Sorry there was not a post on Friday.  I was unable to access my tools for posting for some reason.  It was crashing Firefox every time I tried.  Also, just as a little bit of forewarning, by January 1st I plan on being switched over to local politics (local being the Portland metropolitan area and occasionally Oregon as a whole).

Goodbye Ayers, hello McCarthy.  The latest attacks on Obama have changed their tone from calling him a terrorist to calling him a socialist.  Since the final presidential debate McCain has been repeating that Obama wants to “spread the wealth around”.  The irony is that both candidates want to spread the wealth around.  The difference is who they’re taking from and who they’re giving to.  Obama wants to pull money from the wealthy to give to the middle class, the trickle-up economics that created our enormous surplus under Clinton.  McCain wants to keep the taxes the same on the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy, a continuation of the Jeffersonian economics that haven’t worked for us in over 50 years.  Which of these is going to appeal more to Americans?  McCain would like to think that America wants to keep paying taxes that are unproportionately high compared to the wealthy, but realistically it is Obama’s more socialist spreading of the wealth that is more appealing to Americans.  No one wants to think that the wealthy are getting off easy when they’re in dire straights, and in a time of such economic uncertainty it seems like suicide to try to appeal to that idea.  Hopefully we’ll see Americans voting in their own interests this election.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/20 at 11:19 AM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

We are now winding down into the final weeks of the general election, with less than a month left before the nation goes to the voting booth.  Will we vote for our downfall or will we elevate ourselves?  Will we “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran” or will we use diplomacy to prevent unnecessary deaths?  Will we vote to continue the failed economic policies of deregulation, or will we change how our economy works, so that it actually does work?  These are the questions that are facing the nation right now, and many polls are showing that the choice is an obvious one.  Barack Obama is leading polls across the country.  People are tired of diversionary personal attacks, and they want someone who will tell them what they believe.  John McCain has been on the attack for the past weeks, at it has not helped his position in the polls in the slightest.  Recent polls show that the more McCain attacks, the more people want to vote for Obama.  The more they bring up Ayers, the more the voters bring up the economy.  Tonight we look towards the final debate before the election, what could very well be McCain’s last stand.  If McCain doesn’t affect a major turnaround in voter opinion tonight, he might as well give up the race.  Any chance he has rests on his performance tonight.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/15 at 11:24 AM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

Wow.

I can’t believe this.  I found, probably, the most ridiculous political ad of the year.  A new McCain ad calls Obama the most liberal senator in the Senate, something that was correct for the year of 2007.  It would be hard to argue that Obama was not liberal, and I don’t think Obama has denied being liberal.  The McCain ad, however, suggests that he said that people calling him liberal were lying.  By using Obama quotes saying “They’re not telling the truth” and “Folks are lying”, which were responses to other attacks, such as an anti-choice group claiming Obama was in favor of infanticide, the ad tries to say these were his words in response to claims that he was liberal.  How amazing is that?!  Let’s just reiterate this, because it’s so great.  McCain is using a quote from when Obama was denying being in favor of infanticide to say that he was denying that he was liberal.

This is where it gets better.  McCain’s campaign as released a press release acknowledging that the ad is wrong.  They back it up, however, claiming that when Obama has been confronted about his liberal voting record he calls everyone who attacks him a liar, which also isn’t true.  What he said was that the people who gave him the label “Most Liberal Senator” need to reevaluate it because he missed so many votes due to campaigning.  He also said that he felt the votes on bipartisan ethics reform should not be considered liberal or conservative due to the nature of the issue.  Never did he say that the group was lying, just that he felt it needed to be looked at again taking into account missed votes and bills that were not leaning one way or the other on the political scale.

For more information on the ad, you can check out FactCheck.org, a non-partisan fact checking group that’s part of the Annenburg Public Policy Center.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/13 at 11:11 AM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

As the election winds down to its final weeks, we are seeing dirtier and dirtier fighting between McCain and Obama.  McCain has been focusing on an incredibly loose connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers, a former member of the revolutionary group the Weatherman.  Labeling Obama as a friend of terrorists, McCain is trying to make Obama into an image of evil.  In reality, Obama’s relationship has been existent to the point of necessity.  When Obama was a rising figure in the Chicago political world, Ayers put together a meet and greet for him so he could be introduced to more politicians in Chicago as he was seeking a seat in the state Senate.  They also both sat on the board of an anti-poverty group in Chicago.  They were never friends, simply colleagues.  Also, the violent actions Ayers took as part of the Weatherman was in the 1960s, 40 years ago.  As Obama is nearing 50, that would put Obama under 10 years old while Ayers was actively bombing property of the United States government in protest of the Vietnam War.  To try to link Obama to Ayers violent past is beyond ridiculous, it’s even beyond absurd. 

