Is This Really the Only Option Left?

John McCain’s fade in recent polls, combined with a barrage of negative news coverage during the financial crisis, has leading Republican activists around the country worrying about his prospects and urging his campaign to become much more aggressive against Barack Obama in the remaining month before Election Day.

A flurry of new polls shows Barack Obama gaining in several battleground states – most notably Florida, Pennsylvania and swing states throughout the West. Officials worry early voting, which is under way in important states such as Ohio, is likely to favor Obama in this toxic political climate. 

Several state GOP chairmen in interviews urged the McCain campaign to be more aggressive in hitting Obama’s vulnerabilities, such as his past relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other problematic associations from Chicago.  Read Article Here.

More Obama Events

This is pretty rocking. Not quite Ohio but still good.

The Bruce Springsteen/Billy Joel show is not as sweet to me.  Mostly because I really don't like Billy Joel.  Read About It Here.

VP Debate - The Very Definition of Low Impact

The amount of time and staff power being devoted to this was evidence of concern among Mr. McCain’s associates that Ms. Palin’s early triumphs — a well-received convention speech, her drawing of big crowds — has been overtaken by a series of setbacks, creating higher stakes for her in the debate Thursday with the Democratic nominee for vice president, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

“I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States,” David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview. “If she doesn’t perform well, then people see it.

“And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing.”  Read Article Here.

There are three reasons for this. First, Biden does not want to look condescending. For the same reason, he plans on referring to Palin as “Gov. Palin” during the debate and never as “Sarah.” (He will sometimes refer to John McCain as “John,” however, because they have been senators together for many years.)

Second, Biden knows the press is going to pounce on any mistakes, and so he does not need to.

Third, and most important, Sarah Palin is not Biden’s true target.

“Joe Biden’s No. 1 job during the vice presidential debate is to keep the focus on the top of the ticket,” the Biden debate prepper told me. “He is going to keep the focus on John McCain.”

This is an arguable strategy. After all, McCain is the experienced one on the Republican ticket, the one whose credentials to be commander in chief from Day One are not in much question.  Read Article Here.

The title of this post comes from a West Wing quote, Josh is afraid that Leo is unprepared for the VP debate and Toby reminds him that the debate doesn't really matter.  It is hard to say if this debate truly matters.  As the articles point out America votes for the top of the ticket.  Biden is going to have to walk a tight rope so he does not seem: cruel, patronizing, or elitist.  Palin has to demonstrate that she is more than an SNL skit gone horribly wrong.  I will be blogging live throughout the event, mostly to mock Palin.

Bush Wants Decisive Action...Again

Appearing drawn and frustrated, Bush said in remarks at the White House that this is a "critical moment" for the U.S. economy. He noted that yesterday's single-day loss on the stock market, estimated at more than $1 trillion, was greater than the highest estimated cost of his administration's bailout plan.

"The consequences will grow worse each day if you do not act," Bush said, addressing dissident lawmakers. He added a moment later: "Our economy is depending on decisive action from the government...This is what elected leaders owe the American people."

"Our country is not facing a choice between action and the smooth functioning of the free market. We are facing a choice between action and the real prospect of financial hardship" that will be felt across the board, Bush said.  Read Article Here.

I am glad that Congress stood up to Pres. Bush and his cronies.  The last thing that the nation needs is decisive action without fully understanding the long term consequences.  Isn't decisive action what got the US in Iraq? Afghanistan? Illegal Wiretaps? The Patriot Act? This mess in the first place?  To quote Mr. President, "fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again".

Bailout: A Day Later

Slate on Republican Candidates Chances with Election:

For in the meantime, the chaos they've created by coming to the table and then throwing a fit works to their disadvantage. Each time a deal is close to done and then gets scuppered, the market (and its many participants) freaks out. Huge quantities of wealth are destroyed. The markets fell about 8 percent after today's stunt, likely wiping out close to $1 trillion in wealth. In so doing, they're turning off whatever base the party had left on Wall Street and likely closing off a huge source of campaign cash. Asked for his evaluation of what took place today, Lawrence Fink, the CEO of asset management giant Blackrock, said, "Major disappointment came from the Republican side." A Republican congressman who shows up for a fundraiser in Manhattan this week is likely to get tarred and feathered. In some congressional races, I suppose financial dislocation and bank failures could plausibly be good news for Republican challengers—but only if the challengers can pin them on the incumbent Democrats.

BU Today interviewing Professor Simon Gilchrist:

If you were in Congress, would you have voted for this plan?

Yes. Last weekend’s bailouts of European banks highlight the fragility of the global financial system and how far and how rapidly this problem can spread. A financial meltdown would severely impair the ability of households and firms to obtain the credit necessary to continue funding ongoing operations and spending plans.

Based on the “financial accelerator” economic model I developed in conjunction with Ben Bernanke [chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors] and [NYU economist] Mark Gertler in the 1980s, my recent research suggests that even prior to this September’s events, the financial crisis was creating a drag of about 2 percent on GDP growth. Since then, things have gotten worse, and I anticipate that even with the bailout, we will see a mild recession in the coming year. However, without a bailout, it would likely be a severe global contraction. While people can argue over the details of the plan, it does put in place a mechanism by which the government can intervene to alleviate the systemic risk associated with this financial crisis.

In the short run, the bailout will unfreeze the interbank lending market, the commercial paper market, and other key financial markets required to finance short-term lending. This will reduce the cost of credit to consumers and firms and allow them to obtain financing that would otherwise be unavailable. This, in turn, will alleviate pressure on the economy and reduce unemployment and increase growth. In the long run, however, taxes will be raised or spending cut to pay for this. Also, lending standards will be tighter, which ultimately is probably a good thing. 

Politico ponders the future for Rep. Boehner:

The leader lost the support of some of his closest allies in the House — including Iowa Rep. Tom Latham and California Rep. Devin Nunes, two drinking buddies who helped lay the foundation for Boehner’s political comeback in 2006.

Another Boehner ally, Rep. Thaddeus G. McCotter of Michigan, physically turned his back on the leader during a tense closed-door GOP conference meeting Sunday night.

People who were in the room said McCotter left abruptly after Boehner told members not to attack one another. Boehner tried to reach out to McCotter as he left. McCotter kept walking.

