Day: October 7, 2008

What Is He Thinking?

Is this campaign just turning on itself?  Are they smoking some of that hash coming out of Afghanistan?

John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs.

The Republican presidential nominee has said little about the proposed cuts, but they are needed to keep his health-care plan “budget neutral,” as he has promised. The McCain campaign hasn’t given a specific figure for the cuts, but didn’t dispute the analysts’ estimate.

In the months since Sen. McCain introduced his health plan, statements made by his campaign have implied that the new tax credits he is proposing to help Americans buy health insurance would be paid for with other tax increases.

Sen. McCain’s plan actually would lower taxes for most people. But that means the plan wouldn’t pay for itself, because it cuts certain taxes more than it raises others.

The federal government imposes two taxes on wages, generally: an income tax, which funds the government’s general operations, and the payroll tax, paid for by employers and employees, which funds Social Security and Medicare. If Sen. McCain were to apply both of these to the value of health benefits, he could fully pay for his new tax credits. That is what aides have in the past suggested he would do.

Does any of this make sense?  Why would they push such crap in a state that is full of medicare patients?  Which they did in Florida.  McCain is losing it…as well as the election….he and his camp seem to be trying to lose the election.

Guilty by Association

Since no one in the media has addressed this piece of information, I will do it for them.
Sarah Palin is attacking Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists,” twisting media accounts to falsely connect Obama with the Weather Underground figure Bill Ayers. Let me say that I have no sympathy, and never had, for the anarcho-syndicalist craziness and bona fide infantile leftism, that Ayers and his associates represented nearly 40 years ago, when Obama was in the 3rd grade.

By contrast, Sarah Palin has real and documented connections to the Alaska Independence Party, which is far more extremist than even the most far right of the Republican Party. The main platform of that party, as Alaska Independence Party leaders have stated, is a rejection of the United States and an effort to cause Alaska to leave the union. Given what this party represents today, Palin’s ties to that party deserve to be an issue in the campaign.

Alaska Independence Party leaders have also claimed that Sarah Palin was a member before she was elected mayor of Wasilla, which the McCain campaign has denied. Officially, records show that Palin was a registered Republican since 1982, six years before she married her husband Todd, British Petroleum supervisory employee, self-employed fisherman, and snowmobile mobile racer.

The Director of the Alaska Division of Elections has stated that Todd Palin, however, was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002. Todd Palin, all sources agree, has played a significant role as a policy adviser to his wife’s administration. There is significant disagreement about Sarah Palin’s attendance at Alaska Independence Party conventions before she became mayor of Wasilla. She did visit their convention after she became mayor, however, which the McCain workers try to downplay as a mere courtesy call. As governor, she sent a video tape to the most recent 2008 convention telling the delegates to “keep up the good work” and calling their convention “inspiring.”

Here is a little history on the Alaska Independence Party. The Party was founded by an ultra-rightist gold miner, Joe Vogler in the 1970s with an “anti-American” platform. Palin has denounced those abroad in oil rich countries who “hate America.” Joe Vogler hated America. He said in the 1970s, “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I have no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Later Vogler said that “the fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred of the US government. And I won’t be buried under their damn flag….when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.” He said this in an oral history interview at the University of Alaska in 1991, at which time Bill Ayers had rejected his own past and had become respectable. Two years later Vogler disappeared. A criminal subsequently confessed to murdering him in a conflict over the sale of plastic explosives (which may suggest terrorism).

Like I have said in the past that I really detest the whole premise of guilt by association.  I mean there are many of us that would be guilty if that was the law of the land.  But I guess it is win at any cost.

Tonight Is The Night–Round 2

Tonite is the nite for the second edition of the presidential debate circuit.  Are you ready for some debating?  Just a short preview of what I would like to see and what we will mostly likely see.

First, McCain has started going negative more so than before, so since the economy is the number one issue on the minds of the people, what will McCain choose to talk about?  My guess is that he will try to go everywhere but there.

