Some of you may be aware of the Keating Five scandal McCain was involved in some years ago.  Keating, with Lincoln Savings and Loans, was involved in illegal activities and the largest case of fraud in the history of federal regulation of banking.  McCain, with four other Senators Keating had donated to, fought against actions taken by the federal regulators to stop this fraud and it resulted in billions of dollars of savings being lost.  The Obama campaign is now trying to pull focus to the scandal and McCain’s understanding of economics in a short documentary called Keating Economics.  I would have embedded the video for you, but unfortunately they don’t give that option.  Instead, I’ll just provide you with a link to the site, and encourage that you take a look:  http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/06 at 12:09 PM  •   •  permalink

The debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin was last night.  Both candidates did better than they were expected to.  Joe Biden didn’t ramble and Sarah Palin wasn’t completely moronic.  There was, of course, misquotes, lies, and distortions of fact as any debate has.  One thing it was missing was an acknowledgment of who won. 

Now, I understand that people were expecting Sarah Palin to be a complete train wreck.  They were expecting her to trip on words and show an absolute lack of knowledge on all the important issues.  The Republican party wanted this, as the lowered expectations would make her look good when she showed that she had some small amount of speaking abilities.  After all, this isn’t her first debate.  She won her governor race on charisma, and that charisma was clear last night.  What she didn’t do last night was debate well enough to constitute a win.  As some one with some debate experience I found her performance to be frustrating and very poor.

In a debate, you do not have to be right, your opponent has to be wrong.  Making your opponent wrong is the key to winning any debate.  One thing you never want to do is legitimize the points your opponent is making about you when your opponent is explaining why they think you are wrong.  This is the key to losing, and this was something Sarah Palin did over and over last night.  Each time Joe Biden would present an argument against McCain’s policies, such as his healthcare policy, that Palin couldn’t argue for without looking bad she refused to answer the question, instead defaulting to an already debated topic.  Not answer the question raises those flags that make people legitimize Biden’s statements in their minds.  When Biden say’s your plan is bad for the middle class and you respond let’s talk about energy, you are saying that he’s right, your plan is bad for the middle class.  This is a lose.  This is admitting your wrong, and that your opponent is right.  This is not how you win a debate.  Yet the media called the debate a draw, saying that because Palin had performed better than the expectation that had been set she did as well as the guy who backed her into corners on the important issues that she refused to talk about.  That’s not a draw.  That’s a clear lose!

You don’t win an debate by simply not being a train wreck.  You win a debate by showing that your opponent is wrong, and you make them acknowledge that, like Biden did to Palin.  You back them into a corner that they can’t crawl out of without admitting that they were wrong.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/03 at 12:42 PM  •   •  permalink

It’s my birthday today, so this is going to be kind of a short post.  Finally 21!

Palin is being paraded by the McCain campaign as a champion of ethics and government transparency, but as we’ve all seen, due to the Yahoo! hack, that this just isn’t the case.  Now, we’re being given even more evidence that Palin has been actively trying to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act.

Wired’s Threat Level ran an article today discussing a private email system that had been set up under Palin’s governor campaign domain.  This had several email address that were used by her and her advisors, and when Palin found out that her email on Yahoo! had been hacked she had the emails shut down.  This raises serious questions as to the content of the emails, who she was communicating with, and whether or not it would have been incriminating on an ethical level.  The McCain campaign maintains that the emails were used for personal use only, while one of Palin’s aides contradicts the statement saying they hadn’t been used at all for “a long time”.  I personally would like to see an expansion of the ethics investigation into Palin’s actions to find conclusively how widespread her unethical circumvention of government transparency is.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 10/01 at 11:42 AM  •   •  permalink

As I start this post, I want one thing to be clear:  I hate the idea of bailing out Wall Street.  I hate it.  The fact that we have to bail out the very essence of greed in our society really goes against what I believe in, and I hate that it’s happening.  That being said, I also want this to be clear:  As much as I hate the idea of the bailout, I support it.

Right now we’re looking at the largest investment and lending firms in the world collapsing.  They’re crumbling due to poor investment choices and high-risk loans.  Washington Mutual was the largest bank in the history of the United States to fail.  We’re looking at a serious economic decline, a repression that is headed down a steep slope towards a crisis our country has seen before, a second Great Depression.  This isn’t just the United States we’re looking at here, either, we’re looking at a worldwide economic collapse.

We are part of a global economy.  We’re an economic superpower, and the largest consumers in the world.  Every other economic power in the world is tied directly into our economy.  As we start to slip, Europe and Japan start to slip.  As we fall, so will they.  The only thing that is standing between us and this global disaster is $700 billion.  And even that could very possibly be not enough. 

Stock prices have began to tumble as the House rejected the package as it is right now, with 228 against the plan and 205 for it.  Republicans are attacking Democrats, saying that they politicized the issue.  Democrats are attacking Republicans saying they didn’t pressure their peers enough.  Maybe we can get it though if we resubmit it on Wednesday or Thursday.  Maybe…

As this all resolves we need to be braced for whichever path the government takes, be it ensuring our economic collapse, or spending hundreds of billions of our tax dollars.  One we won’t recover from quickly, the other we will.  Please keep this in mind as you are calling your members of Congress and telling them how they should vote.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 09/29 at 01:08 PM  •   •  permalink

Listening to how John McCain has been lying in this presidential race, you would think that he hasn’t been involved in politics for the past two decades.

Over the course of this election, I have seen some terrible, terrible lying from John McCain.  One of the most bold-faced lies he’s been repeating over and over is that Sarah Palin never supported the Bridge to Nowhere.  As discussed in this Q&A by FactCheck.org, Sarah Palin has changed her stance on the Bridge To Nowhere over time, contrary to what she and John McCain have been repeating.  The Bridge To Nowhere entered Congress in 2005.  When it was first brought before Congress, Sarah Palin supported it.  As the debate heated up and McCain attacked the project, Sarah Palin supported it.  In 2006 the Bridge To Nowhere becomes a symbol of government pork spending, and Sarah Palin still supported it.  In 2006, after Congress had amended the bill to appropriate the funds to the Alaskan Department of Transportation for general use, Sarah Palin announced that she would use the funds for the Bridge to Nowhere, again indicated her support.  It wasn’t for another year, in September of 2007, that Palin would pull her support from the Bridge and announce that the state would not go forward with building it.  That is support that spans two years, nearly her entire career as governor of Alaska.  Now she claims that she never supported using government funds to build it, saying that she told Congress “Thanks, but no thanks.” A lie that McCain is repeating constantly to build her up as an opponent of pork.

The next lie that I found to be bold-faced, and honestly kind of funny, is that McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, hasn’t been involved with Freddie Mac for several years.  Now, we’re finding that Rick Davis actually just recently stopped receiving payments as a consultant from the company earlier this month when the government took over the investment giants.  How much was he receiving?  Fifteen thousand dollars a month.  That’s right.  No involvement what-so-ever here, just a little extra money in his pocket is all.  This isn’t something that would influence a campaign manager, right?  It’s Obama that has the ties, right?  That’s what makes this so funny to me right there.  This realization is coming as McCain puts out his new ad trying to link Obama to Fannie Mae.

Anyways, you’d think McCain would have learned to lie by now, given that he’s been a politician for so many years.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 09/24 at 12:36 PM  •   •  permalink