McCain's Guilt By Association

If we are going to talk about Obama's associates, we should also talk about McCain's associates.

Apparently, McCain's Presidential Transition Chief worked with other lobbyist on behalf of Saddam Hussein's Government in trying to ease sanctions after the first Gulf War, when Iraq was a Rogue State. The two other lobbyists were convicted of acting as unregistered agents of Iraq.

Is there a Republican who doesn't have connections to the Hussein government?

Ireland's Business Tax

In tonight's debate, John McCain asked why our business tax is so much higher than Ireland's. My answer? Defense spending. In fiscal year 2008, the United States spent $623 billion on Defense. Something around 36% of our budget. The estimated 2004 international spending outside the US? $500 Billion. In 2001, Ireland spent only $700 million in defense spending. We have higher taxes than the rest of the world because we spend more on "defense" than every other nation in the world.

Palin v. Flyers

It is obvious to me that Sarah Palin's Handlers are not Hockey Fans and possibly not even sports fans. They sent her into Philadelphia for a Rangers (Who Won!) v. Flyers game. You send a ultra conservative, pro-life, pro-gun woman into one of the most liberal cities in America to attend a Hockey game between two huge rivals in front of some of the rowdiest, meanest, loudest fans in America who are already worked up over a rivalry game. If you aren't liked by Philadelphia Fans, they will not show you any respect. It is no surprise that Sara Palin got deafening boos. That was really just poor judgment on the part of the McCain campaign. Send her to a Avalanche or (maybe) a Red Wings game, but not a Flyers Game.

Bill Ayers

I really just have to wonder: How many people who were under the age of 10 during the Days of Rage know who Bill Ayers was? For that matter, how many people under the age of 10 during the Days of Rage even know what it was? The only reason I know who he is is because we discussed him in my Civil Disobedience Class in Law School. I know a lot of very educated people, even some from Chicago who had no idea who Bill Ayers was until they heard Sarah Palin talk about him and decided to Google him.

Reading about it and speaking to people about it, I always come back to the same questions:
1. How can you work on serious education reform in Chicago and not cross paths with Bill Ayers?
2. How can you blame a fledgling politician for attending or even having a fundraiser hosted for him by a leader in Education reform in his home town?
3. Does one really expect a community organizer to turn down the chairmanship on and Annenberg Foundation Board?

Yes, Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground did some pretty horrible stuff in Protest of the Vietnam War and to "Bring the War Home;" But since then, he has worked hard on education policy and is an honored citizen of Chicago. Were he now planning attacks to "Bring the War Home" from the rest of the world I would question Barack Obama's judgment in associating with him. I bet Sarah Palin did not know who Bill Ayers was until he was given to her as a talking point and it would not surprise me that Barack Obama did not know who he was until relatively recently.

Trooper Gate

I heard last night and read today in the NYTimes that Todd Palin answered his interrogatories and that others involved, including the special assistant to the former Public Safety Commissioner of Alaska, are speaking out about how much communication there was between Governor Palin's Office and the PSC's Office. It is estimated that in 19 months, the Governor's Office, the Governor, or the Governor's Husband contacted the PSC's office 36 times regarding the Governor's former brother-in-law, Trooper Wooten.

I had no way of knowing whether Wooten is truly a present threat to the Governor or her family, I just think they went about dealing with it in the wrong way. He went through a nasty divorce with the Governor's sister. There were some allegedly nasty things said, having working in Matrimonial law, I would not be surprised if most of them were true. Divorce can be nasty, it brings out the worst in people. The was evidently enough for a Domestic Violence Restraining order to be filed, but it was quashed because of lack of evidence. The death threat was not even communicated to the target, Governor Palin's Father, until 2 weeks to a month after it happened. The threat was not even communicated to authorities immediately, something most people would do if they thought the threat was credible. If you tell the police 6 months after the death threat is made, they are not going to take it very seriously because they will not believe you took it seriously. Wooten does not seem to be a great person. Internal affairs found that he did threaten his ex-father-in-law's life, illegally shot a moose, drove with an open container in his squad car, and tasered his son. Honestly, with those violations of laws and trooper policy, it would not have been uncalled to either terminate him with cause or request his resignation.