Social Secutiry

Through talking points and campaign ads, Democrats are accusing GOP candidates of supporting President Bush’s past proposal to allow workers to invest Social Security retirement funds in the marketplace. Though the legislation died in 2005, you’d hardly know it from recent Democratic rhetoric.

“What we have seen as a result of this meltdown in the financial markets is that people’s future retirement savings are put at risk … and there are many members of Congress on the Republican side that supported the Bush Social Security privatization plan,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Sunday on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.”  Read Article Here.

Time to beat this dead horse again.

Good Day for Barr

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Today’s bailout vote in the House embarrassed President Bush, the congressional leaders of both parties – and, to some extent, both major-party presidential candidates. Obama and McCain both endorsed the bailout proposal, and its failure to pass the House puts the two men in an awkward position as negotiations start all over again.

There was, however, one presidential “contender” who got on the right side of this issue: former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. Barr called today’s bill “the bailout from hell” and warned it would make Henry Paulson “an economic dictator, empowered to reengineer the economy as he sees fit.” As Obama and McCain carefully parse their language in response to developments on the Hill, Barr has no such burden: he got what he wanted.

Of the two major-party candidates, McCain finds himself in a somewhat more uncomfortable position going forward, having watched congressional Republicans desert the bailout bill after one of his campaign aides bragged about McCain’s role in corralling GOP support. But after this afternoon’s surprise revolt against the bailout, it’s hard to say either he or Obama had a really good day. Barr, on the other hand, had an unexpected moment in the sun.  

Read Article Here.

Proposal For the Future

Initially I thought that the house not passing the bailout bill was an unbelievable and terrible thing for the economy. Then I read the bill itself, available here.  I obviously know that not passing the bill hurt the economy today, but I am not sure the bill would help the economy in the long term.  It gives too much power to the Treasury Secretary and President, and does not do enough to help the average person.

The Paulson plan, as originally presented on Sept. 20, would have bailed out the institutions holding mortgage derivatives without doing anything about the underlying homes or adequately protecting the taxpayer, who would have been taking the risk without potential for reward. Congressional negotiators addressed those glaring omissions in 'round-the-clock weekend negotiations and announced yesterday they had reached an agreement. Both the House and Senate plan to vote on the proposal this week.

We will never know what would have happened without the largest government bailout in history. And it's far from clear this new New Deal will be the end. Surely there is a better way to dispose of bad assets.   Read Article Here.

I think that a New New Deal is absolutely what is needed.  A new WPA is what the country needs.  It will provide employment for the average person, no matter their education level.  Unemployment is at a dangerous high, even higher among blue collar workers.  And the country desperately needs to be updated.  The harbors, highways and rail system all need to be modernized.  We need to build new factories to produce green technology and products.  It seems to me, that it is high time that the government starts to regulate energy policy and promote public works and green projects.  If it worked to get us out of the Great Depression, it will work to get us out of this Depression.

McCain "Angry and Hyper-Partisan"

Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

This is a moment of national crisis, and today’s inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis.

Palin: Should Scare You

Jack Cafferty unloaded on Sarah Palin's "disastrous" interview with Katie Couric Friday afternoon on CNN, telling Wolf Blitzer, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Governor Palin away from the press."

After showing a clip of Palin stumbling over Couric's question about the bailout and offering an answer connecting the bailout to healthcare, Cafferty asked, "Did you get that?"

He warned the viewers: "If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should."  Read Article Here.

The Vote on the Bailout

While the economic consequences of the vote will be determined during the coming weeks, the outcome this afternoon was a major setback to John McCain, who had backed the proposal and had portrayed himself as a party leader who would help win approval for the bailout. Instead, members of his own party voted 133 to 65 against the measure.

In contrast, Democrats voted 141 to 94 for the bill.

There very likely will be an attempt to try to pass the bill again, although it is not clear how soon that would take place. Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas asked if he could move for reconsideration and if he did, how soon would it be taken up. He was told by House parliamentarians that it would be taken up immediately -- too soon for supporters to regroup -- so he put off his motion.  Read Article Here.

Both Candidates endorsed the deal.  One party voted almost two to one against it, one voted almost two to one for it.  Doesn't this signal who is leading their party and who is out of touch with their party?

Obama and Women's Rights

And though she never was told about the nature of the commercial, Shelton-Knight said she thought that the focus of the ad may be about the practice in Wasilla, Alaska, to charge rape victims to pay for their own exams.

The law was on the books when Sarah Palin became mayor of the small city, and it's unclear whether she supported it or opposed it during her tenure. 

But Shelton-Knight said Palin should not be criticized for having governed a city with such a law as they were quite common until recent years.

Alaska didn't pass a bill until 2000 requiring state and local law enforcement to pay for the exams. And Shelton-Knight said it wasn't until lobbying by her and others that Virginia last year put the financial burden on localities. Many states still charge victims for the cost of the exam.  Read Article Here.

Seems a little craven to use a rape victim in a commercial, but at the same time women's rights are hugely important this election.  With the choice of Palin, McCain certainly has signalled that he does not support the right to abortion.

Another Day, Another Bank

Citigroup reached an agreement early Monday morning to acquire the banking operations of the Wachovia Corporation after making a daring bid that pulled the deeply troubled company from the brink of collapse.

Citigroup will pay $1 a share, or about $2.2 billion, according to people briefed on the deal.

Federal regulators worked around the clock this weekend to orchestrate the sale, finally reaching an agreement at 4 a.m. on Monday morning. In the end, the government agreed to provide Citigroup with a financial guarantee on Wachovia’s most risky assets. It is similar to the deal that the Federal Reserve established with JPMorgan Chase’s emergency takeover of Bear Stearns.  Read Article Here.

C.R.E.A.M. - Failed Bailout

Treasury’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan collapsed in the House on Monday, sending a shock through financial markets and leaving the Bush administration scrambling to find some new path to deal with the credit crunch facing the American economy.

Republican defections proved fatal to the massive government intervention, which was rejected 228-205. Despite bipartisan appeals from the leadership, anti-Wall Street sentiment and the huge scale of the proposed government intervention proved too much for Treasury to prevail.

Democrats more than delivered a majority of their caucus, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) held the vote open to bring her numbers up to 140 votes for the package. But Republicans never topped 70, and the final GOP split was 133 against the bill and only 65 for the measure.