Obama should somewhere within the course of the debate look a McCain and ask him directly, if he thinks he associates with terrorists, and be sure to use the plural for that is what Palin did.  Now McCain has two choices he either has to say yes or no.  A yes answer will make him look silly and a no answer will dispute his running mate.,.it will be a win-win for Obama.

But most likely neither have the cajones to do this on a national stage.  We will get a run of talking points that will not really answer any questions the American people have.  I would like to see Brokaw ask either candidate if they regret their yes vote, considering the market is still tanking even with $700 billion in the wallet.

McCain will no doubt try to keep the conversation on any thing but the economy and he will try to stir any question away from the subject.  Obama must keep the conversation on the economy and it will be intersting to see how he will manage it.

I really want to see if McCain is as evasive as Palin was in her debate.

Professor’s Congressional Scorecard

It is time to tell all just how did the Congress do this past month of September.  I will also recap the year since they have gone home and will do little because of elections and a new admin for the new year.

In The month of September will Congress did do a little work.  The poor babies had to work a weel or so beyond what they were suppose to.

These are the measure voted on that I considered the most importanbt and the most telling of their progress at doing their job of representating the people of those country.

1–Let oil drilling ban expire–no step

2–renew R& D tax incentives for alt energy cars–Fwd step

3–Repeal min. alternative tax–no step–I had mixed emothions about this measure.

4–the shelving HR 362, the Iran resolution–Fwd step

5–market bailout fails–fwd step

6–Amtrak bill passes–fwd step

7–past the bail out bill–bkwd step

For the month the US Congress scores a 3 steps forward.  Finally after a whole damn year they are going in the right direction.  But things will change in Jan 09, at least that is the rallying call.

This is the breakdown for the year of 2008:

Jan–1 step forward

Feb–No step

Mar–2 steps backwards

Apr–1 step forward

May–3 steps forward

Jun–4 steps backwards

Jul–No step

Aug–1 step forward

Sep–3 steps forward

The total is:  (may I have a drum roll, please) 3 steps forward.  The Congress found the gear to move the country forward just in time to put it into park until 09.  Good plan, dipsticks.

Basically all the progress for the year was made in September, just before they went home to face the music of th voters.

The Rats Stick Together

The Treasury Department on Monday named a former Goldman Sachs executive to oversee spending for the $700 billion financial rescue plan.

The administration announced it had tapped Neel Kashkari, 35 — an assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs — to head the Treasury’s new Office of Financial Stability on an interim basis.

Kashkari helped draft the bailout legislation as one of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.’s close advisers on the crisis. Kashkari joined the government after working at Goldman Sachs, the firm Paulson headed before joining the Bush administration in 2006.

I still have a problem with the guysthat made all the profits off the situation are the leaders of the bailout.  Think about it people, if you went to the doctor to have a mole removed and he amputated your penis, would you turn to him for further surgical advice?

Pope Hates Wealth

Yeah right, this from a guy that wears Prada shoes…..please……

When he opened the Synod on Sunday, the Pope attacked modern culture, saying that “nations once rich in faith and vocations are losing their own identity under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain modern culture”.

Speaking to the bishops assembled at the Vatican, Pope Benedict said those who seek “success, career or money are building on sand”.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church said that the disappearance of money as banks collapsed showed that wealth meant “nothing”.

The Pope said that people should instead base their lives on God’s word.

Those who think that “concrete things we can touch are the surest reality” are deceiving themselves, he said.

OK, it is official……but that is ok….I am sure that there is some way to buy your way out of this.

New Voters Flock To Register

This stuff is waht dreams are made of, at least according to some pundits.

In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states — 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.

In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear — of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds.

Republicans acknowledge the challenge but say Obama still has to prove he can get the new voters to the polls.

But after many years of analyzing the politics of the country, I have seen many “new” voters registered and the hopes are high.  Silly rabbit!  Before a victory can be claimed, these “new” voters must actually vote.  In the past they have stayed away on election day.  Obama’s camp is trying hard to keep these voters energized.  The only way to know how successful they will be is on Nov. 4th.