After many essays saying why I am against McCain, it is time that I give reasons why I am for Obama. I am not just voting against McCain, but, instead, I am actually for Obama.
Here’s why:
Obama has demonstrated time and again that he has a steady hand and calm demeanor, proven by over twenty months of running for president against tough and experienced opponents. During this long campaign, he has been vetted by serious challenges, such as the constant character assassination attacks, and yet allows the attacks to roll off his back, staying consistently calm and even. He has managed to keep a tone of optimism in his campaign at a time it would be very easy to be downhearted, worried, nasty toward his opponent, and pessimistic about our future. That optimism alone goes a long way in demonstrating the kind of leadership our nation needs. He knows the language of reassurance that Americans so desperately need to hear. He shows the kind of leadership, intelligence, and skillful communicating that will be needed as America deals with our standing in the world and the historic economic crisis.
Obama is Reaganesque in his attitude and demeanor. Those of us who remember the 1980 campaign recall how the Democrats portrayed Ronald Reagan as an inexperienced cowboy, as a racist—as a lot of bad things. They did this because their own president, Carter, was unpopular, so they wanted to create doubts about the interloper from the West. In the end, the nasty approach didn’t work because Reagan had a calming presence, and an optimistic outlook at a time Americans weren’t feeling too good about themselves. Obama’s speeches repeat Reagan's soothing wisdom that there are solutions to our problems, although not easy ones, and show Reagan’s vision of American exceptionalism. The parties of Reagan and Obama are reversed, but the dynamics are similar. Obama is calm, solid, and reassuring. This comes naturally to him, just as it did to Reagan.
But it is not just his calm, even temperament and his speaking ability that draws me to him. It’s his stand on the issues that will affect me, our country, and therefore the world:
1. On the economy: If you study and compare their economic plans, Obama’s plan is much more geared to help the middle class and small business, whereas McCain’s plan is geared to help big business – such as his wife’s big beer distributorship – and his wealthy friends. Obama only would raise taxes on individuals and businesses netting more than $250,000 after deductions. This affects very little of the population – only about two percent of small businesses in the country fall into the over $250K category. Obama is also proposing a tax credit for offering health care to employees and elimination of capital gains taxes on startup businesses. He is proposing eliminating income tax on the first $50,000 of a retired couple’s income.
McCain’s plan mostly helps the wealthy and does little for the middle class. He has offered to help refinance all bad mortgages at the now lower home values, and, of course, using taxpayer money to pay the banks the money they would lose. Even this idea helps the banks more than it helps the middle class. Most of the middle class, the ones who have played by the rules and have always paid their bills on time, the ones who have been struggling to keep their heads above water for the last eight years, are not helped at all by the McCain Economic Plan.
2. On choosing running mates: Obama has demonstrated sound judgment in selecting as his running mate Sen. Joe Biden, whose experience and knowledge of foreign policy prepare him to step in if, need be as chief executive.
McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, by comparison, may have shown political savvy for that moment. At the expense of offering a vice president the Republican base could rally around, he selected an individual in whom a lack of knowledge to take over as president has become embarrassingly obvious, as evidenced by answers given during unscripted interviews. In the selection of Sarah Palin, instead of choosing one of the many accomplished women in the Republican Party that could have given his candidacy a stamp of seriousness, McCain has shown a reckless gambling attitude in his decision-making process.
3. On health care: Obama wants to continue our current employer-based system by requiring large companies to offer health care. For those people who cannot get health insurance through an employer, he would like to allow them to buy into a national insurance cooperative that offers coverage similar to that for federal employees.
McCain would give a $2,500 refundable tax credit to individuals and $5,000 to families in order to purchase a policy on the open market, but, at this time the average policy costs $12,500 per year. Then, he would tax the payments that businesses and their workers make toward employer-sponsored health insurance. This would cause a hefty tax increase that would likely cause employers to drop the insurance plan and force more people to buy on the open market. He wants to allow people to go to any state to buy insurance. This would likely cause most insurance companies to move to the state with the least regulation.
4. On Iraq: McCain did push the Bush administration to put in more troops – now called “the surge.” But the fact that surge was a success in reducing bloodshed does not vindicate the wrong decision made in the first place to invade a country that was NOT behind the 9/11 attacks and did NOT have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been a huge diversion from Afghanistan where the real terrorist threat resides. The Iraqis do not want us there. It’s time to start handing more responsibility to the Iraqi government and begin slowly pulling out. Obama understands this about Iraq and pledges to give Afghanistan the attention it deserves.
5. About ability: Barack Obama has consistently shown his intellectual strength in problem-solving. He went to Harvard on merit scholarships, not on racial-based quotas. Having the intelligence to get into Harvard without a rich daddy (unlike Bush at Yale or McCain at Annapolis), Obama graduated near the top of his class. While there, he was elected the first black editor of the Harvard Review by the mostly white Harvard student body. That says a lot for Obama. On the other hand, McCain got into Annapolis because of who his daddy was, partied all the way through college, and graduated fifth from the bottom of a class of nearly 900 students. As a retired teacher, this speaks volumes to me.
6. On who has a better moral compass: Barack Obama is a committed Christian, husband, and father. (No, he is not a Muslim.) We know he has not strayed from his wife, because if he had, it would have been dug up by the Republicans and flashed throughout the media for all to see. In his campaigning tactics alone, in the lies and sleazy tricks used, McCain has shown he is not a moral person. But there’s more: McCain is a know womanizer who left his permanently injured wife for his extremely wealthy mistress. And, even more disturbing, The New York Times and Time Magazine have done investigative reporting (Google: New York Times + McCain gambling), with witness statements and pictures, on McCain’s love of gambling regularly at the craps table in various casinos. Interestingly, McCain’s gambling has not been reported in any of the Republican-leaning media – obviously because they do not want the Republican base to know. But even if someone refuses to believe that McCain is a regular casino gambler, his gambling traits show up for all to see in the way he makes his decisions.
My choice has been made easier by the kind of campaign McCain has run. McCain has failed to sound any consistent themes; has been all over the map during the crisis over the federal bailout package; and now has come up with a socialistic $300 billion plan to refinance all distressed mortgages at new lower house values with the government paying the banks the difference, without any description of how he would pay for it. As the global economy went into meltdown, as the Dow went into free fall, McCain staged a pretend campaign suspension, including a suggestion that he would not attend the first debate until the problem was fixed, so that he could fly into Washington and save the country by brokering a deal between Democrats and Republicans. He brokered nothing. In fact, Republican Congressmen, as well as Democrats, said that he got in the way.
Despite promises he would not go negative, McCain has allowed his campaign to attack Obama's character with tenuous associations and outright lies . The McCain strategy recently took on a decidedly dangerous turn as desperation has turned into full-scale panic. McCain supporters are increasingly out of control. At recent McCain/Palin rallies, people in the crowd were heard shouting, “terrorist, treason, kill him, off with his head” in reference to Obama. Since the economic bailout was passed by Congress, all John McCain has wanted to do is link Obama to an aging radical regardless of the fact that their relationship amounted to just crossing paths while serving on the same charity board, on which, by the way, several Republicans have served. McCain and Palin continue to hammer away at Barack Obama’s very minimal relationship with 1960s Weather Underground radical William Ayers. Ask them about the economy and they bring up Bill Ayers. Ask them about Iraq and they talk about Bill Ayers. Just like Sarah said in her one debate, “You can ask me anything you want, but I am gonna talk about what I want to talk about.”
McCain really would be more of the same: On Face the Nation, he said that he agrees with the Republican ideology. Having voted with the Republicans over 90% of the time (McCain has acknowledged this data), McCain would be little change from what we have endured for the last eight years. Eight years of the Bush administration have left our country weary of Republican neo-conservative ideologues.
Obama has given many people hope for a change – a chance to go down a new road. Obama’s rhetoric is not just empty words; what he says is obviously carefully considered. In the debates and during his campaigning, Obama has been the voice of moderation, combining common sense and compassion on issue after issue. When the subject turns to foreign policy, supposedly McCain's strong suit, Obama gives no indication that he will have to learn on the job. The strengths of Barack Obama, whose rise to prominence is not a fluke or national infatuation with a “rock star” but, instead, his remarkable skills -- a keen intellect, and ability to compromise when necessary, noble intentions, moral character, and the wit and grace to express them in ways that have inspired millions across the country – are exactly suited to these fearful times. These strengths give Obama the capacity to grow into the office.
On the other hand, John McCain, whose behavior, as the campaign progressed, in my opinion, has shown the beginnings of character changes that often accompany old age: the obviously simmering anger during each debate, the "that one" comment at the second debate, and the "my fellow prisoners" comment at a campaign stop. In all his campaign speeches, at least in the many to which I have listened, when he isn’t smearing slime all over Obama’s character, it’s always about I, I, I, me, me, me…and rarely speaks about what he will do for the middle class. That is because his policies will mostly help the wealthy and do very little for the middle class.
Our new President will face a series of challenges including the crisis in the financial markets, the rising costs of entitlement programs, a huge national deficit, an unpopular war in Iraq, the war on terror, and a growing strain upon the nation's health care system that will make it difficult to deliver on many campaign promises. Our next president must have the kind of qualities that Obama has demonstrated in his long, unusually tough, and historic fight to lead the United States of America in order to set the right priorities. If Obama does win, I believe he can steer us through the economic downturn, get the Iraqis to take charge of their country, and start putting the culture wars behind us. There is no guarantee that he will be able to clean up all the mess that Bush is leaving behind, but I am absolutely convinced that he is much more likely to do it than his opponent.
Although endorsements generally serve as an informational shortcut for voters, when you're voting in a local race, and you have no information about the candidates, you might well go with whomever your local paper decides to endorse. In a race like Obama-McCain, on the other hand, you already have all the information you could ever want, and probably have already made a choice. With that said, Powell has approval ratings as high as just about any public figure in America. On Meet the Press, Colin Powell had harsh words about the far right path the Republican Party has taken in recent years. In announcing that he is voting for Obama, his endorsement was eloquent, unequivocal, and because of his role in the Bush Administration, genuinely newsworthy.
Powell said, “We have two wars. We have economic problems. We have health problems. We have education problems. We have infrastructure problems. We have problems around the world with our allies. So those are the problems the American people wanted to hear about, not about Mr. Ayers, not about who's a Muslim or who's not a Muslim…to focus on people like Mr. Ayers, for the purpose of suggesting that somehow Mr. Obama would have some kind of terrorist inclinations, I thought that was over the top. It was beyond just good political fighting back and forth. I think it went beyond. …we can't hold our elections on that kind of basis. ...that kind of negativity troubled me – and the constant shifting of the argument. I was troubled a couple of weeks ago when in the middle of the crisis, the [McCain] campaign said, ‘We're going to go negative,’ and when they announced, ‘We're going to go negative and attack [Obama's] character through Bill Ayers." Now I guess the message this week is ‘We're going to call him a socialist, Mr. Obama is now a socialist, because he dares to suggest that maybe we ought to look at the tax structure that we have.’ I don't want my taxes raised. I don't want anybody else's taxes raised. But I also want to see our infrastructure fixed. I don't want to have a $12 trillion national debt, and I don't want to see an annual deficit that's over $500 billion heading toward a trillion. So, how do we deal with all of this? [Someone has to pay for it.]”
Powell continued with, “...it was in the period leading up to the conventions, and then the decisions that came out of the conventions, and then just sort of watching the responses of the two individuals on the economic crisis. It gave me an opportunity to evaluate their judgment, to evaluate their way of approaching a problem, to evaluate the steadiness of their actions. And it was at that point that I realized that, to my mind, anyway, that Senator Obama has demonstrated the kind of calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach to problem-solving that I think we need in this country."
Well said, General Powell, well said.
During the campaign, McCain, the experienced candidate, has not embodied the leadership Americans deserve. He has shown a lack of class, a get-down-in the-trash-to-fight attitude, in contrast to Obama's classy consistency and calm.
Quite frankly, I do not want a President with whom I would feel comfortable having a beer. I do not want someone who is like me. Because he will have to deal with a dangerous world, I want a President who is much more intelligent and very much calmer than I am.
That is why I am voting for Obama.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Is Obama’s tax plan socialism?
Republicans have been pounding the socialism theme in recent days. Critics point to Obama's plan to raise the top two tax rates on the wealthy as clear evidence of his socialist bent. However, Len Burman, the director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that while Obama “would make the tax system more progressive overall, it would not be a radical shift.” In fact, the top two rates would only go back to where they were under Clinton.
In the United States, people often confuse socialism with communism. Thus, when a political nominee of one party accuses his opponent’s ideas of being socialist, many people are thinking “communism,” causing the accusation to be political poison.
As a history teacher, I always made it a point to teach my students the difference between capitalism, socialism, and communism:
• Communism is a social and economic system in which all property, including means of production, is public (owned by the government), not private. It should not to be confused with socialism.
• Socialism, in its pure form, is an economic system characterized by government (public) ownership of all means of production including major industries (manufacturing, services, and energy), banks and insurance companies, agribusiness, transportation, the media, and medical facilities. People may own private property.
• America's democratic capitalist system is not close to socialism. It also has never been a purely free market; rather, it has always mixed a little socialism with capitalism, and has done so since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under our tax system, the wealthy have always paid higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate. It's a form of sharing the wealth.
Obama’s plan does not begin to qualify as socialism. The Obama plan is traditional progressive taxation, just like what we have had in the United States since the beginning of the income tax. We've had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it. McCain's angry denunciation of socialist wealth-spreading ignores the fact that the country has always had a progressive tax code.
The new round of socialism accusations was triggered by Obama's comment last week to "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Toledo, Ohio. Joe told Obama that he hoped someday to buy a plumbing business and asked, "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" (see my Joe the Plumber post to see why Obama plan would actually help Joe.) "It's not that I want to punish your success," the Illinois senator told Joe. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you (those making less), that they've got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." McCain has pounced on the “spread the wealth around” comment and taken it completely out of context, charging Obama with socialism. It’s a last ditch effort to energize his failing campaign.
Key Bush administration tax cuts are due to expire Jan. 1, 2011. Obama wants to end the breaks for most individuals who earn more than $200,000 and families that make more than $250,000, and give a tax cut to those families whose net income is below $250,000. The McCain plan gives very little help to the middle class, gives a further tax cut for the wealthy, and more tax cuts to the wealthy corporations who are raking in billions of dollars in profits. Obama's position would restore the top rates to where they were under President Clinton, when the economy boomed.