After the vote, Republicans claimed that the Democratic leadership had been warned that fewer than 60 Republicans would vote for the bill. Democrats denied the claim, saying they never would have brought the bill to the floor if they had been told there was so little Republican support.  Read Article Here.

Clearly McCain's attempt to moderate discussions and deliver the Republicans failed.  I have a feeling that this is not going to help the financial situation.

The Debate

I have not commented on the debate.  This is partially due to the fact that I did not see all of it.  I was out and only saw the last half hour or so.  From what I saw:

• Obama needs to be more forceful, stop being so academic.
• McCain looks even older when he stands next to Obama
• Not sure the not looking at your opponent strategy was a good way to go for McCain
• McCain sure seemed annoyed when Obama agreed with him.  Since Obama agreed so often, is Obama really that naive? If he is, doesn't that mean that McCain is also naive?
• For all the attack ads, the debate was pretty civil.  Can we see the two of them go at it soon?  I want to watch two people go for the jugular live in a debate.

Those are my thoughts.  Can not wait for the next debates, especially the VP debate.

McCain, Obama and Kissinger

But the true farce and disgrace is that this increasingly glassy-eyed old blunderer and war criminal, who has been wrong on everything since he first authorized illicit wiretapping for the Nixon gang, should be cited as an authority by either nominee, let alone by both of them. Meanwhile, I repeat my question from two weeks ago: Does Sen. Obama appreciate, or do his peacenik fans and fundraisers realize, just how much war he is promising them if he is elected? Once again on Sept. 26 in Mississippi—at the end of a week when American and Pakistani forces had engaged in their first actual direct firefight—he repeated his intention of ignoring the Pakistani frontier when it came to hot pursuit of al-Qaida. Out-hawked on this point, as he was nearly out-doved on the Kissinger one, McCain was moderate by comparison. Obama went on to accuse Iran of having built more centrifuges than most people think it has. This allegation has a confrontational logic of its own, above and beyond the minor issues of preconditions and the "level" of diplomacy. I think Obama is to be praised for doing this—always assuming that he does in fact know what he is doing. But as we all press bravely on, the debate would look more intelligent, and be conducted on a higher plane, if it excluded a discredited pseudo-expert who has trampled on human rights, vandalized the U.S. Constitution, deceived Congress, left a trail of disaster and dictatorship behind him, and deserves to be called not a hawk or a dove but a vulture.  Read Article Here.

SNL and The Election

Every four years SNL becomes kind of relevant again.  This year mostly due to the fact that Tina Fey does a great Sarah Palin.

Check it out here.

I am not going to bother to post clips from Colbert and Daily Show, since there would be too many.

Debate

A year ago, the debate on foreign policy and national security would have been viewed as a marquee general election showdown. McCain and Obama hold starkly different views on the question of exiting from Iraq, and have sparred for months over issues ranging from negotiating with rogue countries to stabilizing Afghanistan to challenging an emboldened Russia. It was supposed to be the night that McCain, long immersed in foreign policy, would occupy the commanding heights.

But as the economy has overtaken Iraq as the top concern of voters, and the financial crisis on Wall Street casts an ever longer shadow, the nation – not to mention the candidates – is focused on matters closer to home. McCain and Obama are each expected to broaden the conversation Friday to encompass economic concerns.  Read Article Here.

Pelosi: McCain's involvement, meeting at White House "disruptive"

“I think Sen. McCain's involvement is sort of a blip.”

Pelosi called Thursday's meeting with the president, congressional leaders and the presidential candidates “disruptive” to the negotiations “because we had to begin writing the bill.”

“We can't take the bill to the floor until the bill is written, and we were on a path to that. It took a whole afternoon. And that time is important to us,” Pelosi said.  Read Article Here.

On a side note, if Pres. Clinton and Sen. Liberman could just switch their party affiliation to Republican, it would save us a lot of time.  The two of them are practically campaigning for McCain.  If they like him that much why not switch teams?

The Stunt Failed

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ended three days of suspense on Friday morning and announced that he will leave bailout negotiations in Washington and fly to Oxford, Miss., for tonight's opening presidential debate.

McCain had previously said that he would suspend his campaign—and so would not attend the debate—until an agreement was reached on the administration's $700 billion mortgage proposal.

No such agreement has been reached, but Republicans said the standoff was hurting McCain's campaign and that he would look terrible if he didn't attend the nationally televised, eagerly anticipated debate, while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was ready to go on stage.  Read Article Here.

Runnin' the Numbers

Obama is breaking open a presidential race that had once looked deadlocked.

State by state, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill). is showing signs of breaking open a presidential race that looked deadlocked through much of September.

A new wave of polls released Wednesday showed decisive leads for Obama in the critical states of Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

That follows noticeable progress in polls in Virginia, which had looked safe for Sen. John McCain, and Florida, which had looked promising for McCain.

This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds.  Read Article Here.

When the Going Gets Tough, Run Away

John McCain called Wednesday for the first presidential debate, scheduled for Friday in Mississippi, to be delayed and urged Barack Obama to join him in Washington for a high-level meeting of congressional leaders to address the financial crisis. Obama responded that the debate should go on.

In a roll of the dice that jolted the presidential race, McCain said in New York Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign - and his fundraising and campaign advertising - as of Thursday and will return to Washington. He also scrapped a planned appearance on David Letterman.

Aides said it was unclear how long the suspension would last. The McCain campaign also left open the possibility of agreeing to the debate if a bailout deal could be reached by early Friday.

"I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself," McCain said. "It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem."

Obama rebuffed the proposal. “It’s my belief that this is exactly the time the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible with dealing with this mess," he told reporters in Florida, where he has been prepping for Friday's event. "What I think is important is that we don’t suddenly infuse Capitol Hill with presidential politics," he said.  Read Article Here.

Blind I and Obama

My favorite Hip-Hop site is blind I. They are pretty good about putting up all sorts of Hip-Hop mixtapes.  Many of them are inspired by Obama.  Some are sick and some are not so sick.  You can check it out here.

