance. (Associated Press, 4/29/08)

• Home foreclosure filings have increased by 112 percent over the past year, to 649,917 properties in the first quarter of 2008, representing one of every 194 households. (RealtyTrac Staff, 4/29/08)
  


• The price of a gallon of gas has increased by 156 percent since January 2001 and is approaching $4. (U.S. Department of Energy, Retail Gasoline Historical Prices)
  


• Over the past year, the cost of milk increased by 13.3 percent, the cost of bread increased by 14.7 percent and the cost of eggs rose by 29.9 percent. (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3/08)
  

McCAIN’S ECONOMIC PROPOSALS: HELP CORPORATIONS, NOT WORKING FAMILIES
McCain’s Economic Plan Helps Corporations, not Working Families. “McCain offered sweeping rhetoric about the economic plight of working-class Americans…even as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at spurring corporate growth.” (The Washington Post, 4/16/08)


McCain Offers Massive Tax Cuts for Corporations and the Wealthy. McCain’s plan offers two massive tax cuts for corporations, slashing tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent, with 58 percent of the benefits going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. This is an even larger tax rate cut for the wealthiest taxpayers than Bush gave them. (Reuters, 3/10/08; “Five Easy Pieces and Two Trillion Dollars,” Center for American Progress Action Fund, 3/21/08)


But He Wants to Tax Our Health Benefits. McCain would make employer-paid health premiums part of taxable income, creating a new tax on working families. He would drive insurance costs up further by promoting high-deductible health savings account plans. (Health08.org Forum, 10/31/07; Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/20/06, 4/5/06)


McCain’s Tax Cuts Would Cut Social Programs Working Families Need. “McCain cannot pay for his tax cuts without massive reductions in Social Security, Medicare or other key programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans.” (“Five Easy Pieces and Two Trillion Dollars,” Center for American Progress Action Fund, 3/21/08)


McCain Skipped Vote on Economic Stimulus Package Despite Being in Washington. McCain missed a key vote on economic stimulus legislation to provide rebates to taxpayers—even though he was in Washington, D.C., at the time. “McCain returned to Washington but made an eleventh-hour decision to skip the vote, aides to his campaign said.” (H.R. 5140, Vote #8, 2/6/08; Associated Press, 2/6/08)


McCain Says He Wants Tough Lender Standards—But Votes Against Them. McCain has called for strict standards and greater transparency for lenders and for cracking down on predatory lenders. But he voted against a measure to discourage predatory lending practices and failed to vote on a bill that would overhaul the mortgage lending practices of the Federal Housing Administration. (McCain’s Remarks on Economic Woes, 3/25/08; St. Petersburg Times, 1/24/08; S. 256, Vote #22, 3/3/05; S. 2338, Vote #432, 12/14/07)



Is that enough?



- Did you know that 70 other countries prefer Obama to McCain?: http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/21/why-do-citizens-in-70-countries-prefer-obama-to-mccain/



- Finally, I have a video to share with you tonight.



Chris Matthews had on one of McCain's senior advisors to discuss Palin's comments about the role of the VP. (I posted about that last night.) The woman could not give Matthews an effective answer about Palin's comments and Matthews ripped her for it. This is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjG8i4lTSpA



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That's all for tonight. Lot's for you all to read.