McCain once said, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans,” in voting against the 2001 Bush tax cuts. McCain himself once seemed to embrace the sensible notion that those who reap the greatest rewards should contribute more back into the system.
To further the hypocrisy, the McCain-Palin ticket is deriding the Obama tax plan, even though giving a refundable tax credit, a "socialist" idea, is also a major part of McCain's health care plan. McCain has been touting the fact that he would outfit "every single American family with a $5000 refundable tax credit" to help with insurance costs. “Refundable” means that everyone gets the money, regardless of whether or not they have paid income tax.
Presidential campaigns are full of hypocrisy, of course, but I can't remember the last time a candidate was this brazen about it. It makes you wonder what McCain thinks about the public's power of comprehension. He obviously thinks that most of us are not able to figure things out for ourselves.
If anyone wants to talk “socialism,” President Bush and a lot of other Republicans, including McCain, backed a massive federal government rescue of ailing financial institutions this fall, one that's committed well more than $1 trillion so far to "private" banks. The government will take partial ownership of the nine biggest banks, a degree of socialism. But this bailout was necessary to save our financial system. It was Bush – with McCain claiming a central role in the drama – who pushed the nearly trillion-dollar government plan to save ailing financial institutions.
I have heard these two statements made in the last week by wealthy individuals:
"Obama wants to talk about giving pieces of the pie to everyone, but he never wants to talk about growing the pie," said one, "I don't want to share my pie. If I earn it, I want to keep it."
"I make over $250,000 a year, between my wife and I," said a contractor, "I don't want to share it with anybody."
As any parent understands, sharing is not the most natural of human instincts. But government is fundamentally about sharing for the common good; taxes are, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the price of a civilized society.
Next time there is a pothole in the road in front of your house, who will pay to fix it? Perhaps it will not be fixed for a long time because the county treasury does not have enough money to fix roads. Why is that? We Americans need to find the ability to move beyond the self-centered "no new taxes" debate and have a credible discussion about how to raise the revenue the country needs to make investments for the future in infrastructure, schools, and so forth, even as we provide for our aging population.
In ancient Athens, Greece, the cradle of democracy, with its complete commitment to political equality, taxes were only paid by the wealthy, with ordinary citizens exempt from tax; yet every man had a vote in everything done by the government. Now that’s a thought, isn’t it?
Let me end with this:
“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Luke 12:48.
In the United States, people often confuse socialism with communism. Thus, when a political nominee of one party accuses his opponent’s ideas of being socialist, many people are thinking “communism,” causing the accusation to be political poison.
As a history teacher, I always made it a point to teach my students the difference between capitalism, socialism, and communism:
• Communism is a social and economic system in which all property, including means of production, is public (owned by the government), not private. It should not to be confused with socialism.
• Socialism, in its pure form, is an economic system characterized by government (public) ownership of all means of production including major industries (manufacturing, services, and energy), banks and insurance companies, agribusiness, transportation, the media, and medical facilities. People may own private property.
• America's democratic capitalist system is not close to socialism. It also has never been a purely free market; rather, it has always mixed a little socialism with capitalism, and has done so since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under our tax system, the wealthy have always paid higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate. It's a form of sharing the wealth.
Obama’s plan does not begin to qualify as socialism. The Obama plan is traditional progressive taxation, just like what we have had in the United States since the beginning of the income tax. We've had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it. McCain's angry denunciation of socialist wealth-spreading ignores the fact that the country has always had a progressive tax code.
The new round of socialism accusations was triggered by Obama's comment last week to "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Toledo, Ohio. Joe told Obama that he hoped someday to buy a plumbing business and asked, "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" (see my Joe the Plumber post to see why Obama plan would actually help Joe.) "It's not that I want to punish your success," the Illinois senator told Joe. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you (those making less), that they've got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." McCain has pounced on the “spread the wealth around” comment and taken it completely out of context, charging Obama with socialism. It’s a last ditch effort to energize his failing campaign.
Key Bush administration tax cuts are due to expire Jan. 1, 2011. Obama wants to end the breaks for most individuals who earn more than $200,000 and families that make more than $250,000, and give a tax cut to those families whose net income is below $250,000. The McCain plan gives very little help to the middle class, gives a further tax cut for the wealthy, and more tax cuts to the wealthy corporations who are raking in billions of dollars in profits. Obama's position would restore the top rates to where they were under President Clinton, when the economy boomed.
McCain once said, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans,” in voting against the 2001 Bush tax cuts. McCain himself once seemed to embrace the sensible notion that those who reap the greatest rewards should contribute more back into the system.
To further the hypocrisy, the McCain-Palin ticket is deriding the Obama tax plan, even though giving a refundable tax credit, a "socialist" idea, is also a major part of McCain's health care plan. McCain has been touting the fact that he would outfit "every single American family with a $5000 refundable tax credit" to help with insurance costs. “Refundable” means that everyone gets the money, regardless of whether or not they have paid income tax.
Presidential campaigns are full of hypocrisy, of course, but I can't remember the last time a candidate was this brazen about it. It makes you wonder what McCain thinks about the public's power of comprehension. He obviously thinks that most of us are not able to figure things out for ourselves.
If anyone wants to talk “socialism,” President Bush and a lot of other Republicans, including McCain, backed a massive federal government rescue of ailing financial institutions this fall, one that's committed well more than $1 trillion so far to "private" banks. The government will take partial ownership of the nine biggest banks, a degree of socialism. But this bailout was necessary to save our financial system. It was Bush – with McCain claiming a central role in the drama – who pushed the nearly trillion-dollar government plan to save ailing financial institutions.
I have heard these two statements made in the last week by wealthy individuals:
"Obama wants to talk about giving pieces of the pie to everyone, but he never wants to talk about growing the pie," said one, "I don't want to share my pie. If I earn it, I want to keep it."
"I make over $250,000 a year, between my wife and I," said a contractor, "I don't want to share it with anybody."
As any parent understands, sharing is not the most natural of human instincts. But government is fundamentally about sharing for the common good; taxes are, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the price of a civilized society.
Next time there is a pothole in the road in front of your house, who will pay to fix it? Perhaps it will not be fixed for a long time because the county treasury does not have enough money to fix roads. Why is that? We Americans need to find the ability to move beyond the self-centered "no new taxes" debate and have a credible discussion about how to raise the revenue the country needs to make investments for the future in infrastructure, schools, and so forth, even as we provide for our aging population.
In ancient Athens, Greece, the cradle of democracy, with its complete commitment to political equality, taxes were only paid by the wealthy, with ordinary citizens exempt from tax; yet every man had a vote in everything done by the government. Now that’s a thought, isn’t it?
Let me end with this:
“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Luke 12:48.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Obama and ACORN
We know election day must be getting close when Republicans start screaming about voter fraud – just as they have in several previous elections. Study after study, and major nationwide enforcement efforts by the department of justice and other enforcement agencies in the states have never, ever produced any evidence of anything more than a handful of cases of actual voter fraud. The failure of many US attorneys to actually find cases of voter fraud to prosecute was the motivation for Karl Rove to push a scheme to fire nine of them and the resulting scandal ultimately led to attorney general Alberto Gonzalez's resignation.
The more accurate accusation would be voter-registration fraud, rather than the voter fraud accusation against Acorn by the Republicans. There appears to be plenty of checks in place to guarantee it doesn't turn into actual voter fraud. For voter fraud to occur, the organizers of such an effort would need hundreds if not thousands of people to participate in a massive conspiracy to show up at the polls claiming to be someone else (a felony) who had been fraudulently registered and placed on the rolls. In several states, they will need to have a government issue photo ID with that other person's information (another felony).
My research has shown Acorn to be mostly a good entity. Acorn’s goal is to register young, first-time voters and disenfranchised voters. Although some paid overeager, and some dishonest, field people working for Acorn may register cartoon characters, dead people, and so forth, to vote. It is unethical, but it does NOT becomes fraud unless a person tries to vote under one of the fictitious names, which rarely happens.
Acorn is uniquely susceptible to registration problems because it pays $8 per hour to the unemployed, including the homeless, to register people. It is too easy for those inclined to do so to go home and copy names out of phone books, etc. I can understand why they do this – to give unemployed or low-income people a paying job – but it opens Acorn up to fraud perpetuated against them since they end up paying for sham registrations. Acorn administrators believe that the multi-layered system of flagging questionable registration forms and then having the voting agencies provide further checks is adequate protection against actual fraudulent registrants ending up on the voter rolls. Voter registration fraud very rarely leads to actual voter fraud.
These attacks on voter registration drives are more rhetorical than physical, unlike several decades ago, but the point of contention is the same: the ability of Americans of color and college-age students to cast a ballot. Republican officials know that this election cycle has seen an unprecedented surge in new voter registrations and that those registrations have been disproportionably Democratic. So, to counter the huge number of Democrat registrants, Republican operatives have spread stories about Acorn turning in thousands of fraudulent registrations, but they know Acorn is required by law to turn them in – and they know that those registrants will never be added to the voter rolls.
Voter fraud and voter registration fraud are two different things, but are being deliberately combined for political purposes. Voter registration fraud is real, but the kinds of allegations about Acorn are not true. Here’s why: Organizations that engage in voter registration drives are required by law to submit every registration form that they receive, no matter how obviously fraudulent the information. That rule is in place as an extremely important protection for the process so that organizations are not able to go on a mass registration drive and then throw out all the Republican registrants or Democratic registrants before they submit the forms to the state government. Acorn, and all other voter drives, are required to flag the forms that they believe are invalid. So, if Acorn registers 100,000 people in Ohio out of which they identify 5,000 registration forms that are phony, they have to turn them in anyway with a cover sheet on each one that is suspect.
Acorn is trying to weed out these dishonest people, often turning them in for prosecution, so do not throw out the baby with the bath water! According to Bertha Lewis, Interim Chief Organizer of ACORN, the majority of the 1.3 million newly registered voters for this year are low- to-moderate income people, 60-70 percent are African American or Latino, and over half are under the age of 30. Lewis said the ultimate goal was to change the face of the electorate and permanently empower the Americans who are most affected by policy decisions.
The accusation that Obama is connected to Acorn appears to be an effort to tie Obama to potentially fraudulent voter registrations. It is a false accusation. Obama was never an Acorn community organizer. Acorn never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee, although some Acorn employees did attend his training sessions on how to do voter registration. Acorn was not part of Project Vote in 1992 when Obama ran the successful voter registration drive.
The Wall Street Journal had this to say in 1992 about Project Vote: "Voting experts at the Democratic National Committee point to surging registration in several big cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that work has been done by the nonpartisan Project Vote, a voter participation organization based in Washington, D.C. Its director, Sandy Newman, says his group has helped to register 150,000 new voters, almost all of them black, in Pennsylvania; 110,000 in Chicago; 70,000 in Michigan; 40,000 in Ohio; and 160,000 (with the help of the New York Public Interest Research Group) in New York City. With the exception of New York, where Mr. Clinton holds a big lead, these are all battleground states, and most of these voters will cast their ballots for Mr. Clinton." [Wall Street Journal, 10/30/92]
In 1995, in his capacity as an attorney, Obama represented Acorn in a successful lawsuit ALONGSIDE the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. Barnhill Attorneys Obama, Judson Miner, and Jeffrey Cummings were listed as Counsel for Acorn, with Obama listed as lead attorney, when the Illinois State Board Of Elections attempted to dismiss the U.S. District Court’s order in Acorn v. Edgar in November 1995. For his work in helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. The payment to the Acorn affiliate was reported in campaign filings, although they had to be revised because of an error.
A more serious issue than voter registration fraud is the many battleground states that have broken federal law by purging their voter registration lists less than 90 days before an election. There is lots of evidence out there that "database matching" produces a lot of false negatives even when done legally, with people who are legitimate voters not getting "matched." This adversely affects low-income and black voters who move often. There is also an effort to keep college students from voting near campus. These legitimate voters, many newly registered, will show up at the polls only to be turned away. That is why, just last week, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Ohio GOP lawsuit that would have forced the Secretary of State to set aside all new registrations until they could be checked against the state driver’s license database. This could be fraught with problems such as if you recently moved, you would not be allowed to vote, or if you are a college student, your college address would not count. Students would have to travel back home to vote, an impossible situation for most.
My question is, why do we, as a free country, need voter registration? We should be able to show up with a driver’s license, or other state ID, which is matched to a state identification database and vote – no registration required. VOTING SHOULD BE A BIRTHRIGHT! But for this to work, of course, some states that give illegal immigrants a driver’s license would have to stop doing so.
McCain is perpetuating deceit that is damaging to our democracy because it calls into question the legitimacy of our election process. They are raising the specter of imaginary voter fraud to further their efforts to disqualify a large number of those registrations through cumbersome requirements that elections boards cannot complete by November 4 to fix a problem that does not exist.
McCain’s and the GOP’s deceit could present a real governing problem for Obama. Should Obama win, a large percentage of the country’s low-informed voters could think that he is a terrorist supporter who conspired to steal the election (a Manchurian Candidate).
And McCain claims to put country first. Yeah…right…
The more accurate accusation would be voter-registration fraud, rather than the voter fraud accusation against Acorn by the Republicans. There appears to be plenty of checks in place to guarantee it doesn't turn into actual voter fraud. For voter fraud to occur, the organizers of such an effort would need hundreds if not thousands of people to participate in a massive conspiracy to show up at the polls claiming to be someone else (a felony) who had been fraudulently registered and placed on the rolls. In several states, they will need to have a government issue photo ID with that other person's information (another felony).
My research has shown Acorn to be mostly a good entity. Acorn’s goal is to register young, first-time voters and disenfranchised voters. Although some paid overeager, and some dishonest, field people working for Acorn may register cartoon characters, dead people, and so forth, to vote. It is unethical, but it does NOT becomes fraud unless a person tries to vote under one of the fictitious names, which rarely happens.
Acorn is uniquely susceptible to registration problems because it pays $8 per hour to the unemployed, including the homeless, to register people. It is too easy for those inclined to do so to go home and copy names out of phone books, etc. I can understand why they do this – to give unemployed or low-income people a paying job – but it opens Acorn up to fraud perpetuated against them since they end up paying for sham registrations. Acorn administrators believe that the multi-layered system of flagging questionable registration forms and then having the voting agencies provide further checks is adequate protection against actual fraudulent registrants ending up on the voter rolls. Voter registration fraud very rarely leads to actual voter fraud.