Don't Get Turned Away

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ADVISE EVERYONE YOU KNOW THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY CAN
NOT GO TO THE POLLS WEARING ANY OBAMA SHIRTS, PINS OR HATS, IT IS
AGAINST THE LAW AND WILL BE GROUNDS TO HAVE THE POLLING OFFICIALS TO
TURN YOU AWAY. THAT IS CONSIDERED CAMPAIGNING AND NO ONE CAN CAMPAIGN
WITHIN 100 FEET OF THE POLLS. THEY ARE BANKING ON US BEING
EXCITED AND NOT BEING AWARE OF THIS LONG STANDING LAW THAT YOU CAN BET
WILL BE ENFORCED THIS YEAR!

THEY ARE BANKING THAT IF YOU ARE TURNED AWAY YOU WILL NOT GO HOME AND CHANGE
YOUR CLOTHES. PLEASE JUST DON’T WEAR OBAMA GEAR OF ANY SORTS TO THE
POLLS! PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION, OH AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE
ALREADY AWARE, WE’RE JUST TRYING TO COVER ALL GROUNDS.PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ADVISE EVERYONE YOU KNOW THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY CAN
NOT GO TO THE POLLS WEARING ANY OBAMA SHIRTS, PINS OR HATS, IT IS
AGAINST THE LAW AND WILL BE GROUNDS TO HAVE THE POLLING OFFICIALS TO
TURN YOU AWAY. THAT IS CONSIDERED CAMPAIGNING AND NO ONE CAN CAMPAIGN
WITHIN 100 FEET OF THE POLLS. THEY ARE BANKING ON US BEING
EXCITED AND NOT BEING AWARE OF THIS LONG STANDING LAW THAT YOU CAN BET
WILL BE ENFORCED THIS YEAR!

THEY ARE BANKING THAT IF YOU ARE TURNED AWAY YOU WILL NOT GO HOME AND CHANGE
YOUR CLOTHES. PLEASE JUST DON’T WEAR OBAMA GEAR OF ANY SORTS TO THE
POLLS! PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION, OH AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE
ALREADY AWARE, WE’RE JUST TRYING TO COVER ALL GROUNDS.

Miami Crew Better go to this

The National and The Breeders Rock Free Concert for Obama

I am sure Obama has something like this but...

I ghost-wrote letters to the editor for the McCain campaign

I spent a morning in John McCain's Virginia campaign headquarters ghost-writing letters to the editor for McCain supporters to sign. I even pretended to have a son in Iraq.  Read Article Here.

Seems a little scummy to do this.

New Numbers

Obama has also increased his advantage on two critical indicators—which candidate voters believe would better handle the economy, and which would bring "change" to Washington—that McCain had closed the gap on following his party's convention. And Democrats have broadened their lead in party affiliation after that too had tightened following McCain's addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket and acceptance of his party's nomination.

The shift appears to be tied, at least in part, to the turmoil on Wall Street. Wednesday's Washington Post-ABC poll found that for the first time this cycle, half of all voters view the economy and jobs as the single most important issue—five times more than cite the war in Iraq and a remarkable 13-point rise in the past two weeks. The CNN/ORC poll found that by nearly a two-to-one margin, 47 to 24 percent, voters believe Republicans “are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market.”  Read Article Here.

Obama McCain and the Press

While I don't believe that the Times is pulling for Barack Obama, and I'd never judge an entire publication by one story, Steve Schmidt is right about the more general point he raises: The press corps does adore Barack Obama. They like his story. They like writing about him. They like the way he gives speeches. They like the way he makes them feel. And they don't mind cutting him slack whenever he acts like a regular politician—which he is.

This, of course, is the same press corps that adored John McCain during the 2000 race, as this comprehensive study by FAIR shows. The press corps liked his honesty. They liked the access he provided them. They liked his maverick stance. They liked the way he made them feel. And they didn't mind cutting him slack whenever he acted like a regular politician—which he was, most of the time.  Read Article Here.

McCain's Chief of Staff

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.  

Freddie Mac’s payments of roughly $500,000 to Davis Manafort, the people familiar with the arrangement said, began in late 2005, immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Mr. Davis to run.

From 2000 to the end of 2005, Mr. Davis received nearly $2 million as president of the coalition, the Homeownership Alliance, which the companies created to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing. That status let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that proved to be their downfall.  Read Article Here.

If Obama can not capitalize on this then I give up.

George F. Will on McCain

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19, Page A22). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."  Read Article Here.

Obama: the new Dukakis?

And yet, and unless I am about to miss some delayed "groundswell" or mood shift, none of this has translated into any measurable advantage for the Democrat. There are three possible reasons for such a huge failure on Barack Obama's part. The first, and the most widely canvassed, is that he is too nice, too innocent, too honest, and too decent to get down in the arena and trade bloody thrusts with the right-wing enemy. (This is rapidly becoming the story line that will achieve mythic status, along with allegations of racial and religious rumor-mongering, if he actually loses in November.) The second is that crisis and difficulty, at home and abroad, sometimes make electors slightly more likely to trust the existing establishment, or some version of it, than any challenger or newcomer, however slight. The third is that Obama does not, and perhaps even cannot, represent "change" for the very simple reason that the Democrats are a status quo party.

To analyze this is to be obliged to balance some of the qualities of Obama's own personality with some of the characteristics of his party. Here's a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia? No, not the line about his white grandmother. Some other line. Oh, dear. Now do you see what I mean?  Read Article Here.

Todd Palin

Todd Palin grew up as the archetypal Alaskan -- salmon fisherman, champion snowmobiler, North Slope oil worker. But since his wife became governor 20 months ago, his portfolio has broadened: househusband, babysitter, senior adviser, legislative liaison, and -- when the occasion warrants -- enforcer and protector.  Read Article Here.

We can argue if Gov. Sarah Palin has experience necessary to be President.  I think we can all agree that champion snow mobiler and fisherman are not.  From the sounds of the article, Todd Palin would have much more power than anyone would feel comfortable with.  I don't care if you can have a beer with the guy or if he is hot, he might be the deciding voice in foreign policy and that is an even scarier thought than Pres. Palin.

From Presidential Dreams to Realities

Abroad are two wars of uncertain future, conflicts to be won or wound down in a way that brings stability to those regions while retaining public confidence in the next commander in chief. At home, the cost and complexities of resolving the economic crisis have put the government on a new footing and are likely to sharply limit the next president's domestic maneuvering room.