There were other avenues that Governor Palin's family could have pursued without at least the appearance of using the influence of the Governor's Office to get Trooper Wooten fired. I honestly don't have a problem with the Governor's Office requesting that Trooper Wooten not be assigned to events she is attending with her family, but as Governor and a potential national leader, you should be able to deal with your Ex-brother in law. But if the Governor's office got involved beyond a possible threat to the Governor or her family, which there has been no indication of problems since prior to her becoming Governor, it was inappropriate. If there have been problems since, should have been handled through the legal system.

As for the investigation of the dismissal of the Public Safety Commission over his refusal to fire Trooper Wooten, Sarah Palin fed the fire for this investigation. When the legislative investigation began in July, Governor Palin welcomed the probe saying she had nothing to hide and pledged her and her staff's cooperation with the legislature in its investigation. Then she got tapped for McCain's VP. All of the sudden, not 2 days after her and the McCain campaign's most recent statement of cooperation, Governor Palin requested that the personnel board review the dismissal, not the legislature, and directed her lawyer to get the legislature to drop the investigation. That is why we have Trooper Gate. That sent a signal to every blogger, newspaper reporter, and non-republican (and probably some of them too) that something was wrong here. If not actually impropriety, then at least the appearance of it and these people want to know what happened before they decide whether they want Governor Palin one heart beat from the presidency.

The question of whether as Governor, Palin improperly used her influence and fired a man who did not give in, is a valid one and should be investigated. It is not like Bay Buchanan's outrageous suggestion on CNN Election Center last night that there should be investigation into whether Barack Obama was a drug dealer on the streets of Chicago, something of which there is NO indication of anywhere (and if there was, someone would have come forward with it).

Note: Critique me or not, my rendition of what happened or allegedly happened in the Divorce and Investigation of Trooper Wooten came from Wikipedia.

Healthcare like the financial Markets?

This is from Paul Krugman:

September 19, 2008, 7:24 pm

McCain on banking and health

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

This is a September/October 2008 edition. Check out bottom of the first column on Page 30 of the magazine (Page 3 of the PDF)

Federal Taxes paid v. Benefits received

So I am sitting here watching McCain talk about how Obama has requested over $900 Million in federal funds for Illinois. (He did not mention whether this was in 2007, 2008, or over his tenure as a Senator). I will take that figure as about accurate because really I am just concerned with how much states pay and how much they receive in federal money. To this end I visited The Tax Foundation website to check out the 2005 numbers. I can't imagine any of the candidates has had much time to get pork for themselves in 2008. Here are the numbers for the 4 state who have candidates in this presidential election:

Taxes Paid Funds received (in Millions)
Alaska $4,830 $9,230
Arizona $35,988 $44,639
Delaware $6,662 $5,495
Illinois $99,776 $80,778

Alaska received $1.84; Arizona recieved $1.19, Delaware received $.77, and Illinois received $.75 for every dollar sent to Washington. Now that is only 2005, the Foundation does not have more recent numbers yet and I don't have time right now to track down more recent numbers. However, the ratios probably have not changed that much. I will find them when I can or if you have a link, please post. If the ratios are still the same, it is really hard for the candidates from receiver states to call out the candidates from donor states on pork.

It might be interesting to take a look at the Ranks in states for money received per dollar paid in federal taxes. You might notice how Red the top is and how blue the bottom is.

Corporate Campaign Contributions

So there is all this talk about donations by Fannie and Freddie to the Obama campaign. Worldnetdaily.com has Obama taking $126, 349 from EMPLOYEES of Fannie and Freddie based on information from Opensecrets.org. (My research on opensecrets, a fabulous website btw, came up with about $109,000, including every election back until 1992, but whatever). They just seem to forgo mentioning that McCain took money from Fannie and Freddie's employees as well. It was only $17,900 according to my calculations, paltry yes, but still worth mentioning. It kind of gives you a air of credibility as a media outlet when you mention both sides. So here you go, right from John McCain's top contributors and Barack Obama's top contributors:

McCain

Merrill Lynch	$298,413
Citigroup Inc	$269,251
Morgan Stanley	$233,272
Goldman Sachs	$208,395
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$179,975
AT&T Inc	$174,487
Blank Rome LLP	$150,426
Credit Suisse Group	$150,025
Greenberg Traurig LLP	$146,787
UBS AG	$140,165
PricewaterhouseCoopers	$140,120
US Government	$137,617
Bank of America	$129,475
Wachovia Corp	$122,846
Lehman Brothers	$117,500
FedEx Corp	$113,453
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher	$104,250
US Army	$103,613
Bear Stearns	$99,300
Pinnacle West Capital	$97,700