These attacks on voter registration drives are more rhetorical than physical, unlike several decades ago, but the point of contention is the same: the ability of Americans of color and college-age students to cast a ballot. Republican officials know that this election cycle has seen an unprecedented surge in new voter registrations and that those registrations have been disproportionably Democratic. So, to counter the huge number of Democrat registrants, Republican operatives have spread stories about Acorn turning in thousands of fraudulent registrations, but they know Acorn is required by law to turn them in – and they know that those registrants will never be added to the voter rolls.
Voter fraud and voter registration fraud are two different things, but are being deliberately combined for political purposes. Voter registration fraud is real, but the kinds of allegations about Acorn are not true. Here’s why: Organizations that engage in voter registration drives are required by law to submit every registration form that they receive, no matter how obviously fraudulent the information. That rule is in place as an extremely important protection for the process so that organizations are not able to go on a mass registration drive and then throw out all the Republican registrants or Democratic registrants before they submit the forms to the state government. Acorn, and all other voter drives, are required to flag the forms that they believe are invalid. So, if Acorn registers 100,000 people in Ohio out of which they identify 5,000 registration forms that are phony, they have to turn them in anyway with a cover sheet on each one that is suspect.
Acorn is trying to weed out these dishonest people, often turning them in for prosecution, so do not throw out the baby with the bath water! According to Bertha Lewis, Interim Chief Organizer of ACORN, the majority of the 1.3 million newly registered voters for this year are low- to-moderate income people, 60-70 percent are African American or Latino, and over half are under the age of 30. Lewis said the ultimate goal was to change the face of the electorate and permanently empower the Americans who are most affected by policy decisions.
The accusation that Obama is connected to Acorn appears to be an effort to tie Obama to potentially fraudulent voter registrations. It is a false accusation. Obama was never an Acorn community organizer. Acorn never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee, although some Acorn employees did attend his training sessions on how to do voter registration. Acorn was not part of Project Vote in 1992 when Obama ran the successful voter registration drive.
The Wall Street Journal had this to say in 1992 about Project Vote: "Voting experts at the Democratic National Committee point to surging registration in several big cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that work has been done by the nonpartisan Project Vote, a voter participation organization based in Washington, D.C. Its director, Sandy Newman, says his group has helped to register 150,000 new voters, almost all of them black, in Pennsylvania; 110,000 in Chicago; 70,000 in Michigan; 40,000 in Ohio; and 160,000 (with the help of the New York Public Interest Research Group) in New York City. With the exception of New York, where Mr. Clinton holds a big lead, these are all battleground states, and most of these voters will cast their ballots for Mr. Clinton." [Wall Street Journal, 10/30/92]
In 1995, in his capacity as an attorney, Obama represented Acorn in a successful lawsuit ALONGSIDE the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. Barnhill Attorneys Obama, Judson Miner, and Jeffrey Cummings were listed as Counsel for Acorn, with Obama listed as lead attorney, when the Illinois State Board Of Elections attempted to dismiss the U.S. District Court’s order in Acorn v. Edgar in November 1995. For his work in helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. The payment to the Acorn affiliate was reported in campaign filings, although they had to be revised because of an error.
A more serious issue than voter registration fraud is the many battleground states that have broken federal law by purging their voter registration lists less than 90 days before an election. There is lots of evidence out there that "database matching" produces a lot of false negatives even when done legally, with people who are legitimate voters not getting "matched." This adversely affects low-income and black voters who move often. There is also an effort to keep college students from voting near campus. These legitimate voters, many newly registered, will show up at the polls only to be turned away. That is why, just last week, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Ohio GOP lawsuit that would have forced the Secretary of State to set aside all new registrations until they could be checked against the state driver’s license database. This could be fraught with problems such as if you recently moved, you would not be allowed to vote, or if you are a college student, your college address would not count. Students would have to travel back home to vote, an impossible situation for most.
My question is, why do we, as a free country, need voter registration? We should be able to show up with a driver’s license, or other state ID, which is matched to a state identification database and vote – no registration required. VOTING SHOULD BE A BIRTHRIGHT! But for this to work, of course, some states that give illegal immigrants a driver’s license would have to stop doing so.
McCain is perpetuating deceit that is damaging to our democracy because it calls into question the legitimacy of our election process. They are raising the specter of imaginary voter fraud to further their efforts to disqualify a large number of those registrations through cumbersome requirements that elections boards cannot complete by November 4 to fix a problem that does not exist.
McCain’s and the GOP’s deceit could present a real governing problem for Obama. Should Obama win, a large percentage of the country’s low-informed voters could think that he is a terrorist supporter who conspired to steal the election (a Manchurian Candidate).
And McCain claims to put country first. Yeah…right…
Saturday, October 18, 2008
McCain’s ground war
According to Pew Research: Democrats overwhelmingly believe that Obama's television ads are truthful, while they doubt the truthfulness of McCain's. Similarly, Republicans believe McCain's ads are truthful, while a most of them say Obama's are not. Independents have a much more favorable view of Obama's ads than they do of McCain's. By a margin of 42%-26% independents say Obama's ads are truthful. When it comes to McCain's ads, independents are evenly divided: 32% say they are truthful and 33% say they are not. Public views of the candidates continue to fluctuate. Obama's image improved somewhat last week: 29% say their view of the Democratic nominee has become more favorable in recent days; whereas the public view of Biden remains steady. For John McCain and Sarah Palin, though, changing views are leaning more negative than positive.
How could this be? With just a few days until the election, John McCain and his Republican allies are stepping up their character assaults, which paint Barack Obama in television ads, mail, and now, automated phone calls, as a shifty coddler of terrorists. It is not surprising at all that McCain and Palin have shrunk ever further into filthy campaign tactics, grasping at the only straws they believe they have left...playing the "fear" card. They cannot win if they talk about policies – especially where the economy is concerned. It is a disgusting form of negative campaigning – calling people randomly off a computerized list, during dinner time, and reciting a message that is misleading. Republicans should be talking about serious issues, but they cannot win if they talk about the issues. They know this.
Truth is not at the forefront of the McCain Team’s robocalls. They are using deceit and fear. In the recent past, Senator John McCain has denounced such phone calls: In the 2000 primaries, Mr. McCain was a target of misleading calls that included innuendo about his family, and he blamed them in part for his loss to George W. Bush. This past January, too, in South Carolina, McCain described the calls against him as “scurrilous stuff,” and his campaign set up a “truth squad” to debunk them.
Here are some of the mud-slinging, anti-Obama robocalls being made by the McCain/Palin campaign with the RNC. Obama is a Baby-killing, America-ignoring, Hollywood-loving, and Terrorist-loving...
One says: "I'm calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions -- a position at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America. Please vote -- vote for the candidates who share our values. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202 863 8500." Yes, they opposed it because there was already such a law on the books.
Another says "Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats got caught putting Hollywood above America. On the very day our elected leaders gathered in Washington to deal with the financial crisis, Barack Obama spent just 20 minutes with economic advisers, but hours at a celebrity Hollywood fundraiser. Where are the Democrats' priorities?" Where was McCain? In NYC doing an interview with Couric and then spent the night so he could hang around Bill Clinton’s Environmental meeting the next day.
A third says, "Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats aren't who you think they are. They say they want to keep us safe, but Barack Obama said the threat we face now from terrorism is nowhere near as dire as it was in the end of the Cold War. And Congressional Democrats now want to give civil rights to terrorists." An outright lie.
A fourth says, "You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country." Another outright lie.
According to fivethirtyeight.com, Indiana, PA and Northern Cambria, PA, volunteers fielded complaints of a massive wave of ugly robocalls both paid for by John McCain's campaign and those paid for by third parties. The third party call was interactive, and supposedly from Barack Obama himself (but it isn’t). The call starts out reasonably, and then the fake "Obama" asks what the listener thinks is the most important issue. Whatever the response, fake "Obama" then launches into a profane and crazed tirade using "n***er" and other shock language.
And check out this Virginia GOP mailer: http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=1E55D115E3595A37B81D03D9A05755D2?diaryId=16675
In Nevada, a four-page campaign flier mailed this week by the state Republican Party also focused on Obama's past relationship with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, calling the college professor a "terrorist, radical, friend of Obama" and featuring several images of Obama and Ayers.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, made several appeals to McCain on Friday. Collins faces a tough race for re-election and serves as a co-chairwoman of McCain’s Maine campaign. "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley said. "Senator Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately.
Maybe the Democrats should make robocalls, too, with McCain's own voice saying he voted with President Bush 90% of the time. Another good one would be McCain saying that Obama is a decent man that one need not be afraid to have as president. These would both be absolutely true.
If, through dirty politics and voter suppression*, McCain were to win, this fear and smear tactic doesn't seem to be such a great recipe for the future bipartisanship that he loves to tout.
But maybe Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will let bygones be bygones. Ya think?
*more about voter suppression later
How could this be? With just a few days until the election, John McCain and his Republican allies are stepping up their character assaults, which paint Barack Obama in television ads, mail, and now, automated phone calls, as a shifty coddler of terrorists. It is not surprising at all that McCain and Palin have shrunk ever further into filthy campaign tactics, grasping at the only straws they believe they have left...playing the "fear" card. They cannot win if they talk about policies – especially where the economy is concerned. It is a disgusting form of negative campaigning – calling people randomly off a computerized list, during dinner time, and reciting a message that is misleading. Republicans should be talking about serious issues, but they cannot win if they talk about the issues. They know this.
Truth is not at the forefront of the McCain Team’s robocalls. They are using deceit and fear. In the recent past, Senator John McCain has denounced such phone calls: In the 2000 primaries, Mr. McCain was a target of misleading calls that included innuendo about his family, and he blamed them in part for his loss to George W. Bush. This past January, too, in South Carolina, McCain described the calls against him as “scurrilous stuff,” and his campaign set up a “truth squad” to debunk them.
Here are some of the mud-slinging, anti-Obama robocalls being made by the McCain/Palin campaign with the RNC. Obama is a Baby-killing, America-ignoring, Hollywood-loving, and Terrorist-loving...
One says: "I'm calling on behalf of John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the Illinois Senate opposed a bill requiring doctors to care for babies born alive after surviving attempted abortions -- a position at odds even with John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama and his liberal Democrats are too extreme for America. Please vote -- vote for the candidates who share our values. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202 863 8500." Yes, they opposed it because there was already such a law on the books.
Another says "Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats got caught putting Hollywood above America. On the very day our elected leaders gathered in Washington to deal with the financial crisis, Barack Obama spent just 20 minutes with economic advisers, but hours at a celebrity Hollywood fundraiser. Where are the Democrats' priorities?" Where was McCain? In NYC doing an interview with Couric and then spent the night so he could hang around Bill Clinton’s Environmental meeting the next day.
A third says, "Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats aren't who you think they are. They say they want to keep us safe, but Barack Obama said the threat we face now from terrorism is nowhere near as dire as it was in the end of the Cold War. And Congressional Democrats now want to give civil rights to terrorists." An outright lie.
A fourth says, "You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country." Another outright lie.
According to fivethirtyeight.com, Indiana, PA and Northern Cambria, PA, volunteers fielded complaints of a massive wave of ugly robocalls both paid for by John McCain's campaign and those paid for by third parties. The third party call was interactive, and supposedly from Barack Obama himself (but it isn’t). The call starts out reasonably, and then the fake "Obama" asks what the listener thinks is the most important issue. Whatever the response, fake "Obama" then launches into a profane and crazed tirade using "n***er" and other shock language.
And check out this Virginia GOP mailer: http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=1E55D115E3595A37B81D03D9A05755D2?diaryId=16675
In Nevada, a four-page campaign flier mailed this week by the state Republican Party also focused on Obama's past relationship with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, calling the college professor a "terrorist, radical, friend of Obama" and featuring several images of Obama and Ayers.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, made several appeals to McCain on Friday. Collins faces a tough race for re-election and serves as a co-chairwoman of McCain’s Maine campaign. "These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics," Collins spokesman Kevin Kelley said. "Senator Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately.
Maybe the Democrats should make robocalls, too, with McCain's own voice saying he voted with President Bush 90% of the time. Another good one would be McCain saying that Obama is a decent man that one need not be afraid to have as president. These would both be absolutely true.
If, through dirty politics and voter suppression*, McCain were to win, this fear and smear tactic doesn't seem to be such a great recipe for the future bipartisanship that he loves to tout.
But maybe Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will let bygones be bygones. Ya think?
*more about voter suppression later
A sigh of relief
Americans are giving out a collective sigh of relief now that the debates are over. Polls, columnists and opinion pages have awarded victory in every debate to Obama. Wednesday night was John McCain’s last big chance to change things. It didn’t happen.
The Republican talking heads liked what they heard. McCain played to his base on Wednesday night. There is one huge problem with this tactic: the middle of October is not the time to play to your base; instead, it is the time to play to the moderate voters. The policies he proposed for the economy are mostly in line with Republican orthodoxy. He had the same two answers to almost every economic question: 1. cut taxes and government spending, and 2. Joe the Plumber.* McCain made it clear that his intention is to cut taxes, even more than Bush has, for the richest Americans and reduce the government services that working class Americans need more than ever.
McCain’s obvious goal was to try to throw Obama off his game, but he began to undercut himself when he grew extremely angry while attacking Obama over his ties to William Ayers, the Chicago professor who helped found the Weather Underground terrorism group 40 years ago. Instead of gaining ground by showing command on the top issue for voters, the economy, he kept trying to come back to Ayers, but eventually ended the attack by saying that an aging from 40-years-ago did not matter to him – which I believe was probably a true statement. The Ayers tactic is just that, a tactic, and one that has backfired in the polls.
For McCain’s punches to make a difference, they had to rattle, to wound, or cause the opponent to counterpunch in a self-defeating way. The only person appearing nervous and rattled during the debate was McCain. His facial expressions conveyed a lack of calm that everyone from average voters to seasoned political observers say is a damaging trait for a presidential candidate in the midst of an economic crisis. There were copious eye-rolling, constant nervous blinking, frequent and exaggerated wide-eyed "I can't believe what he's saying" looks, and, as the debate progressed, a stiff, uncomfortable, look-straight-ahead expression that was in marked contrast to Obama's trademark unflappable calm, which was spiced up with some head shakes and a grin that said "there he goes again."