Presidential campaigns are exercises in big dreams and grand ambitions. This campaign has turned into a case of watching those ambitions chipped away by events. McCain or Obama will inherit a mess by any definition and will have to spend the first year of his presidency, at least, consumed with these problems.  Read Article Here.

Presidential Powers and Presidential Candidates

Some of this makes for reassuring reading: McCain pledges never to use a signing statement—the somewhat symbolic but nevertheless crazy-making evidence that the Bush administration was doing its utmost to supersede Congress. McCain also says that if Congress definitively says that a "specific interrogation technique" is off-limits, the president can't approve its use anyway. But McCain also declines to name a single use of executive power by the Bush administration that is unconstitutional or even just "a bad idea." And in May he went on his infamous tear about the federal judiciary, blasting the judges "common and systematic abuse of our federal courts"—never mind that at this point the majority are Republican appointees. (If anyone was wondering whether McCain would toe the line and appoint archconservative justices in the model of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, as he'd promised, this should have quelled such doubts.)

As for Obama, he has been consistently strong in saying the president can't hold detainees he decides are enemy combatants without charges, and on preserving the right to habeas corpus—the means by which the Guantanamo detainees might actually challenge their enemy combatant status in court someday. The Bush administration has cast all of this as a fight for supremacy between the executive and the courts, so Obama's position would be a major easing of tensions. Obama also told Savage that "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." And he said the president can't ignore Congress on troop deployments, while McCain complained about Congress micromanaging wars. Given how imperial the American presidency has become over the last half-century, Congress isn't good at taking power back for itself. So, Obama looks like he has the legislature's back.  Read Article Here.

Follow the Money

“These are not ideological courses,” said James Piereson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which created the Veritas Fund for Higher Education to funnel donations to these sorts of projects. The initiatives are only political insofar as they “work against the thrust of programs and courses in gender, race and class studies, and postmodernism in general,” he said.

The programs and centers differ in emphasis, with some concentrating on American democratic and capitalist institutions and others on the Western canon, the great books often derided during the culture wars as the history of “dead white men.” They sponsor colloquia, seminars, courses, visiting lecturers and postdoctoral students. At Brown, the Political Theory Project even put on a play by the capitalist heroine Ayn Rand.  Read Article Here.

Seems to counter balance the Obama article I posted earlier.

Prof. Obama

Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School for a decade before he left in 2003 to run for the United States Senate. He emerged as one of the Senate’s most liberal members, and his voting record is often invoked in the current campaign, especially by his opponents. But the men and women who studied with him at Chicago echo Escuder’s observation that Obama was much more pragmatic than ideological. Even as his political career advanced, Obama’s teaching stuck to the law-school norm of dispassionately evaluating competing arguments with the tools of forensic logic. But Obama apparently was not attached to legal argumentation for its own sake. “It was drilled into us from Day 1 that you examined your biases and inclinations,” Richard Hess, now an attorney at Susman Godfrey in Houston, told me. “And then, when you made decisions, they were based on sound empirical reasons.” Escuder saw his professor as “a street smart academic”: “He wanted his students to consider the impact laws and judicial opinions had on real people.” According to Marcus Fruchter, who took constitutional law with Obama and now practices at the law firm of Schopf & Weiss in Chicago, “You never would have known he was going to be a liberal senator based on what he said in his courses.”  Read Article Here.

Brilliance

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!  Read Article Here.

I am going to post the shocking similarities between West Wing and this election soon.

Third Party

In an effort to be fair and balanced, I have decided to link some of the other candidates running for president this year:

Bob Barr - Libertarian Party

Cynthia McKinney -  Green Party and Workers World Party

Charles Jay - Boston Tea Party and Personal Choice Party

Chuck Baldwin - Constitution Party

Gloria La Riva - Party for Socialism and Liberation

Brian Moore - Socialist Party USA

There are many more parties/candidates.  These are the largest ones.  Interesting to see how the third parties are usually split into two groups: strict constitutional liberty groups or communist/environmental anarchist-esque groups.  I personally think that the Green Party is closest to my beliefs, but I know that they won't win and in a close race every vote counts.

McCain and Georgia

That's exactly what worries some of McCain's many foreign-policy consultants. As the two presidential candidates prepare to debate foreign affairs and national security this Friday night, the Republican nominee is widely assumed to have an edge: polls consistently show that voters think he's better prepared than Sen. Barack Obama to be commander in chief. His relationships with leaders like Saakashvili contribute to that reputation. Yet McCain's affection for Misha runs counter to the instincts of many Republican foreign-policy "realists." (GOP moderates use the term to distinguish themselves from the party's neoconservative wing. McCain's chief foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, a former Saakashvili lobbyist, is identified with the neocons.) The candidate likes Saakashvili's sense of moral absolutes, says Dimitri Simes, founding president of the realists' home think tank, the Nixon Center: "I understand how someone who takes this posture would appeal to Senator McCain, who also does not tend to see international relations in shades of gray."

The concern, according to a McCain adviser and former Republican administration official, who did not want his name linked to criticism of the nominee's positions, is this: "When you personalize these issues, you lose sight of some more basic national interests." Saakashvili's tough talk about Moscow may ignite McCain's imagination, but his brinksmanship in August led to the rout of Georgia's armed forces and the worst U.S.-Russia standoff since the cold war. Simes says that "a number of leading Republican realists have shared their reservations with Senator McCain regarding Saakashvili and blind U.S. support for Georgia."  Read Article Here.

This article makes me question McCain's foreign policy experience.  It is beginning to sound as if he is not as wise as he claims.  The fact that no one is willing to be named in this piece makes me wonder about McCain's tendency to hold grudges.

In Defense of Atheism, Elitism, and Experience

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.  

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.  Read Full Article Here.

These are just random excerpts from the article.  They are not in order but I think you get the idea.  Do read the full article it is very insightful.

Point Taken

If there's one piece of advice Barack Obama should heed, it's this: Don't listen to advice. As John McCain overtakes Obama in the polls, pundits and bloggers have turned into political versions of "Dear Abby." They advise him about his message (Mark Halperin says: Talk about the economy!), his style (Arianna Huffington wants to see more MLK references), and his themes (Ellen Malcolm of Emily's List says, "Talk about who really is able to change the direction of this country"). So many people have added their two cents, no wonder Obama's breaking fundraising records.  Read Article Here.