	Obama Goldman Sachs $691,930 University of California $611,207 Citigroup Inc $448,599 JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919 Harvard University $435,769 Google Inc $420,174 UBS AG $404,750 National Amusements Inc $389,140 Microsoft Corp $377,235 Lehman Brothers $370,524 Sidley Austin LLP $350,302 Moveon.org $347,463 Skadden, Arps et al $340,264 Time Warner $338,527 Wilmerhale Llp $335,398 Morgan Stanley $318,070 Latham & Watkins $297,400 Jones Day $289,476 University of Chicago $278,885 Stanford University $276,038
	Of note is that McCain's number 1 (employee) contributor is Merrill Lynch, another one of the companies that recently had a collapse. But basically, it should just be pointed out that both of these candidates take money from wall street. It is kinda tough for either to accuse the other of being in bed with Wall Street without admitting their own connections (both took a lot of money from Lehman Brothers). This is politics and the money is (was) on Wall Street. I would also point out that: *McCain has full disclosure of 85.8%, partial disclosure of 3%, and no disclosure of 11.1% of his contributions.
	*Obama has full disclosure of 92.4%, partial disclosure of 1.8%, and no disclosure of 5.8% of his contributions.

My favorite plays on "I can see Russia from my house"

"I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me an astrophysicist" -Paul Begala

"I can see the highway from my house, can I be Transportation secretary." -I don't know her name, but she was on Larry King's 9pm show on 9/17/08.

Please add your favorites...

www.mccainpalinvictory2008.com

Go ahead. Visit the site. You might think it is an political site, but there is no way to get through the intro page without going to the donation website. It does specify that the website is run by the RNC and a few state Republican Committees. But really, what I love about the site is their privacy policy. Go ahead. Read the Privacy Policy.

I might also point out that this site comes up first in Google before www.johnmccain.com when you search for McCain 08.

Polls

When you get all worked up about the meaning of all of this constant polling just take a look at the chart of the Gallup Daily Presidential Poll. It reads more like two erratic heart beats than any predictor of who is going to win the presidential election. Polls are useful in that they tell the political strategists where they have to focus their efforts in order to win over undecided voters. Yes, McCain got a big bump after the Republican Convention, this will settle out, just as Obama's bigger bump did after the start of the Republican Convention.

In the end, the day before the election, unless something extremely shocking happens, this poll will still read with both candidates in the 40s, probably with a 3-4 point difference between them (flip a coin to see who is in the lead) and this election will be decided by the people Gallup does not call on a daily basis.

Saturday Night Live

OMG, when the season premier of SNL opened, I swear I wasn't sure if that was Tina Fey or really Sarah Palin replacing Barack Obama as he declined to appear due to the Hurricane. The opening skit will go down as one of the best in SNL history.

Hillary Clinton's 2008 Convention Speech

I have to say I was very impressed. I thought she did a fantastic job of speaking of her accomplishments, bashing and comparing McCain to Bush, and encouraging her supporters to vote for Obama.

The best part of the speech, which I hope every Hillary Clinton support who has not yet decided to vote for Obama in November reads, was:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

I hope her supporters get that message loud and clear. What is important is that you vote for the candidate who has the same goals as you and the person you supported. Barack Obama is that person for Hillary Clinton's supporters. It is not John McCain.

Clean Coal is Sponsoring the CNN Presentation of the Democratic National Convention.

Something is really wrong with that, especially considering donations by Turner Broadcasting (the owner of CNN) Employee donations are considerably lopsided towards the the left, including Ted Turner's $1000 contribution to Barack Obama's campaign.

I guess this is a good sign of media independence, and a sign of a really good marketing strategy on behalf of the Coal Industry. I just hope people who watch the clean coal commercials realize it is not a brain child of the left, but yet another spin by the right to get at the Environmental Vote.