During McCain’s attacks on Obama, he would unconsciously jut out in tongue. When someone juts out his tongue during conversation, he either thinks he is being funny or, more likely, he is uncomfortable with what he is saying – like he has been caught doing something wrong. Retired FBI agent Joe Navarro, a Bluff Magazine columnist, said, “Reptilian tongue-jutting behavior is a gesture used by people who think they have gotten away with something or are caught doing something.” McCain, through his body language, has shown that he feels as if he is being caught doing something wrong.
Another bad omen for Republican presidential candidate John McCain: He blinks heavily. According to Boston University psychology professor J.J. Tecce, candidates who blink more than their opponents during debates tend to lose presidential elections. “People are picking up McCain’s rapid blinking and saying there’s something about him that’s awfully twitchy and nervous and I don’t think I want to vote for that guy.”
McCain veered from one hot button to another, pressing them all, hoping to goad Obama into an outburst or a mistake that would alter the shape of the race in its last three weeks. Obama, on the defensive, showing a bit more animation than he had in the previous debates, remained calm and collected, showing the survival skills that he learned in his brutal 16-month primary battle with Hillary Clinton. To show that he could be trusted to change the direction of the country, Obama kept bringing the debate back around to the economy, while remaining relaxed and steady. His most crucial task was to appear bemused and unruffled in the face of McCain’s attacks, which the Obama campaign knew were coming – and that is just what he did.
McCain’s most memorable line was when he tried to distance himself from President Bush. "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country." This line may have worked earlier in the campaign, but not now when most people have made up their minds, but a few days from now, no one will remember much of what was said during the debate. The policies spoken, the attacks made, were the same that had been heard from both candidates for weeks. What will be remembered is the demeanor, the body language. McCain’s nervous, angry, erratic, tongue-jutting behavior with his occasional deer in the headlights look is what will be remembered about him. Obama was relaxed, poised, and presidential, handling McCain's barrage of attacks without folding. That is all Obama really needed to do to freeze the dynamics of the campaign in place during the debate – dynamics that by and large favor him.
The debate was not a game changer. Since most polls are showing support for Obama has crossed over 50%, McCain had to actually change minds to win. He didn't.
Let’s say that something happens that causes a McCain victory: Robert Goidel, a Patchwork Nation blogger and professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, has commented that the policy prescriptions from both Obama and McCain, the larger themes, tend to be Democratic.
“Even if McCain were to somehow win, the Democrats have won,” Professor Goidel wrote. “What I mean by this is the conversation is no longer ‘ending welfare as we know it’ or ‘government is the problem not the solution.’ The question is – what can government do to address a failing economy, a health care system that needs reform, and a world that is no longer at our command.”
Some of the strongest issues for the GOP in the past 20+ years have involved the restraining of government. In an election where the stock market is free-falling and where people are talking about the possibility of another “Great Depression,” those arguments may have lost much of their power with voters. Suddenly, “spreading around the wealth” sounds really good to many people.
After November 4, this nation, heavily burdened from eight years of Bush policies, will move away from neo-conservative policies with a sigh of relief, no matter who is at the helm.
* see "All About Joe" post
The Republican talking heads liked what they heard. McCain played to his base on Wednesday night. There is one huge problem with this tactic: the middle of October is not the time to play to your base; instead, it is the time to play to the moderate voters. The policies he proposed for the economy are mostly in line with Republican orthodoxy. He had the same two answers to almost every economic question: 1. cut taxes and government spending, and 2. Joe the Plumber.* McCain made it clear that his intention is to cut taxes, even more than Bush has, for the richest Americans and reduce the government services that working class Americans need more than ever.
McCain’s obvious goal was to try to throw Obama off his game, but he began to undercut himself when he grew extremely angry while attacking Obama over his ties to William Ayers, the Chicago professor who helped found the Weather Underground terrorism group 40 years ago. Instead of gaining ground by showing command on the top issue for voters, the economy, he kept trying to come back to Ayers, but eventually ended the attack by saying that an aging from 40-years-ago did not matter to him – which I believe was probably a true statement. The Ayers tactic is just that, a tactic, and one that has backfired in the polls.
For McCain’s punches to make a difference, they had to rattle, to wound, or cause the opponent to counterpunch in a self-defeating way. The only person appearing nervous and rattled during the debate was McCain. His facial expressions conveyed a lack of calm that everyone from average voters to seasoned political observers say is a damaging trait for a presidential candidate in the midst of an economic crisis. There were copious eye-rolling, constant nervous blinking, frequent and exaggerated wide-eyed "I can't believe what he's saying" looks, and, as the debate progressed, a stiff, uncomfortable, look-straight-ahead expression that was in marked contrast to Obama's trademark unflappable calm, which was spiced up with some head shakes and a grin that said "there he goes again."
During McCain’s attacks on Obama, he would unconsciously jut out in tongue. When someone juts out his tongue during conversation, he either thinks he is being funny or, more likely, he is uncomfortable with what he is saying – like he has been caught doing something wrong. Retired FBI agent Joe Navarro, a Bluff Magazine columnist, said, “Reptilian tongue-jutting behavior is a gesture used by people who think they have gotten away with something or are caught doing something.” McCain, through his body language, has shown that he feels as if he is being caught doing something wrong.
Another bad omen for Republican presidential candidate John McCain: He blinks heavily. According to Boston University psychology professor J.J. Tecce, candidates who blink more than their opponents during debates tend to lose presidential elections. “People are picking up McCain’s rapid blinking and saying there’s something about him that’s awfully twitchy and nervous and I don’t think I want to vote for that guy.”
McCain veered from one hot button to another, pressing them all, hoping to goad Obama into an outburst or a mistake that would alter the shape of the race in its last three weeks. Obama, on the defensive, showing a bit more animation than he had in the previous debates, remained calm and collected, showing the survival skills that he learned in his brutal 16-month primary battle with Hillary Clinton. To show that he could be trusted to change the direction of the country, Obama kept bringing the debate back around to the economy, while remaining relaxed and steady. His most crucial task was to appear bemused and unruffled in the face of McCain’s attacks, which the Obama campaign knew were coming – and that is just what he did.
McCain’s most memorable line was when he tried to distance himself from President Bush. "Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country." This line may have worked earlier in the campaign, but not now when most people have made up their minds, but a few days from now, no one will remember much of what was said during the debate. The policies spoken, the attacks made, were the same that had been heard from both candidates for weeks. What will be remembered is the demeanor, the body language. McCain’s nervous, angry, erratic, tongue-jutting behavior with his occasional deer in the headlights look is what will be remembered about him. Obama was relaxed, poised, and presidential, handling McCain's barrage of attacks without folding. That is all Obama really needed to do to freeze the dynamics of the campaign in place during the debate – dynamics that by and large favor him.
The debate was not a game changer. Since most polls are showing support for Obama has crossed over 50%, McCain had to actually change minds to win. He didn't.
Let’s say that something happens that causes a McCain victory: Robert Goidel, a Patchwork Nation blogger and professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, has commented that the policy prescriptions from both Obama and McCain, the larger themes, tend to be Democratic.
“Even if McCain were to somehow win, the Democrats have won,” Professor Goidel wrote. “What I mean by this is the conversation is no longer ‘ending welfare as we know it’ or ‘government is the problem not the solution.’ The question is – what can government do to address a failing economy, a health care system that needs reform, and a world that is no longer at our command.”
Some of the strongest issues for the GOP in the past 20+ years have involved the restraining of government. In an election where the stock market is free-falling and where people are talking about the possibility of another “Great Depression,” those arguments may have lost much of their power with voters. Suddenly, “spreading around the wealth” sounds really good to many people.
After November 4, this nation, heavily burdened from eight years of Bush policies, will move away from neo-conservative policies with a sigh of relief, no matter who is at the helm.
* see "All About Joe" post
All about Joe
At a rally at Florida International University, McCain made a leap by suggesting that the Obama campaign was somehow maligning Joe the Plumber. He said, “People are digging through his personal life, and he has TV crews camped out in front of his house. He didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house. He wasn’t recruited or prompted by our campaign. He just asked a question. And Americans ought to be able to ask Senator Obama tough questions without being smeared and targeted with political attacks.” Never mind that McCain was the one who put Joe into the spotlight during the last debate. McCain brought up Joe’s name and used him as a prop. Now he is trying to blame Joe’s predicament on Obama.
Here is what happened:
When Obama was canvassing a neighborhood in Ohio, going door to door, Joe decided to step out in front of the camera and ask a question about whether buying his boss’s business would force him to pay a higher tax rate under the Obama plan. Obama explained to him that the business grosses more than $250k, that is certainly not his tax liability. He would have to make net profits of more than $250k to be affected by the Obama plan. But 97% of small businesses never make that kind of profit because there are so many expenses to deduct that tax liability is always limited. If the net profit, after all expenses, is more than $250K, there is only a 3% difference between Obama's small business tax rate and McCain's small business rate on anything more $250K. So even if he made more than that, it would be offset by the additional benefit that Obama's plan offers: a per employee tax credit for new employees and the elimination of capital gains for small businesses. Very importantly, the Obama health care savings and benefits to small business would more than make up for any modest tax increase. This doesn’t sound like Obama is “punishing” small businesses.
I personally know and have known several small business owners, including one in my own family who is quite successful, and have never heard one say ‘I'm going to stop making more money because the government is going to take more of it.’ That argument doesn’t hold water.
Joe the Plumber acknowledged during his conversation with Obama that he would be better off with the Democrat's tax plan, if he really was a plumber.
Reporters began digging into records and found out that Joe is not really a plumber and has never held a plumber’s license, which is required in Toledo and several surrounding municipalities. He never completed an apprenticeship, is not a journeyman or master plumber, and does not belong to the plumber’s union which is quite active in Ohio. Joe has acknowledged he doesn't have a plumber's license, but said he didn't need one because he works for someone else at a company that does residential work. That excuse doesn’t fly in Ohio. According to David Golis, manager and residential building official for the Toledo Division of Building Inspection, Joe does need to be licensed to do plumbing work in Ohio.
Oops.
And then there is the matter of his income taxes. Joe owes the state of Ohio $1,182.98 in personal income tax, according to Lucas County Court of Common Pleas records. In January 2007, Ohio's Department of Taxation filed a lien on his property until he pays the debt. The lien remains active.
Joe’s a real stand up guy, isn’t he?
Here is what happened:
When Obama was canvassing a neighborhood in Ohio, going door to door, Joe decided to step out in front of the camera and ask a question about whether buying his boss’s business would force him to pay a higher tax rate under the Obama plan. Obama explained to him that the business grosses more than $250k, that is certainly not his tax liability. He would have to make net profits of more than $250k to be affected by the Obama plan. But 97% of small businesses never make that kind of profit because there are so many expenses to deduct that tax liability is always limited. If the net profit, after all expenses, is more than $250K, there is only a 3% difference between Obama's small business tax rate and McCain's small business rate on anything more $250K. So even if he made more than that, it would be offset by the additional benefit that Obama's plan offers: a per employee tax credit for new employees and the elimination of capital gains for small businesses. Very importantly, the Obama health care savings and benefits to small business would more than make up for any modest tax increase. This doesn’t sound like Obama is “punishing” small businesses.
I personally know and have known several small business owners, including one in my own family who is quite successful, and have never heard one say ‘I'm going to stop making more money because the government is going to take more of it.’ That argument doesn’t hold water.
Joe the Plumber acknowledged during his conversation with Obama that he would be better off with the Democrat's tax plan, if he really was a plumber.
Reporters began digging into records and found out that Joe is not really a plumber and has never held a plumber’s license, which is required in Toledo and several surrounding municipalities. He never completed an apprenticeship, is not a journeyman or master plumber, and does not belong to the plumber’s union which is quite active in Ohio. Joe has acknowledged he doesn't have a plumber's license, but said he didn't need one because he works for someone else at a company that does residential work. That excuse doesn’t fly in Ohio. According to David Golis, manager and residential building official for the Toledo Division of Building Inspection, Joe does need to be licensed to do plumbing work in Ohio.
Oops.
And then there is the matter of his income taxes. Joe owes the state of Ohio $1,182.98 in personal income tax, according to Lucas County Court of Common Pleas records. In January 2007, Ohio's Department of Taxation filed a lien on his property until he pays the debt. The lien remains active.
Joe’s a real stand up guy, isn’t he?
Monday, October 13, 2008
A very dangerous ugliness
Utter contempt for Democrats is nothing new from the conservative base. But in 2000 and 2004, the Republican rank and file was more likely to mock Gore’s stiffness or make fun of Kerry with such sayings as “flip, flop, flip, flop” while waving flip flop sandals in the air. This year, 2008, the emotion on display is unadulterated anger and hatred. There is disbelief that Obama is ahead in the polls. “How could this be happening when Obama is a terrorist?” they ask, referring to the viral e-mails that have traveled around the Internet for over a year now.
On February 21, 2000, during the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, McCain said: "…I just have to rely on the good judgment of the voters not to buy into these negative attack ads. Sooner or later, people are going to figure out if all you run is negative attack ads you don't have much of a vision for the future or you're not ready to articulate it." He was speaking of the scurrilous attacks that were being made against him by Bush/Cheney/Rove.
After the second McCain-Obama debate this October, the polls rose in Obama’s favor causing the conservatives to run scared. Shouts of "terrorist" and "treason" aimed at Obama turned Republican rallies into alarming, hate-filled frenzies against the Democratic candidate. Then after letting things build up into a fury for several days, after the attacks began to spill into a very dangerous ugliness, McCain did an about face and urged his supporters to stop hurling abuse against Obama, saying he admired and respected his Democratic rival.
On Friday, at a Minnesota rally, McCain gave the microphone to an elderly woman who then told him that she was afraid of Obama because he was an “Arab,” McCain quickly took the microphone from her and said, “No ma’am.”
She asked, “He isn’t?”
“No,” McCain said, “He is a decent person, a family man, a citizen…”
A young man said that he was scared of Obama. McCain answered, “ I want to be president ... but I have to tell you that he is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States."
Then a man stood up and said, “We want you to fight.”
McCain answered, “We want to fight, and I will fight, but we will be respectful.”
McCain was booed by the crowd.
He replied to the boos, “I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments and I will respect him. I want everyone to be respectful and let's make sure we are, because that is the way that politics should be conducted in America.”