C.R.E.A.M. - Vegas Style

Let’s understand what happened here. Wall Street — the financial industry — became a bubble in recent years thanks to an excess of liquidity and the oldest bubble maker in history: greed. Some of the smartest people forgot one of the oldest rules of investing: There is no such thing as a risk-free return. When you reach too far for yield, sooner or later you get burned.

In the ’90s, the no-lose, risk-free, high-yield return was supposed to be dot-com stocks. This decade’s version are subprime mortgages and financial stocks. Just like the dot-comers in the 1990s, the financial stocks got inflated to ridiculous levels and salaries for Wall Street executives reached ridiculous heights. You are now watching live and in color that bubble burst: “Thank you for playing, Lehman Brothers.” That’s really sad for a 158-year-old company.  Read Article Here.

There is No Strong Leader Without a Strong Country

Who cares how much steel John McCain has in his gut when the steel that today holds up our bridges, railroads, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is rusting? McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin “reform” Washington — as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook?  Read Article Here.

Barbies for War

R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented.”  Read Article Here.

Got this from my Dad

In the middle of September of 2008, as the Senate of the United States was pondering an energy bill, all 100 Senators were invited to speak at a Bipartisan Energy Summit. With a national election less than two months away, you may imagine the posturing. But you might not have anticipated this minute-long question. [Watch it here.]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator from Rhode Island:

WHITEHOUSE: Gentlemen, we're in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We're burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security and economic ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

(Long silent pause during which nobody answers.)

WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn't seem so.

I watched this remarkable moment as I was reading Water Consciousness, a book about a crisis that just possibly muscles oil aside as the biggest threat to life as we know it. News to you? It certainly would be to our nation's leaders. But consider some facts:

-- Right now, 1.3 billion people have no access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack adequate sewage or sanitation. The demand for water doubles every 20 years. At this rate, demand for fresh water will outpace supply by 50% --- in less than 20 years.

-- Yes, the earth is mostly water, but 97% of the earth's water is salty. All life shares 1% of the earth's water.

-- 70% of the water in America we use goes to agriculture.

--- That third-of-a-pound burger? It takes 600 gallons of water to grow the corn that feeds the cow that produces just that third of a pound of meat.

-- To sustain life, we each need 13 gallons of water a day. In the United States, we each use about 150 gallons.

-- Three out of four Americans drink bottled water. One out of five Americans drinks only bottled water.

-- National Climate Data Center officials say that 43% of the United States is in “moderate to extreme drought.”

-- More than 50% of the water that American households use goes for lawns, gardens and pools.

In short, we are wasting a resource we can't live without. We are in crisis. And we have not declared any level of emergency.

This is not to say we're lost. Smart, serious essays by experienced professionals explain the problem and present some savvy solutions. If you're better read than this water user, perhaps you already know about the importance of watersheds and acequias (communal irrigation systems) and cisterns that collect rainwater --- but let me confess, I read with a pen in hand, and marked a lot. You may not like Big Government; you need to know the argument for a federal trust fund for water.

And in these pages you can learn what you, as an individual, can do. Calculate your water footprint. Rethink that lawn. Get a front-loading washing machine. Stop buying gourmet water; purify tap water at home and carry it around in non-toxic bottles.

A Goldman Sachs analyst predicts that the “water business could become the oil business of the decade from 2020 to 2030.” Whatever your politics, you really don't want that to happen. So either read two hundred pages of this picture-and-text book or start looking for a second home that has its own water supply. Because you don't want to be sitting on the sidelines, thirsty, as a Senator desperately tries to talk sense to his/her colleagues in 2025.

Last Post on this Subject

All in all, it adds up to a huge win for Obama, right? Not exactly. (At this point in the campaign, the only huge wins are in contests of height or age.) For Obama to take advantage of this moment, he has to convince voters he's going to change their lives. He can't use it as merely another opportunity to paint McCain as out of touch.  Read Article Here.

I am done with this subject.  At this point we all get it, McCain is bad on the economy.  And as the article points out, Obama has to be careful with the subject. If he continually points out the economy sucks, then he will become the candidate of gloom and not the candidate for change.  I am sure Obama's people are thinking of ways to make the campaign about the economy and how Obama will change the economy and the American people's lives for the better.

Obama and Afghanistan

Meanwhile, and on Pakistani soil and under the very noses of its army and the ISI, the city of Quetta and the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas are becoming the incubating ground of a reorganized and protected al-Qaida. Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He began using this rhetoric when it was much simpler to counterpose the "good" war in Afghanistan with the "bad" one in Iraq. Never mind that now; he is committed in advance to a serious projection of American power into the heartland of our deadliest enemy. And that, I think, is another reason why so many people are reluctant to employ truthful descriptions for the emerging Afghan-Pakistan confrontation: American liberals can't quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he's ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that—not less.  Read Article Here.

This article thoroughly explains the Pakistan problem.  The problem being they are an unstable, corrupt, dangerous nation, that has nuclear weapons, wants to wipe India off the map and supports terrorism.  This is clearly an over simplification on my part, but I haven't heard to many positive things said about Pakistan.  This might be due to the fact the West is currently in love with India or it might be due to the fact that it supports, or at least doesn't stop, Al-Queda.

C.R.E.A.M. - Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch

Republican John McCain said today the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are still strong despite the collapse of some of Wall Street's top financial institutions and the tumbling of the stock exchange.

Democrat Barack Obama called the turmoil in the financial markets "a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future and make their mortgage payments."  Read Article Here.

As if we need anymore proof, John McCain does not understand anything having to do with the economy.  As I write this the DOW is down over THREE Hundred Points due to Merrill Lynch acquisition and the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.  When the market is down this much, how can you really say that it is still strong?

What I Fear

That is what scares the Rev. Howard Bess. A retired American Baptist minister who pastors a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla's twin town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley, Bess has been tangling with Palin and her fellow evangelical activists ever since she was a Wasilla City Council member in the 1990s. Recently, Bess again found himself in the spotlight with Palin, when it was reported that his 1995 book, "Pastor, I Am Gay," was among those Palin tried to have removed from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor.

"She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face".  Read Article Here.

This is what scares the hell out of me.  That Palin is the new Falwell.  That the government will attempt to revert the Nation to the 1950's, where African Americans, Gay's, Women and Intellectuals couldn't live openly for fear of persecution.  