The costs of clean coal are significant and the effects of coal mining still devastate coal country, polluting water supplies and destroying wilderness. The energy needed to clean the waste of carbon is great and there is no way to capture the radiation that is emitted from coal plants, radiation emissions that are actually greater than those emitted from nuclear power plants. Clean coal is not nearly as clean as the coal industry or the Bush Administration would lead you to believe.

FEMA: "Ooops I did it again."

As if FEMA does not have enough bad press, it was recently revealed that they gave away $85 million of household supplies intended for Katrina Victims becuase there was no need for them in New Orleans. This is despite the fact that they have regular meetings with a Non-profit, UNITY they refer people to for these supplies, a non-profit that tells FEMA all the time it needs. Apparently, when FEMA offered these supplies to the state, an new agency that UNITY had never heard of, said the state didn't need the supplies.

I am just flaberghasted at this. One of the commentators on this article were correct. If FEMA was a private company, heads would roll. I doubt there will even be an insvestigation of what went wrong. I don't think someone was purposely keeping these supplies from Katrina victims, but someone was grossly negligent. Heads should roll for this and some of the takers of the supplies should step up and offer them to UNITY and other non-profits working in New Orleans.

Thanks John

For the campaign map wiget.

Go visit John at A Lie A Day.

National Popular Vote Update

The National Popular Vote movement is a movement in state legislatures to drop out of the Electoral College. Since states determine how they distribute their Electors to the Electoral College, it is possible, as Maryland and New Jersey have done, to apportion all of their Electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. See my post about Maryland passing this measure last year. In both Maryland and New Jersey, this will not take effect until states representing at least 270 Electoral Votes pass similar measures. It has already been vetoed in Hawaii and California, but is pending in a number of states either in the legislature or on the Governor's desk. It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

I am not a big fan of it, I prefer a proportional electoral college system where if you win 70 of the popular vote in a state, you get 70% (or a rounded percentage) of the Electoral votes in that state. If there are 10 Electors, you get 7 of them. Interestingly enough, Minnesota and Oklahoma have joined the proportional party with Maine and Nebraska. Too bad solid states like New York, California, Georgia and Texas will never pass a proportional rule for the Electors.

Carbon Belch Day

This made me puke a little bit in my mouth.

I "Carbon Belch Day" link is blocked through my job, so please tell me this is actually a really really really bad joke. Please, tell me.

Russian Censorship

This is just a bit scary to read...

The Kremlin is literally erasing opposition from TV. They aren't sending them off to Siberia like the old Communist regime used to do, but they actually took a guest on a talk show who was critical of Putin out of the show when it aired. They didn't cut his scenes, they digitally removed not only his comments but his image. The Kremlin is apparently also keeping basically all opposition off of the television. They even cancelled a rock concert because the band came out in opposition to Putin.

On top of this, Russia has some of the largest oil reserves in the world and are keeping almost as close an eye on it as (if not more than) the Saudi Royal family. Just relish the thought of a world dependent on oil and us muscling for influence with a very large censorship crazy country that controls the taps. Yet another reason why we need to be exporting green technology instead of democracy.

Ownership Society?

From the President's America's Ownership Society Initiative from the summer of 2004:

Expanding Homeownership. The President believes that homeownership is the cornerstone of America's vibrant communities and benefits individual families by building stability and long-term financial security. In June 2002, President Bush issued America's Homeownership Challenge to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and non-minorities. The President also announced the goal of increasing the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families before the end of the decade. Under his leadership, the overall U.S. homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time high of 69.2 percent. Minority homeownership set a new record of 51 percent in the second quarter, up 0.2 percentage point from the first quarter and up 2.1 percentage points from a year ago. President Bush's initiative to dismantle the barriers to homeownership includes:

*American Dream Downpayment Initiative, which provides down payment
assistance to approximately 40,000 low-income families;

*Affordable Housing. The President has proposed the Single-Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit, which would increase the supply of affordable homes;

*Helping Families Help Themselves. The President has proposed increasing support for the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunities Program; and

*Simplifying Homebuying and Increasing Education. The President and HUD
want to empower homebuyers by simplifying the home buying process so consumers can better understand and benefit from cost savings. The President also wants to expand financial education efforts so that families can understand what they need to do to become homeowners.

Well, it seems the encouraging the real estate industry and mortgage industry to make homeownership easier has really worked out for us.

UPDATE: Foreclosures are up 65% over this time last year.