For a moment there, I caught a glimpse of the McCain I had once admired. What caused this sudden about face by McCain? The US Secret Service told McCain that it was investigating an alleged death threat from a Florida rally attendee. But I can neither forget nor forgive the horrid ugliness, the ignorance, the name-calling and abuse that I saw projected toward Obama at various McCain and Palin rallies during the last week. For McCain to decide to stop the hate and ugliness because one of his followers had made a threat on Obama’s life does not change my opinion of him.
To my disgust, McCain has proven to be quite a different man than the one I once admired. John McCain has been too willing to say and do anything – with zero regard for truth or decency – in order to win the job of President. I do not believe McCain chose to tone down the attacks, but instead was forced to do so, by the Secret Service. It is now being said that McCain will change his tactics, once again, and actually talk about the economy and its effects on the middle class. But during this past week, as far as I am concerned, he has lost all right to legitimate argument.
Let’s take a look at the past week:
Monday, October 6, at a rally in New Mexico, Senator McCain, while spewing toxic assaults against his Democratic opponent, asked the crowd, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" An audience member shouted back "He's a terrorist!" McCain did not correct the man, but instead, he grinned and went on with his speech.
At a Wednesday rally in Pennsylvania, McCain asked the same question. A woman yelled, "He's a damn liar! Get him! He's bad for our country!" Another shouted back, "he is a bomb."
On Thursday, “I’m mad; I’m really mad!” a Wisconsin voter bellowed at McCain. “And what’s going to surprise ya, is it’s not the economy — it’s the socialists taking over our country. When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there gonna run this country, we gotta have our head examined!”
In the same Wisconsin mob, as one man in the audience asked a question about Obama’s associations, the crowd erupted in name-calling. “Obama, Osama!” one woman called out. The crowd took up the chant.
During the same week, the pit bull was unleashed and ran amok. Palin told those gathered at her rallies that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd while a crowd member screamed "treason!" ( The full context of the quote shows that Obama was NOT criticizing troops in any way, he was talking about how we need more troops in Afghanistan, to put in practice Petraeus' "clear and hold" tactic so that more civilians aren't killed there. Obama has long held this position, one that McCain has only recently come around to. But the McCain campaign twists the quote to make it sound unpatriotic.)
Palin linked Obama with a terrorist every time she gave a speech. "Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers, and, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she said as the crowd booed loudly. Never mind that she is deliberately misquoting the New York Times. Truth does not matter to them. ( Many uninformed voters seem to be unaware that the “relationship” between Ayers and Obama is from serving on the same education charity board in Chicago. These voters do not know that anyone who serves in any education position in Chicago will cross paths with Ayers, now an education professor at a state university. Ayers served with Obama and many others on a non-profit board that disbursed $50 million in grants dealing with school reform. Obama and Ayers were NOT friends, although Ayers hosted a coffee for Obama in his first run for state office. Yet Palin would like the Republican base to believe there was more to the relationship that just both men serving on the same board.)
During Palin’s incendiary rhetoric linking Obama to terrorism, a supporter yells "Kill him." This was clearly heard by Palin and others in the crowd. Did Sarah stop in her tracks and admonish the shouter? No.
"Kill him" apparently passed the test for what's allowed in crowd reactions at Republican rallies.
Then there were the speakers at McCain/Palin rallies who continued, unchecked by their leadership, to refer to "Barack Hussein Obama" - the emphasis on his middle name is to imply that Obama is Muslim when he is really a Christian. These speakers know that most people attending the McCain/Palin rallies are low-information voters who vote on non-factual emotion instead of knowledge, so they are inciting voters to draw the worst possible conclusion:
That in the post 9-11 world, a dark-skinned man with a middle name of Hussein is somehow a Muslim terrorist, a one-man sleeper cell, from Africa or the Middle East, who, when once elected president will somehow turn our country over to bin Laden.
This is unbelievable. They seem to just let the misinformation pour into their heads. Garbage in, garbage out.
Every time Sarah Palin talked about Barack Obama "palling around with terrorists," it added fuel to the absurd notion that he's a Muslim terrorist. Every time McCain railed on about tenuous character issues, it made it okay for his followers to base their votes on viral e-mails full of bigotry, lies, and hate that family members or friends forwarded, rather than on issues that matter:
http://bloggerinterrupted.com/2008/10/video-the-mccain-palin-mob-in-strongsville-ohio
“Obama is a terrorist,” they say, citing his name as proof of ties to Islam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itEucdhf4Us
There IS a limit to how far it is acceptable to go with negative campaigning, and the McCain Team has exceeded that limit. The current political environment does not excuse remaining silent when a candidate for president is referred to as a "terrorist" in their presence. A desire to win does not excuse remaining silent during a threat on the life of a U.S. Senator at one of their rallies. There are no excuses for evil such as this. John McCain and Sarah Palin, the GOP, and all who support them were one step short of inciting violence at their rallies. They were letting physical threats go unchallenged.
“… when the Republican campaign, mired in desperation, deliberately stokes the fires of hate and fear, using disgusting lies to argue that Obama is literally dangerous, no one should be surprised when the far-right Republican base becomes frenzied…. The responsible thing for McCain and Palin to do would be to turn down the temperature a bit and insist, in no uncertain terms, that they have no tolerance for the kind of ugliness Americans have been recently observing from the GOP.” Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly.
Sarah Palin said that from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough. Kind of rough? The McCain campaign seems to be counting on prejudice and racism. They are picking up where Hillary left off, but have gone much, much farther. They have been presiding over hate rallies where people feel free to yell out murderous threats as the candidates laugh it off and keep giving their speeches, essentially endorsing such mentality.
John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s constant incendiary attacks against Obama have been producing verbal responses from audiences that demonstrate the danger of such vicious grandstanding. McCain and Palin seem to be inciting extremists within our own country to follow a disturbing path. Once you’ve aroused a lynch mob, it’s hard to stay in charge. McCain may think that it’s the usual political fun and games, but McCain and his pit-bull gal may have unleashed emotions in their followers that they can’t control. Once people are shouting “Treason!” “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” it’s difficult to tell them to calm down. And if those emotions boil over into violence against America’s first black presidential nominee, the results will be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. Do McCain and Palin really want to be partly responsible for an assassination attempt?
For McCain, this is repugnant behavior, unworthy of respect, unworthy of being in the White House, unworthy of being the leader of the free world.
On February 21, 2000, during the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, McCain said: "…I just have to rely on the good judgment of the voters not to buy into these negative attack ads. Sooner or later, people are going to figure out if all you run is negative attack ads you don't have much of a vision for the future or you're not ready to articulate it." He was speaking of the scurrilous attacks that were being made against him by Bush/Cheney/Rove.
After the second McCain-Obama debate this October, the polls rose in Obama’s favor causing the conservatives to run scared. Shouts of "terrorist" and "treason" aimed at Obama turned Republican rallies into alarming, hate-filled frenzies against the Democratic candidate. Then after letting things build up into a fury for several days, after the attacks began to spill into a very dangerous ugliness, McCain did an about face and urged his supporters to stop hurling abuse against Obama, saying he admired and respected his Democratic rival.
On Friday, at a Minnesota rally, McCain gave the microphone to an elderly woman who then told him that she was afraid of Obama because he was an “Arab,” McCain quickly took the microphone from her and said, “No ma’am.”
She asked, “He isn’t?”
“No,” McCain said, “He is a decent person, a family man, a citizen…”
A young man said that he was scared of Obama. McCain answered, “ I want to be president ... but I have to tell you that he is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States."
Then a man stood up and said, “We want you to fight.”
McCain answered, “We want to fight, and I will fight, but we will be respectful.”
McCain was booed by the crowd.
He replied to the boos, “I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments and I will respect him. I want everyone to be respectful and let's make sure we are, because that is the way that politics should be conducted in America.”
For a moment there, I caught a glimpse of the McCain I had once admired. What caused this sudden about face by McCain? The US Secret Service told McCain that it was investigating an alleged death threat from a Florida rally attendee. But I can neither forget nor forgive the horrid ugliness, the ignorance, the name-calling and abuse that I saw projected toward Obama at various McCain and Palin rallies during the last week. For McCain to decide to stop the hate and ugliness because one of his followers had made a threat on Obama’s life does not change my opinion of him.
To my disgust, McCain has proven to be quite a different man than the one I once admired. John McCain has been too willing to say and do anything – with zero regard for truth or decency – in order to win the job of President. I do not believe McCain chose to tone down the attacks, but instead was forced to do so, by the Secret Service. It is now being said that McCain will change his tactics, once again, and actually talk about the economy and its effects on the middle class. But during this past week, as far as I am concerned, he has lost all right to legitimate argument.
Let’s take a look at the past week:
Monday, October 6, at a rally in New Mexico, Senator McCain, while spewing toxic assaults against his Democratic opponent, asked the crowd, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" An audience member shouted back "He's a terrorist!" McCain did not correct the man, but instead, he grinned and went on with his speech.
At a Wednesday rally in Pennsylvania, McCain asked the same question. A woman yelled, "He's a damn liar! Get him! He's bad for our country!" Another shouted back, "he is a bomb."
On Thursday, “I’m mad; I’m really mad!” a Wisconsin voter bellowed at McCain. “And what’s going to surprise ya, is it’s not the economy — it’s the socialists taking over our country. When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there gonna run this country, we gotta have our head examined!”
In the same Wisconsin mob, as one man in the audience asked a question about Obama’s associations, the crowd erupted in name-calling. “Obama, Osama!” one woman called out. The crowd took up the chant.
During the same week, the pit bull was unleashed and ran amok. Palin told those gathered at her rallies that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd while a crowd member screamed "treason!" ( The full context of the quote shows that Obama was NOT criticizing troops in any way, he was talking about how we need more troops in Afghanistan, to put in practice Petraeus' "clear and hold" tactic so that more civilians aren't killed there. Obama has long held this position, one that McCain has only recently come around to. But the McCain campaign twists the quote to make it sound unpatriotic.)
Palin linked Obama with a terrorist every time she gave a speech. "Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers, and, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she said as the crowd booed loudly. Never mind that she is deliberately misquoting the New York Times. Truth does not matter to them. ( Many uninformed voters seem to be unaware that the “relationship” between Ayers and Obama is from serving on the same education charity board in Chicago. These voters do not know that anyone who serves in any education position in Chicago will cross paths with Ayers, now an education professor at a state university. Ayers served with Obama and many others on a non-profit board that disbursed $50 million in grants dealing with school reform. Obama and Ayers were NOT friends, although Ayers hosted a coffee for Obama in his first run for state office. Yet Palin would like the Republican base to believe there was more to the relationship that just both men serving on the same board.)
During Palin’s incendiary rhetoric linking Obama to terrorism, a supporter yells "Kill him." This was clearly heard by Palin and others in the crowd. Did Sarah stop in her tracks and admonish the shouter? No.
"Kill him" apparently passed the test for what's allowed in crowd reactions at Republican rallies.
Then there were the speakers at McCain/Palin rallies who continued, unchecked by their leadership, to refer to "Barack Hussein Obama" - the emphasis on his middle name is to imply that Obama is Muslim when he is really a Christian. These speakers know that most people attending the McCain/Palin rallies are low-information voters who vote on non-factual emotion instead of knowledge, so they are inciting voters to draw the worst possible conclusion:
That in the post 9-11 world, a dark-skinned man with a middle name of Hussein is somehow a Muslim terrorist, a one-man sleeper cell, from Africa or the Middle East, who, when once elected president will somehow turn our country over to bin Laden.
This is unbelievable. They seem to just let the misinformation pour into their heads. Garbage in, garbage out.
Every time Sarah Palin talked about Barack Obama "palling around with terrorists," it added fuel to the absurd notion that he's a Muslim terrorist. Every time McCain railed on about tenuous character issues, it made it okay for his followers to base their votes on viral e-mails full of bigotry, lies, and hate that family members or friends forwarded, rather than on issues that matter:
http://bloggerinterrupted.com/2008/10/video-the-mccain-palin-mob-in-strongsville-ohio
“Obama is a terrorist,” they say, citing his name as proof of ties to Islam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itEucdhf4Us
There IS a limit to how far it is acceptable to go with negative campaigning, and the McCain Team has exceeded that limit. The current political environment does not excuse remaining silent when a candidate for president is referred to as a "terrorist" in their presence. A desire to win does not excuse remaining silent during a threat on the life of a U.S. Senator at one of their rallies. There are no excuses for evil such as this. John McCain and Sarah Palin, the GOP, and all who support them were one step short of inciting violence at their rallies. They were letting physical threats go unchallenged.
“… when the Republican campaign, mired in desperation, deliberately stokes the fires of hate and fear, using disgusting lies to argue that Obama is literally dangerous, no one should be surprised when the far-right Republican base becomes frenzied…. The responsible thing for McCain and Palin to do would be to turn down the temperature a bit and insist, in no uncertain terms, that they have no tolerance for the kind of ugliness Americans have been recently observing from the GOP.” Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly.
Sarah Palin said that from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough. Kind of rough? The McCain campaign seems to be counting on prejudice and racism. They are picking up where Hillary left off, but have gone much, much farther. They have been presiding over hate rallies where people feel free to yell out murderous threats as the candidates laugh it off and keep giving their speeches, essentially endorsing such mentality.
John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s constant incendiary attacks against Obama have been producing verbal responses from audiences that demonstrate the danger of such vicious grandstanding. McCain and Palin seem to be inciting extremists within our own country to follow a disturbing path. Once you’ve aroused a lynch mob, it’s hard to stay in charge. McCain may think that it’s the usual political fun and games, but McCain and his pit-bull gal may have unleashed emotions in their followers that they can’t control. Once people are shouting “Treason!” “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” it’s difficult to tell them to calm down. And if those emotions boil over into violence against America’s first black presidential nominee, the results will be a disaster of unimaginable proportions. Do McCain and Palin really want to be partly responsible for an assassination attempt?
For McCain, this is repugnant behavior, unworthy of respect, unworthy of being in the White House, unworthy of being the leader of the free world.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Dear Senator McCain
Dear Senator McCain,
Last night, you made some amazing statements concerning your qualifications to be the next President of the United States. I, like many other Americans, would be intrigued to learn more.
You have an interesting debating technique. You seem to enjoy leading the audience with sweeping statements. But instead of tantalizing us with your astonishing “I know how” statements, why not provide us with some specifics?