Race, Politics and Polls in Ohio

A striking feature of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, which was released Friday, was that while McCain is winning the support of 90 percent of Republican voters, Obama is only picking up 82 percent of the Democrats. These differing levels of party loyalty -- which might (note the conditional tense) be attributed to Palin for the Republicans and Obama's African-American heritage on the Democratic side -- partly explain why McCain leads 48 to 44 percent in the survey. (A Quinnipiac University poll gave Obama a 49-44 edge in Ohio over McCain, which underscores why slavishly following the gyrating surveys can be an exercise in frustration.)

But polls, which tend to put the undecided vote in single digits, may understate the volatility of the race. In the Ohio Poll, 19 percent of the state's voters said that they could change their minds before Election Day and another 4 percent were undecided. "I think voters know less at this point about Obama than they do about McCain," said Eric Rademacher, the co-director of the Ohio Poll. "The people who were saying that they could change their minds are those who normally don't pay attention to politics until after the convention."  Read Article Here.

Ohio is important to me right now.  Partially because everyday I am comparing BU to Miami, but also because Ohio will decide the winner of this election.  It has 20 electoral points and is the reason why Kerry lost the election.  The article makes me feel a little more optimistic about Obama's chances, but only a little.

Closer to the Truth

Both major party candidates for president vowed to run a different kind of campaign, implicitly promising a break from the spin-fests that past contests had become. But the close race and the tumultuous media environment in which McCain and Obama now find themselves appear to have crushed those notions.

"When you are seeking people's approval, you tend to tell them what you think they want to hear," said Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press and CNN reporter who runs the online truth-squad effort Fact Check.org.

Analysts who have studied campaign rhetoric point out that rhetorical excess is hardly new. Plato railed against it 2,400 years ago. But even he might have been taken aback this year, particularly by the GOP ticket's recent comments and advertisements.  Read Article Here.

What If and What Will Be?

I anticipate that most black Americans will believe that an Obama defeat will have stemmed in substantial part from a prejudice that robbed 40 million Americans of the chance to become president on the day they were born black. They will of course understand that race wasn't the only significant variable -- that party affiliation, ideological proclivities, strategic choices and dumb luck also mattered. But deep in their bones, they will believe -- and probably rightly -- that race was a key element, that had the racial shoe been on the other foot -- had John McCain been black and Obama white -- the result would have been different.

This conclusion will be accompanied by bitter disappointment, and in some quarters, stark rage. In the early stages of the Obama campaign, his rival, Hillary Clinton, outpolled him among blacks in part because many didn't believe that he stood a chance of prevailing. Then came Iowa. And the near-victory in New Hampshire. When blacks realized that Obama's candidacy represented a serious drive for electoral power with an appreciable chance of success, they gravitated overwhelmingly to the Illinois senator.  Read Article Here.

This is a real question: what will Black America do if Obama loses unfairly?  I think that if Obama does lose on issues, then it will be difficult to harbor bitter feelings.  However, if his race and all of the smear is the reason why he loses, then I think anger and bitterness will be around for a long time.  And then the black and youth votes will certainly change.  People who are excited for the election will lose interest.  It will show that their vote doesn't matter when the elderly decide an election.  I unfortunately believe that his race and the negative ads will be a large part of the exit polls.

A New Round of Attacks

"So from where he and George Bush sit, maybe they just can't see," the Democrat told supporters and some self-identified undecided voters earlier in the day in Dover. "Maybe they are just that out of touch. But you know the truth, and so do I. . . . We just can't afford four more years of what John McCain and George Bush consider progress."

If Democrats were expecting a dramatic change in words, tone or temperament, they did not get it. While McCain attacked him as a pampered, fading celebrity, a sexist and a desperate bully, Obama stuck to familiar themes linking the senator from Arizona to Bush and Washington lobbyists.  Read Article Here.

I think that Obama may have to go harsher than saying McCain will be Bush deux.  However, I don't think he should stoop to the awful levels that McCain has.  Blatant lies and double speak will not help the nation.  If Obama gives up his image of being a new breed of politics and goes completely negative and toxic, I think the voters will vote for McCain who is seen as being patriotic and a "real" person.  

I was one of those half-million

Mr. Obama is not taking public financing — the $84 million cash infusion from a government presidential-election fund that Mr. McCain will receive — so his fund-raising burden is considerably higher than his Republican rival’s.

But almost more important than Mr. Obama’s August total may be the fact that it came partly from a half-million first-time donors, most of them far from having contributed the full $2,300 per person allowed in any general election.  Read Article Here.

While not taking public financing is a dicey idea, it certainly has created a greater base for Obama.  Over half a million people have decided to donate, I would bet most of whom are young and a $20 donation is not a small amount of money.

Cheney: Keeper of Secret's

Today the Washington Post is running and expose on Cheney's role in the warrant less wiretaps.  It is an interesting and incredible read.  It is nothing that is really shocking, other than Cheney kept the program secret from almost everyone.  I mean top adviser's seemingly didn't know that this program existed.  Here is a little taste: 

It was an awkward question. Potenza, the NSA's acting general counsel, and Brenner, its inspector general, were supposed to be the ones who kept their agency on the straight and narrow. That's what Cheney and their boss, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, told doubters among the very few people who knew what was going on. Cheney, who chaired briefings for select members of Congress, said repeatedly that the NSA's top law and ethics officers -- career public servants -- approved and supervised the surveillance program.

That was not exactly true, not without one of those silent asterisks that secretly flip a sentence on its tail. Every 45 days, after Justice Department review, Bush renewed his military order for warrantless eavesdropping. Brenner and Potenza told Hayden that the agency was entitled to rely on those orders [4]. The United States was at war with al-Qaeda, intelligence-gathering is inherent in war, and the Constitution appoints the president commander in chief.  Read Article Here.

My lone question is why would we, as a nation, want to continue practices like this?

Another One Bites the Dust

Fearing that a failure of Lehman Bros. could topple other financial firms, senior officials of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department were talking with the struggling company and potential buyers Thursday to try to smooth the way for a sale of the venerable investment bank, people familiar with the situation said.

The 158-year-old Wall Street institution has seen its shares fall 70% in the last three days. A sale of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. -- at what would be a bargain price -- would make it the second major Wall Street firm to succumb to the nearly 2-year-old mortgage crisis.  Read Article Here.