Obama, on the other hand, has been accused of trying to play McCain’s age as a factor against him.  The only complaints on this note I’ve really heard or read about is Obama repeatedly calling McCain erratic, so you can take that how you want.  The problem with Obama’s campaign right now is investigations into his campaign financing.  There are numerous people who have donated repeatedly to Obama’s campaign under fake names, such as “Qwerty” and “Good Will”.  While the Republican National Committee would like to have you think this amounts to $220 million dollars, according to an investigation by the New York Times the figure is closer to $40 thousand*. Some are suggesting that the Obama campaign is simply backed up when it comes to responding to and refunding these donations, but in order to maintain his integrity it’s important that he have a group who’s job is simply to stay on this and make sure it’s as fraud-free as possible.

*This figure is counting donations that were not refunded as of September.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/10 at 11:21 AM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink

Last night was the second presidential debate, and the only town hall format debate we are going to see in this election.  This debate, to me, was almost as frustrating as the debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.  The reason?  McCain is trying to make himself appear to be Obama on many issues.

Throughout the debate many pressing issues came up, and most of the issues discussed were regarding the economy and the downhill trend it’s showing.  This is a topic that, up until the debate, McCain has been trying to avoid because he knows that if the discussion stays on economy, he will not when the election.  Last night during the debate McCain showed an interesting new tactic, one that honestly baffled me, and made Obama laugh on a couple of occasions.  McCain was trying to claim to be Barack Obama!  There were times when the wording McCain would use was so close to Obama’s I couldn’t help but cock my head to the side and just stare in wonder.  For example:  A woman named Teresa Finch asked “How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?” Obama was the first to respond, saying “I understand your frustration and your cynicism”.  He went on to explain his side of things.  How did McCain start his response?  “I can see why you feel that cynicism and mistrust”.  Replace mistrust with frustration and you’ve got almost the exact same comment!  And this was not an isolated event, it happened throughout the debate.  And when McCain wasn’t using Obama’s words as his own, he was a broken record.  Luckily we didn’t have him use the word maverick once in the entire debate.  Unfortunately, he replaced that word with reformer.

The biggest issue I have with John McCain’s debating is a voice he uses when he talks about hardships and fixing the government.  His voice goes kind of soft, like a forced caring.  Watching the debate, I commonly thought to myself “There’s his bullshit voice again.” Every time he talked about the economy making life harder on the average American you could almost here the italics in his voice.  “I really care.  I understand how to fix the economy.” It seemed so obvious to me that whenever he used that voice he was talking out of his ass.  If you didn’t here it go back and listen, it’s there, I assure you.

I think the highlight of the debate to me was when McCain said “Sen. Obama likes to talk loudly.  In fact, he said he wants to announce that he’s going to attack Pakistan. Remarkable.” Obama turned around and said “Now, Sen. McCain suggests that ... I’m just spouting off, and he’s somber and responsible ... Sen. McCain, this is the guy who sang, “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” who called for the annihilation of North Korea. That I don’t think is an example of ‘speaking softly.’” As soon as Obama said the first bomb of McCain’s song, McCain’s face went from triumph to horror.  It was amazingly gratifying to hear him called out on this point.

Now, I’m not going to say I was 100% pleased with Obama’s performance at the debate.  I really wished he would have answered the questions he didn’t and go into detail on his plans that he did talk about.  He had a lot of build up and then had to cut his discussion of the policies short because of time restraints.  That was a disappointment, and I think if he had put the emphasis on his policy ideas instead of the build-up he could have done a lot better in the debates.

(Note:  All quotes came from the CNN transcript of the debate.  You can find it at http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript/.)

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/08 at 11:52 AM  •  (0) Comments •  permalink