You said, “I know how to fix Social Security.” That is an absolute relief to hear. Being just eight years away from applying for it, I’ve been really worried about my Social Security. Your previous suggestion was to privatize Social Security, but you did not mention that last night. I am guessing that you have temporarily abandoned this idea due to the precipitous drop in the stock market. The only detail I heard you mention on Social Security was that you want another commission to study the issue.
Let me clue you in: Like millions of retirees or nearly retired persons, I have worked diligently my entire life assuming the safety net of Social Security would be there as the “third leg” to my retirement income – with the other two legs being my pension and savings. This is how all the financial advisors, throughout the decades of my career, said to save for retirement. My employer is thinking about either reducing pension fund benefits (luckily, they are not going to abandon the employer-based pension as many other large corporations have) or asking employees to work longer years. And, my personal retirement savings lost almost half of its value during the last two weeks. So, I will be relying on Social Security more than I had originally planned. You say “work more years.” No, my health will not allow this to be a solution. Since you declare that you know now to fix Social Security, please share this amazing secret.
You scolded Obama for telegraphing (your word) that he would cross over Pakistan’s borders, if necessary, to get bin Laden, saying that “you should not announce it.” Then, using different words, you “telegraphed” that you would do the same thing. You said, “I know how to find Osama bin Laden.” The commander in Afghanistan is General David McKiernan. Please give him a call and share your secret with him. Better yet, why don’t you hop on a plane to Kabul and relieve some of our over-extended troops. They have families they haven’t seen in 15 months.
You made a statement that Obama has voted to raise our taxes 94 times in the last 3 ½ years. Factcheck.org, a non-partisan project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, delved through the records to determine just what these 94 instances were:
• 23 votes were against new tax cuts for corporations.
• 7 votes were "for measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals."
• 11 votes were to increase taxes on people making more than $1 million a year, to help fund programs such as Head Start, school nutrition, or veterans' health care.
• 53 votes were budget resolutions that, by themselves, could not have resulted in raising taxes.
This total includes multiple votes on the same measures. A close look at the record reveals that Obama has voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers.
So, Mr. McCain, why do you keep lying about Obama’s record? Is it because you know that most voters will not bother to look it up? Is it because if you actually said what you would do, lower taxes for the wealthy and for corporations while ignoring the middle and lower classes (more of the usual “trickle down”), then people will turn away from you in droves?
Why don't you, instead of trying to smear Senator Obama (“that one”), lay some actual plans on the table for all Americans to see? Maybe then, you would be fighting on a level playing field based on issues, expertise, judgment, and leadership rather than one about pitbulls, lipstick, unfounded smears, and inciting people at your rallies to refer to Obama by shouting “terrorist” or “treason” or, worse, “kill him.”
Senator McCain, give us voters, who are not members of your base, some credit. We know, and have known for a long time, who Fannie and Freddie are. Most of us know that these two entities played a small part in the mortgage meltdown, but that the big banks and mortgage companies lending to people who did not really qualify (called subprime) is really what caused the economy to tank. We understand what’s at stake in Afghanistan. We want you to understand that most of us want to get out of Iraq as soon as we can do so responsibly.
Please, Senator McCain, stop speaking in huge generalities and sweeping statements. Instead, please answer the questions – give us some details. We’re waiting.
Sincerely,
A well informed voter
Last night, you made some amazing statements concerning your qualifications to be the next President of the United States. I, like many other Americans, would be intrigued to learn more.
You have an interesting debating technique. You seem to enjoy leading the audience with sweeping statements. But instead of tantalizing us with your astonishing “I know how” statements, why not provide us with some specifics?
You said, “I know how to fix Social Security.” That is an absolute relief to hear. Being just eight years away from applying for it, I’ve been really worried about my Social Security. Your previous suggestion was to privatize Social Security, but you did not mention that last night. I am guessing that you have temporarily abandoned this idea due to the precipitous drop in the stock market. The only detail I heard you mention on Social Security was that you want another commission to study the issue.
Let me clue you in: Like millions of retirees or nearly retired persons, I have worked diligently my entire life assuming the safety net of Social Security would be there as the “third leg” to my retirement income – with the other two legs being my pension and savings. This is how all the financial advisors, throughout the decades of my career, said to save for retirement. My employer is thinking about either reducing pension fund benefits (luckily, they are not going to abandon the employer-based pension as many other large corporations have) or asking employees to work longer years. And, my personal retirement savings lost almost half of its value during the last two weeks. So, I will be relying on Social Security more than I had originally planned. You say “work more years.” No, my health will not allow this to be a solution. Since you declare that you know now to fix Social Security, please share this amazing secret.
You scolded Obama for telegraphing (your word) that he would cross over Pakistan’s borders, if necessary, to get bin Laden, saying that “you should not announce it.” Then, using different words, you “telegraphed” that you would do the same thing. You said, “I know how to find Osama bin Laden.” The commander in Afghanistan is General David McKiernan. Please give him a call and share your secret with him. Better yet, why don’t you hop on a plane to Kabul and relieve some of our over-extended troops. They have families they haven’t seen in 15 months.
You made a statement that Obama has voted to raise our taxes 94 times in the last 3 ½ years. Factcheck.org, a non-partisan project of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, delved through the records to determine just what these 94 instances were:
• 23 votes were against new tax cuts for corporations.
• 7 votes were "for measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals."
• 11 votes were to increase taxes on people making more than $1 million a year, to help fund programs such as Head Start, school nutrition, or veterans' health care.
• 53 votes were budget resolutions that, by themselves, could not have resulted in raising taxes.
This total includes multiple votes on the same measures. A close look at the record reveals that Obama has voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers.
So, Mr. McCain, why do you keep lying about Obama’s record? Is it because you know that most voters will not bother to look it up? Is it because if you actually said what you would do, lower taxes for the wealthy and for corporations while ignoring the middle and lower classes (more of the usual “trickle down”), then people will turn away from you in droves?
Why don't you, instead of trying to smear Senator Obama (“that one”), lay some actual plans on the table for all Americans to see? Maybe then, you would be fighting on a level playing field based on issues, expertise, judgment, and leadership rather than one about pitbulls, lipstick, unfounded smears, and inciting people at your rallies to refer to Obama by shouting “terrorist” or “treason” or, worse, “kill him.”
Senator McCain, give us voters, who are not members of your base, some credit. We know, and have known for a long time, who Fannie and Freddie are. Most of us know that these two entities played a small part in the mortgage meltdown, but that the big banks and mortgage companies lending to people who did not really qualify (called subprime) is really what caused the economy to tank. We understand what’s at stake in Afghanistan. We want you to understand that most of us want to get out of Iraq as soon as we can do so responsibly.
Please, Senator McCain, stop speaking in huge generalities and sweeping statements. Instead, please answer the questions – give us some details. We’re waiting.
Sincerely,
A well informed voter
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Fourth Quarter
Elections in this country are more like emotional football games than what they should be. That is why you will hear chants like “USA, USA” and “drill, baby, drill” and “Saraccuda.” People will vote for their team even if it means voting against their own economic best interest. That is why negative campaigns, tearing down one’s opponent with slander, lies, and innuendoes, work so well in this country. “My team, no matter what” is the slogan of the base of both parties.
Think of the latest McCain Team strategy as the last few minutes of a basketball game. The team is down, so the fouling begins – on purpose. This trick is used to get the opposing team to the free throw line to stop the clock. Then the team using the dirty fouling tactics gets the ball back with a chance to score. It’s ugly, but for the losing team, it’s the only chance they have. With less than a month to go and his poll numbers down, McCain has said that since the economy is “fixed,” it is time to get down and dirty – take off the gloves. McCain’s position is to try to assassinate Obama’s character and dissipate the credibility that Obama has built up.
In the past, Democrats have been known to do the same thing when they were down, although in the past two decades they have tried to stay above such shenanigans. Instead of reaping the rewards for not playing dirty, Gore, and then Kerry, were considered weak by the voters and lost the election. The Obama Team knows this and therefore for every bit of dirt thrown by the McCain team, the Obama campaign will throw dirt right back at them, although they would prefer to just talk about the issues. Mud has already been thrown in both directions, causing the McCain campaign to scream “unfair” when the Obama Team dragged the Keating Scandal into the mix.
Many conservatives have very recently voiced an unease about this 4th quarter strategy, worrying that this time it will backfire on them. They are remembering 1992 when the economy took center stage. Many conservatives are now saying that the McCain Team, in trying to skirt around the economic issues, does not understand how the same political tactics that worked previously will not work this time because the economy is going to dominate the next five weeks.
How the 4th quarter fouls began:
The McCain Team knows how to manipulate the media in getting them to focus on the sleaze and away from substance.
On Saturday, after feeling empowered by not making a major gaffe during the debate, Sarah Palin went on the offensive, touting the “gloves are off” line and rolling out a sound bite they knew would get a lot of airtime:
“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Palin started with the “guilt by association” – speaking of Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, the co-founder of the violent 1960s era group the Weather Underground. Although they are not friends, they both serve on the same anti-poverty board in Chicago. Many organizations, such as FactCheck.org, have concluded that the relationship between Obama and Ayers was tenuous at best.
The challenge for Obama is to not allow the conversation to change. “They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. That’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time. So I want all of you to be clear, I’m going to keep on talking about the issues that matter, ” Obama told a crowd. But he is truly not being given a choice – if he wants to win, he will have to play dirty, too.
There is a very good chance McCain’s strategy will backfire:
Many people have been hit hard by the economy. Voters are thinking about the economy and not much else. They have watched their savings and retirement accounts drop like a rock. As McCain insists on turning the page on the economy and spending his time throwing mud at Obama, the world’s, not just the U.S., stock markets are crashing – which causes credit to become tighter and tighter. More banks are failing. More people are losing their homes. Farmers will not be able to get the credit needed to plant next year’s crops. These problems are not going away any time soon, regardless of the bail out passed by Congress.
There is something else the McCain team has not thought about: the shady characters that McCain, himself, has palled around with in the past. Palin’s husband has some shady doings of his own that could be dragged into the spotlight. The Obama Team has plenty to pick from in order to retaliate. Remember how the Bush Team swift-boated McCain in 2000? There is plenty of dirt to use against McCain. He should think twice about throwing mud. McCain’s swift-boating tactic could backfire; it could be like spitting into the wind.
Here’s why:
• McCain was one of the Keating Five. The core allegation of the Keating Five scandal is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences. Charles Keating, an Arizona businessman, went to prison during the aftermath. Here is a good article on the Keating Five scandal:
http://washingtonindependent.com/9039/did-mccain-learn-from-the-sl-crisis
• McCain has been voted as unethical by the United States Senate. In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found that McCain had exercised "poor judgment" for meeting with federal regulators on Keating's behalf. Others members of the Keating Five were found to have acted improperly. Many independent observers thought all five got off lightly, especially McCain, who had far closer ties to Keating than the others.
• McCain has a gambling addiction. He spends thousands of dollars at the craps table every month.
• McCain cheated on his wife with several women before settling on the very wealthy beer company heiress, Cindy. He then divorced his wife to marry Cindy.
• McCain has a shoot from the hip, think later, temper.
• McCain is said to have given the North Vietnamese way more information than name and serial number.
• The image of McCain as someone who fights against lobbyists is all smoke screen and mirrors. McCain has a cozy friendship with many, many lobbyists, who line his pocket and run his campaign. More than 20 top McCain advisers and fundraisers have lobbied for Big Oil. John McCain's coziness with Big Oil is in many respects just a replay of his old coziness with Charles Keating. In both cases, money and access bought influence.
• Troopergate could be the be all, end all, for Sarah’s political career if it is shown that she really did abuse her power as governor.
• Per diems are paid to Sarah, as governor, for staying in her own house. Even if it may be legal in Alaska, it’s not ethical.
• The director of Division of Elections in Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, has verified that Todd Palin registered in October 1995 with the radical Alaskan Independence Party, a group that advocates Alaskan secession from the United States. Besides a short period of a few months in 2000 when he changed his registration to undeclared, Todd Palin remained a registered member of AIP until July 2002 when he registered again as an undeclared voter. The founder, Joe Volger, declared "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."
http://www.akip.org/introduction.html
"Her damned institutions." Imagine if the remarks of Obama's preacher had been the guiding principal of an actual political organization. The question is, do we make Sarah guilty by association? It is her husband, after all, who was a member of this radical group.
There’s more:
• McCain wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq which has caused our attention to be deflected from the real battle against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
• His speeches, until the last two weeks, pushed deregulation even though lack of oversight of Wall Street is what caused the economic turmoil and credit crunch. He exclaimed that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” although most of us in the middle class knew otherwise (no, he did NOT mean the “workers” when he was saying it).
• He wants to deregulate health care in the same way that the financial section was deregulated.
• He has shown an indifference for the middle class and a preference to the wealthy and big business – just like the Bush/Cheney administration.
Perhaps McCain should think twice before opening up this Pandora’s box of mud slinging. Maybe he should stick to the issues, like the economy, and what he will actually do to help the middle class.
Think of the latest McCain Team strategy as the last few minutes of a basketball game. The team is down, so the fouling begins – on purpose. This trick is used to get the opposing team to the free throw line to stop the clock. Then the team using the dirty fouling tactics gets the ball back with a chance to score. It’s ugly, but for the losing team, it’s the only chance they have. With less than a month to go and his poll numbers down, McCain has said that since the economy is “fixed,” it is time to get down and dirty – take off the gloves. McCain’s position is to try to assassinate Obama’s character and dissipate the credibility that Obama has built up.
In the past, Democrats have been known to do the same thing when they were down, although in the past two decades they have tried to stay above such shenanigans. Instead of reaping the rewards for not playing dirty, Gore, and then Kerry, were considered weak by the voters and lost the election. The Obama Team knows this and therefore for every bit of dirt thrown by the McCain team, the Obama campaign will throw dirt right back at them, although they would prefer to just talk about the issues. Mud has already been thrown in both directions, causing the McCain campaign to scream “unfair” when the Obama Team dragged the Keating Scandal into the mix.
Many conservatives have very recently voiced an unease about this 4th quarter strategy, worrying that this time it will backfire on them. They are remembering 1992 when the economy took center stage. Many conservatives are now saying that the McCain Team, in trying to skirt around the economic issues, does not understand how the same political tactics that worked previously will not work this time because the economy is going to dominate the next five weeks.