This is a bad sign.  Not sure who would want to invest in Lehman Bros. though.

Let the Destruction Continue

McCain released an ad titled "Disrespectful" that repeated his campaign's theme of attacking Obama as a "celebrity," at the same time casting the hugely popular GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as a victim. "They" dismissed her as "good looking," said she was just doing "what she was told" and called her a liar, the ad intones. As for Obama, the ad says, "he was the world's biggest celebrity, but his star is fading."

Obama released two ads -- one positive, the other an attack that avoids mentioning Palin but accuses McCain of being out of touch with the country after 26 years in Washington: "He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send e-mail. Still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class."  Read Article Here.

Good to know that we are back to normal with the candidates, and in particular McCain, are back to tearing each other down and launching negative attack ads.  For two men who ran on the idea of change and new type of politics this sure feels conventional.  For full analysis of the ads and what the facts are, please check out Factcheck.org.

9/11 and Iraq

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

"America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001," she said at the deployment ceremony, which drew hundreds of military families who walked from their homes on the sprawling post to the airstrip where the service was held.  Read Article Here.

Another Day, another story that makes me horrified that this person could potentially lead the country.  When even the White House has stopped using the 9/11-Iraq connection, you know it is completely fictitious.  

McCain - Nuclear Active Man

John McCain's plan to revive the U.S. nuclear power industry with 45 new reactors may cost $315 billion, with taxpayers bearing much of the financial risk.

The Republican presidential nominee wants the plants built in time to help the U.S. meet a 29 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030. Industry estimates put their cost at $7 billion each. Barack Obama, McCain's Democratic opponent, is less specific about his plans, saying he wants to ``find ways to safely harness nuclear power.''

Global warming and the rising cost of fossil fuels have boosted chances that atomic energy will supply more U.S. electricity. Public concerns remain about reactor safety and disposing of waste that stays hazardous for millennia. Investment bankers, citing the industry's cost overruns in the 1980s, say they won't finance its long-sought ``nuclear renaissance'' without federal backing. Read Article Here.

While I hate to admit it, McCain is probably right.  Of the options, Nuclear is the one that will have the most rapid results.  It is also one of the most dangerous.  Currently solar/wind/hydro are not efficient enough to provide the increased demand in power.  Nuclear is the only alternative energy that could be implemented and have real effects right away.  Building plants would provide vital stimulation in the economy and it is low on emissions.  Personally I think Obama needs to go for a more aggressive environmental plan.  He will likely pick up voters and force McCain to either lose support from people Palin brought over with ANWAR or voters who support his environment friendly policies.  It is also the one environmental policy that could leave us with blue hair and fins for hands.  So as always it is a mix bag.

Palin's First Interview

“But it is about reform of government, and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people,” Ms. Palin responded. She started to talk about energy independence, drawing on her experience with oil and gas development in Alaska, when Mr. Gibson interrupted to say, “National security is a whole lot more than energy.”

“It is,” she conceded, “but I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security.”

Then came a few rapid-fire questions, making us wonder if this had been edited or if their exchange went like this in real time.

He asked whether she had ever traveled outside of the United States.

Answer: Canada, Mexico and “the trip of a lifetime” to Kuwait, when she visited soldiers.

Has she ever met a foreign head of state?

“I have not,” she responded, but noted that a lot of previous vice presidents had probably not either.  Read Full Coverage Here.

There is Hope

I read this and saw a little ray of hope:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads Republican rival John McCain in Ohio while McCain is ahead in Florida, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

Obama leads McCain 49 percent to 44 percent in Ohio, the poll said. McCain got 50 percent support in Florida to 43 percent for Obama. In Pennsylvania, Obama has 48 percent support to 45 percent for McCain, a result within the poll's error margin. The three states are important to each campaign, as no one has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of them.  Read Article Here.

This is also helps, but I would feel better if there were more solid blue.

The Truth About Biden

Mr. Obama knew what he was getting when he picked Mr. Biden as his running mate: A veteran of six terms in the Senate, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, an Irish Catholic with working-class roots, a guy who had twice been tested in the arena of presidential politics.

And a human verbal wrecking crew.

This is the fellow who nearly derailed his nascent presidential campaign last year by calling Mr. Obama bright and clean and articulate and who noted that you needed a slight Indian accent to walk into a Dunkin’ Donuts or 7-Eleven in Delaware.  Read Article Here.

Everyone with a working brain understood why Biden was chosen.  Yes he has experience, even more importantly he is WHITE.  White white, snow white even.  He is from Delaware and helps make people forget for a minute that Obama is black.  While I wish I could say that I think people are beyond skin color, I know that this is completely untrue.  If he wanted real foreign policy experience, Bill Richardson was your man.  If you wanted to appease the greatest amount of people, Hillary Clinton was your woman.  If you wanted people to actually vote for Obama, then it had to be a white man.  Most of the nation is not ready for a black man and another minority to lead an office that has only been held by WASPs.

McCain continues to push old politics

Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign launched a broadside against Sen. Barack Obama yesterday, accusing him of a sexist smear, comparing his campaign to a pack of wolves on the prowl against the GOP vice presidential pick, charging that the Democratic nominee favored sex education for kindergartners, and resurrecting the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

The assault came a day before the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, when McCain and Obama are scheduled to appear together at Ground Zero during a mutually declared truce. That cease-fire is not likely to last long. With the airwaves already filling up with some of the most negative imagery of the campaign, Obama aides hinted that they would save their toughest counterpunch until after Sept. 11.  Read Article Here.

Sen. McCain changed his campaign ideal from experience to change.  Clearly his idea of change is using his experience to change Obama's mind on being president.  After all the horrible things said about him, why would Obama want to be president?  Its a cheap shot to continue to fake outrage over sexism, claims that Obama favors sex education for kindergartners and resurrecting Wright.  I guess all I can hope is that Obama gives up idealism and goes for the jugular.  McCain has plenty of vulnerabilities including lobbying, infidelity and Alzheimer's.

While September 11 does not mean much to me, shouldn't the candidates at least pretend that they care.  Shouldn't they not launch the most heinous claims the day before and day after 9/11?  Can they just give us a couple days off and remind us why we should care about this election?