How the 4th quarter fouls began:
The McCain Team knows how to manipulate the media in getting them to focus on the sleaze and away from substance.
On Saturday, after feeling empowered by not making a major gaffe during the debate, Sarah Palin went on the offensive, touting the “gloves are off” line and rolling out a sound bite they knew would get a lot of airtime:
“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Palin started with the “guilt by association” – speaking of Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, the co-founder of the violent 1960s era group the Weather Underground. Although they are not friends, they both serve on the same anti-poverty board in Chicago. Many organizations, such as FactCheck.org, have concluded that the relationship between Obama and Ayers was tenuous at best.
The challenge for Obama is to not allow the conversation to change. “They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. That’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time. So I want all of you to be clear, I’m going to keep on talking about the issues that matter, ” Obama told a crowd. But he is truly not being given a choice – if he wants to win, he will have to play dirty, too.
There is a very good chance McCain’s strategy will backfire:
Many people have been hit hard by the economy. Voters are thinking about the economy and not much else. They have watched their savings and retirement accounts drop like a rock. As McCain insists on turning the page on the economy and spending his time throwing mud at Obama, the world’s, not just the U.S., stock markets are crashing – which causes credit to become tighter and tighter. More banks are failing. More people are losing their homes. Farmers will not be able to get the credit needed to plant next year’s crops. These problems are not going away any time soon, regardless of the bail out passed by Congress.
There is something else the McCain team has not thought about: the shady characters that McCain, himself, has palled around with in the past. Palin’s husband has some shady doings of his own that could be dragged into the spotlight. The Obama Team has plenty to pick from in order to retaliate. Remember how the Bush Team swift-boated McCain in 2000? There is plenty of dirt to use against McCain. He should think twice about throwing mud. McCain’s swift-boating tactic could backfire; it could be like spitting into the wind.
Here’s why:
• McCain was one of the Keating Five. The core allegation of the Keating Five scandal is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences. Charles Keating, an Arizona businessman, went to prison during the aftermath. Here is a good article on the Keating Five scandal:
http://washingtonindependent.com/9039/did-mccain-learn-from-the-sl-crisis
• McCain has been voted as unethical by the United States Senate. In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found that McCain had exercised "poor judgment" for meeting with federal regulators on Keating's behalf. Others members of the Keating Five were found to have acted improperly. Many independent observers thought all five got off lightly, especially McCain, who had far closer ties to Keating than the others.
• McCain has a gambling addiction. He spends thousands of dollars at the craps table every month.
• McCain cheated on his wife with several women before settling on the very wealthy beer company heiress, Cindy. He then divorced his wife to marry Cindy.
• McCain has a shoot from the hip, think later, temper.
• McCain is said to have given the North Vietnamese way more information than name and serial number.
• The image of McCain as someone who fights against lobbyists is all smoke screen and mirrors. McCain has a cozy friendship with many, many lobbyists, who line his pocket and run his campaign. More than 20 top McCain advisers and fundraisers have lobbied for Big Oil. John McCain's coziness with Big Oil is in many respects just a replay of his old coziness with Charles Keating. In both cases, money and access bought influence.
• Troopergate could be the be all, end all, for Sarah’s political career if it is shown that she really did abuse her power as governor.
• Per diems are paid to Sarah, as governor, for staying in her own house. Even if it may be legal in Alaska, it’s not ethical.
• The director of Division of Elections in Alaska, Gail Fenumiai, has verified that Todd Palin registered in October 1995 with the radical Alaskan Independence Party, a group that advocates Alaskan secession from the United States. Besides a short period of a few months in 2000 when he changed his registration to undeclared, Todd Palin remained a registered member of AIP until July 2002 when he registered again as an undeclared voter. The founder, Joe Volger, declared "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."
http://www.akip.org/introduction.html
"Her damned institutions." Imagine if the remarks of Obama's preacher had been the guiding principal of an actual political organization. The question is, do we make Sarah guilty by association? It is her husband, after all, who was a member of this radical group.
There’s more:
• McCain wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq which has caused our attention to be deflected from the real battle against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
• His speeches, until the last two weeks, pushed deregulation even though lack of oversight of Wall Street is what caused the economic turmoil and credit crunch. He exclaimed that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” although most of us in the middle class knew otherwise (no, he did NOT mean the “workers” when he was saying it).
• He wants to deregulate health care in the same way that the financial section was deregulated.
• He has shown an indifference for the middle class and a preference to the wealthy and big business – just like the Bush/Cheney administration.
Perhaps McCain should think twice before opening up this Pandora’s box of mud slinging. Maybe he should stick to the issues, like the economy, and what he will actually do to help the middle class.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Worldwide Crash!
Today a worldwide major sell off of stocks and bonds was triggered due to fears of slower global economic growth – despite a $700 billion US bank bailout being passed by legislators and efforts by several European countries, including Germany and Denmark, to rescue their banks.
“In our country, the ‘Fundamentals are Sound’ group at Treasury, and the ‘Whip Inflation Now’ group at the Federal Reserve couldn't switch fast enough from ‘fighting inflation’ to ‘fighting recession,’ ” says Jim Cramer, economic guru, host of CNBC’s Mad Money and co-founder of TheStreet.com.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke studied the Depression, or so they say, and supposedly knew more about how to stop it than anyone. It appears he knew less than anyone as he and his minions presided over the deflationary destruction of worldwide finance.
• Starting in Asia, the sell off spread to Europe and Wall Street, where the Dow Jones fell by more than 6.7% to end below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004.
• The London stock market lost 7.85% – its biggest percentage fall since 1987. Germany's market lost 7.39% while France's Cac-40 index dropped 9.04% - its biggest one-day fall ever.
• Share trading was temporarily suspended in the markets of Brazil and Russia after prices plummeted by 10% and 15% respectively. Russia's market ended 19.1% down.
• Japan's market closed down 4.3%, or 465 points, at 10,473.1 – its lowest close since February 2004. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid 5%.
• Markets in India, China, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also lost ground, while the Indonesian market lost 10% – the biggest one-day fall on record.
• Iceland suspended trading in shares of six major financial institutions bank shares and the government offered unlimited guarantees on savers' deposits. It had earlier agreed measures for the country's banks to sell off some foreign assets. The currency last week plummeted 20% against the dollar and the government was forced to bail out the country's third-largest bank.
• Sweden massively increased the level of protection it offered bank depositors while Denmark moved to offer full protection. Austria said it would also boost protection but did not decide on how much.
• In Italy, the board of banking announced a €3 billion emergency capital increase.
This is just the beginning! We will probably see the stock markets drop much more. Due to the extreme deregulation of the U.S. financial markets, which allowed them free reign to do whatever they wanted, we now have a severe recession in the making, possibly a Depression. The $700 billion bailout will take one to two years to work its way through our economy. In the meantime, we are going to hurt, from Wall Street to Retirement Pension Funds to Main Street to the farm (because farmers won’t be able to get loans to start next year’s crop due to very tight credit markets).
And McCain thinks the bailout means his campaign can turn the page on the economy! He does not understand how the economy works.
McCain does not understand!
“In our country, the ‘Fundamentals are Sound’ group at Treasury, and the ‘Whip Inflation Now’ group at the Federal Reserve couldn't switch fast enough from ‘fighting inflation’ to ‘fighting recession,’ ” says Jim Cramer, economic guru, host of CNBC’s Mad Money and co-founder of TheStreet.com.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke studied the Depression, or so they say, and supposedly knew more about how to stop it than anyone. It appears he knew less than anyone as he and his minions presided over the deflationary destruction of worldwide finance.
• Starting in Asia, the sell off spread to Europe and Wall Street, where the Dow Jones fell by more than 6.7% to end below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004.
• The London stock market lost 7.85% – its biggest percentage fall since 1987. Germany's market lost 7.39% while France's Cac-40 index dropped 9.04% - its biggest one-day fall ever.
• Share trading was temporarily suspended in the markets of Brazil and Russia after prices plummeted by 10% and 15% respectively. Russia's market ended 19.1% down.
• Japan's market closed down 4.3%, or 465 points, at 10,473.1 – its lowest close since February 2004. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid 5%.
• Markets in India, China, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also lost ground, while the Indonesian market lost 10% – the biggest one-day fall on record.
• Iceland suspended trading in shares of six major financial institutions bank shares and the government offered unlimited guarantees on savers' deposits. It had earlier agreed measures for the country's banks to sell off some foreign assets. The currency last week plummeted 20% against the dollar and the government was forced to bail out the country's third-largest bank.
• Sweden massively increased the level of protection it offered bank depositors while Denmark moved to offer full protection. Austria said it would also boost protection but did not decide on how much.
• In Italy, the board of banking announced a €3 billion emergency capital increase.
This is just the beginning! We will probably see the stock markets drop much more. Due to the extreme deregulation of the U.S. financial markets, which allowed them free reign to do whatever they wanted, we now have a severe recession in the making, possibly a Depression. The $700 billion bailout will take one to two years to work its way through our economy. In the meantime, we are going to hurt, from Wall Street to Retirement Pension Funds to Main Street to the farm (because farmers won’t be able to get loans to start next year’s crop due to very tight credit markets).
And McCain thinks the bailout means his campaign can turn the page on the economy! He does not understand how the economy works.
McCain does not understand!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Sent up a creek without a paddle
Each candidate has proposed a health care plan. Have you bothered to go to the candidates’ websites and read their proposals or are you just trusting their word? I have been to both websites – here’s my understanding of what I read:
Under McCain’s health care plan, if you get your health insurance through your employer, there will be an increase in your taxable income by the amount that your employer pays for your plan. If you think the tax credit McCain is offering will offset the tax, think again. The credit is only for those who have to buy an individual plan on the open market at an average cost of $12,000 a year. It is NOT for people who have employer-based insurance.
How would the McCain tax increase work? The average total premium for a family health care plan is $12,106 per year, with $8824 paid by the employer.
• A married couple with an annual taxable income of $63,701 to $128,500 would have a tax increase of $2406 (25% of $8824);
• and a couple earning from $15,651 to $63,700 would have a tax increase of $1323.60 (15% of $8824).
The more your employer pays for your insurance, the higher your tax bill!
But the scariest part of McCain’s plan is that your employer may decide to drop your insurance program because they would otherwise have to pay payroll taxes on that $8824, making an already expensive health care plan even more expensive. This would force you to buy health insurance as an individual on the open market. Any medical condition you might now have or once had would be "pre-existing" and insurance companies will refuse to cover you, or only partially cover you, excluding that condition. Do you have asthma? Do you have COPD? Have you had cancer that is now in remission? Have you had surgery of any kind? Have you had pre-cancers removed from your skin? Did you have mono at some point in your life? Have you had an ulcer caused by the ulcer bug? Do you have acid reflux (which has a very low chance of resulting in esophageal cancer)? Is your blood pressure above “normal?” Is your cholesterol up a little? You will likely be denied insurance. Then, McCain says, a pool of people who have been denied insurance will be cared for by a nonprofit corporation. Can you imagine how high the premiums would be?
What I see behind McCain’s plan is a desire on his part to completely destroy employer-based health care, forcing all Americans to purchase on the open market. It will cost thousands of dollars more than what we now pay, if you are lucky enough to quality. If you are over 50 years of age and have developed some health problems – good luck.
In contrast to the McCain plan, Obama's plan is simple and fair:
1) If you have insurance through your employer, you can keep it. It will NOT be taxed.
2) If you want to buy health insurance on your own, he proposes reforming the insurance rules so you can't be turned down for prior medical conditions.
3) Obama’s plan will give everyone the opportunity to get a plan through a Health Insurance Cooperative (called an Exchange) that will offer, at a fair price, the kind of benefits McCain, Obama, and all of Congress, have.
4) All children will be covered, if not through their parent’s plan, then through SCHIPS, the government’s insurance for children who do not qualify for Medicaid. Anyone saying that we should not make sure all the children are covered has a cold heart in my book.
5) Medicare would be allowed to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies.
The McCain Team will make accusations that Obama wants to socialize medicine; that he is proposing a big government takeover of health care. "That's malarkey," as Biden often says. The oldest trick in the Republican bag of tricks is to call something socialism.
Obama is NOT proposing a big government plan! His plan would rely on the same insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals we have today. He would require that preventive care be covered, that children be covered, that insurance companies not turn you down or cancel your insurance due to any condition you may have, and that employers kick in to pay their part. These ideas represent pretty much the way health care was until about ten years ago before drug prices and insurance started to skyrocket and many employers stop offering insurance benefits. These ideas are main street values.
So don't be fooled.
John McCain is the one who proposes to increase your taxes. His plan would not only overturn the employer-based health insurance that is so unique to America, his proposals could cause 20 million people to lose their employer-based insurance and be forced to buy insurance on their own. McCain proposes to give a $5000 tax credit to help out, but the tax credit he proposes covers less than half of the cost of the average health insurance plan. This plan shows that either McCain does not care about the average American, or he is completely out of touch because his own health care, through Congress, is so wonderful that it causes him to erroneously think that everyone else has the same wonderful health care.
My state legislature is already arguing over whether to reduce the already greatly reduced benefits of the health care plan for both active and retired teachers. We are part of the “underinsured” group because our insurance is inadequate. Presently, they refuse to pay for the drugs the doctor thinks would be best, and instead, forces her to prescribe from their list of accepted drugs, often with less than a desirable outcome. Five years ago, when my husband and I both had surgery, we ended up paying 33% of our medical expenses for that year because several of my tests and drugs were not covered. Through diligence, we save a certain percentage of our yearly income and, luckily, had savings that covered our part of the expenses. But what if we had not been able to save anything in the years prior to us both needing surgery?
I’ve done the math – my husband and I could not afford John McCain’s health care plan. His tax increase would take a big bite out of our monthly budget. And if it were to cause the state to stop providing insurance, I would be denied insurance on the open market due to my asthma and other chronic problems.
Under McCain, many more Americans would be up the proverbial creek without a health insurance paddle.
Under McCain’s health care plan, if you get your health insurance through your employer, there will be an increase in your taxable income by the amount that your employer pays for your plan. If you think the tax credit McCain is offering will offset the tax, think again. The credit is only for those who have to buy an individual plan on the open market at an average cost of $12,000 a year. It is NOT for people who have employer-based insurance.
How would the McCain tax increase work? The average total premium for a family health care plan is $12,106 per year, with $8824 paid by the employer.
• A married couple with an annual taxable income of $63,701 to $128,500 would have a tax increase of $2406 (25% of $8824);
• and a couple earning from $15,651 to $63,700 would have a tax increase of $1323.60 (15% of $8824).
The more your employer pays for your insurance, the higher your tax bill!
But the scariest part of McCain’s plan is that your employer may decide to drop your insurance program because they would otherwise have to pay payroll taxes on that $8824, making an already expensive health care plan even more expensive. This would force you to buy health insurance as an individual on the open market. Any medical condition you might now have or once had would be "pre-existing" and insurance companies will refuse to cover you, or only partially cover you, excluding that condition. Do you have asthma? Do you have COPD? Have you had cancer that is now in remission? Have you had surgery of any kind? Have you had pre-cancers removed from your skin? Did you have mono at some point in your life? Have you had an ulcer caused by the ulcer bug? Do you have acid reflux (which has a very low chance of resulting in esophageal cancer)? Is your blood pressure above “normal?” Is your cholesterol up a little? You will likely be denied insurance. Then, McCain says, a pool of people who have been denied insurance will be cared for by a nonprofit corporation. Can you imagine how high the premiums would be?
What I see behind McCain’s plan is a desire on his part to completely destroy employer-based health care, forcing all Americans to purchase on the open market. It will cost thousands of dollars more than what we now pay, if you are lucky enough to quality. If you are over 50 years of age and have developed some health problems – good luck.
In contrast to the McCain plan, Obama's plan is simple and fair:
1) If you have insurance through your employer, you can keep it. It will NOT be taxed.
2) If you want to buy health insurance on your own, he proposes reforming the insurance rules so you can't be turned down for prior medical conditions.
3) Obama’s plan will give everyone the opportunity to get a plan through a Health Insurance Cooperative (called an Exchange) that will offer, at a fair price, the kind of benefits McCain, Obama, and all of Congress, have.
4) All children will be covered, if not through their parent’s plan, then through SCHIPS, the government’s insurance for children who do not qualify for Medicaid. Anyone saying that we should not make sure all the children are covered has a cold heart in my book.
5) Medicare would be allowed to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies.
The McCain Team will make accusations that Obama wants to socialize medicine; that he is proposing a big government takeover of health care. "That's malarkey," as Biden often says. The oldest trick in the Republican bag of tricks is to call something socialism.
Obama is NOT proposing a big government plan! His plan would rely on the same insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals we have today. He would require that preventive care be covered, that children be covered, that insurance companies not turn you down or cancel your insurance due to any condition you may have, and that employers kick in to pay their part. These ideas represent pretty much the way health care was until about ten years ago before drug prices and insurance started to skyrocket and many employers stop offering insurance benefits. These ideas are main street values.
So don't be fooled.
John McCain is the one who proposes to increase your taxes. His plan would not only overturn the employer-based health insurance that is so unique to America, his proposals could cause 20 million people to lose their employer-based insurance and be forced to buy insurance on their own. McCain proposes to give a $5000 tax credit to help out, but the tax credit he proposes covers less than half of the cost of the average health insurance plan. This plan shows that either McCain does not care about the average American, or he is completely out of touch because his own health care, through Congress, is so wonderful that it causes him to erroneously think that everyone else has the same wonderful health care.
My state legislature is already arguing over whether to reduce the already greatly reduced benefits of the health care plan for both active and retired teachers. We are part of the “underinsured” group because our insurance is inadequate. Presently, they refuse to pay for the drugs the doctor thinks would be best, and instead, forces her to prescribe from their list of accepted drugs, often with less than a desirable outcome. Five years ago, when my husband and I both had surgery, we ended up paying 33% of our medical expenses for that year because several of my tests and drugs were not covered. Through diligence, we save a certain percentage of our yearly income and, luckily, had savings that covered our part of the expenses. But what if we had not been able to save anything in the years prior to us both needing surgery?
I’ve done the math – my husband and I could not afford John McCain’s health care plan. His tax increase would take a big bite out of our monthly budget. And if it were to cause the state to stop providing insurance, I would be denied insurance on the open market due to my asthma and other chronic problems.
Under McCain, many more Americans would be up the proverbial creek without a health insurance paddle.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
a little more about Sarah Palin
Joe Biden and Sarah Palin are in different leagues. During the debate, Biden proved that he is capable of understanding complex issues, handling power responsibly and changing the standing of America in the world. Palin proved she is capable of standing on a stage and speaking memorized talking points, and managing a small town and a state with a large amount of frozen land and a very small population of around 670,000 – about the same as one good-sized city.
Remember, Palin has proven to us over the last several weeks that, without a script, complex national and international issues are beyond her understanding. The brain power is not there. She strings together as many talking points as she can, whether or not it has anything to do with the subject. Without a script, her answers are as nonsensical as a beauty queen up on the stage answering a question with babble and then ending with “world peace.”
The Republican Party insulted the public's intelligence by setting up a well-coached Sarah Palin to face off with Joe Biden, her head filled with nothing more than the clichés she's been babbling on the campaign trail. Most of us did not fall for the trick. That is why the majority of polls show Biden as the winner by double digits. When can we see this woman actually speak her own mind? Oh, yes, I forgot – she tried to do that in the Katie Couric interviews – yes, that really went well, didn't it?
Since she did well keeping to her talking points during the debate, even though she did not really answer most of the questions, she will now be declared the winner by her base and then kept out of the media, touring states where she can speak to the choir in her cutesy colloquialisms. By November 4, Sarah will have been well in the background. The election will once again become Obama vs McCain.
Palin seems to think she will be running the Senate, as she indicated in her debate. She needs to study the constitution and try her best to understand what her job will be: to break tie votes. But with a larger majority of Democrats, there will be no tie votes to break.
I’m “gonna betcha” that if McCain wins, Sarah will be kept completely in the background, occasionally attending ceremonies and giving her scripted speeches, but mostly forgotten.
Remember, Palin has proven to us over the last several weeks that, without a script, complex national and international issues are beyond her understanding. The brain power is not there. She strings together as many talking points as she can, whether or not it has anything to do with the subject. Without a script, her answers are as nonsensical as a beauty queen up on the stage answering a question with babble and then ending with “world peace.”
The Republican Party insulted the public's intelligence by setting up a well-coached Sarah Palin to face off with Joe Biden, her head filled with nothing more than the clichés she's been babbling on the campaign trail. Most of us did not fall for the trick. That is why the majority of polls show Biden as the winner by double digits. When can we see this woman actually speak her own mind? Oh, yes, I forgot – she tried to do that in the Katie Couric interviews – yes, that really went well, didn't it?
Since she did well keeping to her talking points during the debate, even though she did not really answer most of the questions, she will now be declared the winner by her base and then kept out of the media, touring states where she can speak to the choir in her cutesy colloquialisms. By November 4, Sarah will have been well in the background. The election will once again become Obama vs McCain.
Palin seems to think she will be running the Senate, as she indicated in her debate. She needs to study the constitution and try her best to understand what her job will be: to break tie votes. But with a larger majority of Democrats, there will be no tie votes to break.
I’m “gonna betcha” that if McCain wins, Sarah will be kept completely in the background, occasionally attending ceremonies and giving her scripted speeches, but mostly forgotten.
Friday, October 3, 2008
The VP debate changed nothing
Palin's strategy was clear - to be folksy, perky, and look straight into the camera as often as possible. Biden's strategy was to not attack her and instead link President Bush and McCain together as a package. You could tell that not being allowed to directly go after Palin caused Biden to feel frustrated because he would smile while she attacked him. But he ran the risk of alienating women if he had been too tough on Palin. He did well as he managed to be forceful without appearing overbearing when he challenged Palin's facts.
Early on, Palin told the moderator, Gwen Ifill, that she could ask whatever she wanted, but "I'm gonna answer whatever I want." She kept true to that promise, refusing to answer the question of whether a bailout bill showcased the worst of Washington or the best, refusing to answer the question about the McCain-Palin plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq, and refusing to discuss McCain's record as a deregulator in Congress. Instead, she repeated the Republican mantra of low taxes as being good for the economy and issued charges that Obama had voted for tax hikes on families that make as little as $42,000, which Biden answered with facts that proved her statement as untrue. Palin also avoided discussing McCain's deregulation history by declaring that her own record in Alaska shows her as a tax cutter, although under Palin the sales tax in Wasilla did go up. Politicians often avoid tough questions and try to point the finger at the other guy, but Palin seems to do so because she doesn't have an answer to the question.
As the economy took center stage, Biden argued that McCain's conversion to being a regulator of Wall Street was only in the last two weeks. He pointed to a recent article where McCain had called for deregulation in the health care industry similar to the deregulation on Wall Street. He said, "And while (Democratic presidential candidate) Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation. As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry."
Palin was at her best when she injected her sarcastic humor into her remarks. "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again looking backward," she told Biden. Yet, it was the Biden who got off the best one-liner of the night by using Palin's favorite line against her: "I call that the ultimate bridge to nowhere," he said while describing McCain's health care plan.
Biden did well in exposing McCain's $5000 health insurance tax deduction for those who need to buy insurance as not being nearly enough to pay for a policy which, on average, would cost at least twice that amount. He mentioned McCain's plan to tax an employee's health care benefits. Since employers would have to pay payroll taxes on the money they are spending on their employees' health insurance, there is a risk that many businesses will drop their employer-provided health care.
Palin did a decent job of exposing Biden's disagreement with Obama over Iraq policy during the Democratic primaries. But Palin was unable to sustain that line of attack because of Biden's superior understanding of Senate votes by Obama and McCain on the war. He pointed out several times when McCain voted against money for the troops.
The issue on Afghanistan and Iraq showcased a huge difference between the two presidential candidates, with Obama favoring a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq in order to focus on Afghanistan, and McCain opposing this strategy. Biden was knowledgeable and comprehensive when the questioning turned to the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the pursuit of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In one response he linked McCain's policies in the middle-east repeatedly to those of the deeply unpopular President Bush. Palin's talking point that Obama's plan for a troop withdrawal timetable was a "white flag of surrender in Iraq, and that is not what our troops need to hear today," was well delivered at just the right moment, but she noticeably failed to answer pointed questions on Bush's handling of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian question.
There was another misstep by Palin after Biden almost lost his composure while speaking of the death of his first wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972. Palin failed to acknowledge his obvious distress as she hastily delivered a prepared answer into the camera - which did not work well toward forging an emotional attachment with the viewers.
Throughout the debate, Biden was clearly in control of both his facts and his demeanor, while at times Palin struggled to appear in command of the subject. Palin was better when she was attacking Obama's record and plans than she was in explaining her team's positions.
Who won last night's vice presidential debate? The answer depends on which ticket you support. If you like the Democrat ticket, then Joe Biden won as he consistently did a better job of actually answering the questions, using facts and policy. If you prefer the Republican ticket, Palin won, performing better than expected, as she skirted difficult questions and used memorized talking points that often strayed well away from what was asked.
The debate changed nothing in the race.
Early on, Palin told the moderator, Gwen Ifill, that she could ask whatever she wanted, but "I'm gonna answer whatever I want." She kept true to that promise, refusing to answer the question of whether a bailout bill showcased the worst of Washington or the best, refusing to answer the question about the McCain-Palin plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq, and refusing to discuss McCain's record as a deregulator in Congress. Instead, she repeated the Republican mantra of low taxes as being good for the economy and issued charges that Obama had voted for tax hikes on families that make as little as $42,000, which Biden answered with facts that proved her statement as untrue. Palin also avoided discussing McCain's deregulation history by declaring that her own record in Alaska shows her as a tax cutter, although under Palin the sales tax in Wasilla did go up. Politicians often avoid tough questions and try to point the finger at the other guy, but Palin seems to do so because she doesn't have an answer to the question.
As the economy took center stage, Biden argued that McCain's conversion to being a regulator of Wall Street was only in the last two weeks. He pointed to a recent article where McCain had called for deregulation in the health care industry similar to the deregulation on Wall Street. He said, "And while (Democratic presidential candidate) Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation. As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry deregulate it and let the free market move like he did for the banking industry."
Palin was at her best when she injected her sarcastic humor into her remarks. "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again looking backward," she told Biden. Yet, it was the Biden who got off the best one-liner of the night by using Palin's favorite line against her: "I call that the ultimate bridge to nowhere," he said while describing McCain's health care plan.
Biden did well in exposing McCain's $5000 health insurance tax deduction for those who need to buy insurance as not being nearly enough to pay for a policy which, on average, would cost at least twice that amount. He mentioned McCain's plan to tax an employee's health care benefits. Since employers would have to pay payroll taxes on the money they are spending on their employees' health insurance, there is a risk that many businesses will drop their employer-provided health care.
Palin did a decent job of exposing Biden's disagreement with Obama over Iraq policy during the Democratic primaries. But Palin was unable to sustain that line of attack because of Biden's superior understanding of Senate votes by Obama and McCain on the war. He pointed out several times when McCain voted against money for the troops.
The issue on Afghanistan and Iraq showcased a huge difference between the two presidential candidates, with Obama favoring a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq in order to focus on Afghanistan, and McCain opposing this strategy. Biden was knowledgeable and comprehensive when the questioning turned to the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the pursuit of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In one response he linked McCain's policies in the middle-east repeatedly to those of the deeply unpopular President Bush. Palin's talking point that Obama's plan for a troop withdrawal timetable was a "white flag of surrender in Iraq, and that is not what our troops need to hear today," was well delivered at just the right moment, but she noticeably failed to answer pointed questions on Bush's handling of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian question.
There was another misstep by Palin after Biden almost lost his composure while speaking of the death of his first wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972. Palin failed to acknowledge his obvious distress as she hastily delivered a prepared answer into the camera - which did not work well toward forging an emotional attachment with the viewers.
Throughout the debate, Biden was clearly in control of both his facts and his demeanor, while at times Palin struggled to appear in command of the subject. Palin was better when she was attacking Obama's record and plans than she was in explaining her team's positions.
Who won last night's vice presidential debate? The answer depends on which ticket you support. If you like the Democrat ticket, then Joe Biden won as he consistently did a better job of actually answering the questions, using facts and policy. If you prefer the Republican ticket, Palin won, performing better than expected, as she skirted difficult questions and used memorized talking points that often strayed well away from what was asked.
The debate changed nothing in the race.
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