Christmas Under Siege?

Nothing gets me in the holiday spirit more than when Bill O'Reilly brings up the "War on Christmas." Last night he spent the first segment of his program pulling his hair out and calling the governor of Washington a coward because an atheist group is allowed to put up a sign that says enjoy the winter solstice and, by the way, religion is myth and superstition at the capitol (I paraphrase liberally). He is not calmed by the fact that there is also a Christmas tree and a nativity scene at the capitol as well - this only irritates him more and makes me laugh harder.

O'Reilly has been on this kick for years. He believes the traditions of Christmas are in jeopardy because, among other things, retailers have stopped using the word Christmas in their advertisements, the American Civil Liberties Union has insisted and many ctites and states agree that religious themes are not appropriate in public settings and the phrases "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" are discriminatory against Christians.

Apparently, according to his logic, if people stop saying "Merry Christmas" to you when you make your purchases at retailers, the United States will turn into Canada! O'Reilly wrote:

Secular progressives realize that America as it is now will never approve of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, euthanasia, legalized drugs, income redistribution through taxation, and many other progressive visions because of religious opposition.

But if the secularists can destroy religion in the public arena, the brave new progressive world is a possibility. That's what happened in Canada.

In 1980, 79 percent of Canadians said that religion was important for the nation there. That number has now dropped to 61percent.

In 1971, less than one percent of the Canadian population reported having no religion. That number has now risen to 16 percent.

The fall of religion in Canada has corresponded to the rise in progressive public policy. Most Canadians now favor gay marriage. The age of consent for sex is 14 years. That means if you're an adult and you have sex with a 15-year-old, that's fine. Welfare's double what it is in the USA. And the Canadian military is almost non-existent. Drug decriminalization is a reality, as is any kind of abortion.

The Canadian model is what progressive Americans are shooting for. Thus, Christian displays like Christmas must be scaled back because the connection with Judeo-Christian beliefs is bad for the secular agenda.

He rants and raves that Christmas traditions are being destroyed and that Ulysses S. Grant made Christmas a federal holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Well, he doesn't have that quite right. The wording of the bill passed in 1870 says nothing of Jesus Christ. It simply states that there will be no business and that the District of Columbia will be closed on January 1, July 4 and December 25. (It also declares that Sunday is the first day of the week, thereby giving credence that Saturday is the sabbath.)

Private property and churches are appropriate for nativity scenes and many of the traditions that O'Reailly is seeking to defend, federal buildings are not. Wishing a person a happy holiday is not an affront to Christmas, it is a statement seeking to be as inclusive as possible for people of all religions and beliefs. Views on issues like same-sex marriage, abortion and drug use do not always fall along religious lines; I'm Catholic and support all of the aforementioned in one shape or form.

Christmas tradition is fluid and has evolved immensely over the centuries. Previously, Christmas has been banned in the United States, Christmas has been celebrated as late as January 12th and Christmas has taken traditions from many pagan celebrations and incorporated them (The History Channel has a great show on the history of Christmas. Click this link for sow times: http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&showId=203415.)

Christmas is alive and well in the United States, but religious fascism is on the decline;that's the real issue that O'Reilly is concerned about. He's really declared "War on Change."

Great Expectations

President-elect Obama has been extremely busy since November 4th. He has already appointed several key members of his administration and he has announced several potential cabinet members. In this respect, he is far ahead of his predecessors.; most presidents-elect do not begin making appointments and nominations until after the first of the year. I believe his rapid work is due to the state of the country and the lame duck that is currently in office. The American people and President Bush are both excited for him to leave office as soon as possible.

Obama is under intense pressure and scrutiny now, before he has even been sworn into office. The right-wing media (yes, I typed that correctly) has labeled the current economic state the "Obama Recession." The rationale is that if people were excited about his stance on the economy that they would be spending and investing. Of course, this makes little sense because we have been in a recession since December of 2007 and people stopped spending and investing long before anyone thought Obama was a viable candidate.

The Republicans want him to get us out of this recession by abolishing all taxes; apparently the Republicans know a lot of people who are hoarding their money out of spite. They speak lightly when they talk about Obama and rarely bring up any other subject outside of taxes.

The liberal portion of the Democratic party is hounding Obama because he is looking at all sides of the argument and considering Republicans for government posts (like he said he would). They would prefer if he just told the Republicans to fuck off and enacted their agenda on January 20th.

Large businesses want bailouts, small businesses want whatever the big industries get, the homeless want homes, the jobless want jobs, and everybody wants more money. It will be impossible to satisfy every request.

I think he is doing a marvelous job thus far. Why? Because politicos in Washington are pissed. And only a smart and crafty politician can get them all to hate you and do what you want anyway. If he is successful, he will very few friends outside of those who elect politicians.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who sent well wishes to me and my family - Tracy and I are grateful. Tracy's grandfather had a heart attack and endured a long and arduous surgery on November 4th. He is resting and doing well, but the danger of an infection or the onset of pneumonia or some other setback is always present, especially during the first thirty days after the surgery.

Thanks also to everyone who read my blog during the last few months leading up to the election. I appreciate the time you took out of your busy schedule to let me hit you with my opinions. I plan on continuing to post short essays about an array of subjects in the future and I hope that you will continue to check back occasionally and read my posts. As always, my posts will be subject to your commentary.

Why I Voted for "That One"

I have left the battleground state of Colorado for Iowa due to a family emergency, but I thought that I would leave one final post before the election. Here are the reasons that I voted for "that one":

1. Energy Plan - For as long as I can remember, I have been told that the planet would eventually run out of fossil fuels. The United States has done very little to research and use alternative fuels, but Obama has a thorough hand comprehensive energy plan with the caveat that it will create jobs and bolster the economy.
2. Foreign Policy - The war in Iraq was a trumped up debacle and continues to be. The Iraq government has been asking us to leave for a long time, but the Bush administration has insisted that we stay so that we can mold Iraq into the country that we want it to be. We need to leave in a responsible manner and Barack Obama wants to initiate this withdrawal. Furthermore, we should join our allies to solve conflicts diplomatically. John McCain has the direct opposite philosophy.
3. Health Care - I believe that everyone should have health care. We are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide this for its citizens. Currently, the government already pays for approximately 45% of health care costs, so a compromise should be reached to help those in need.
4. Farms - Barack Obama supported the 2008 Farm Bill. John McCain said that he would veto that bill as president and wants to abolish most farm subsidies because he considers them pork barrel spending.

While I agree with Barack Obama on a lot of issues, I certainly don't agree with him on everything. I understand why some of my friends and family are voting for John McCain, and although I don't agree with them, I do believe that John McCain will work hard to do what he believes is best for the country. But that is the beauty of democracy - we aren't supposed to agree on everything. We are supposed to work for the greater good for the greatest number of people. So, get out and vote tomorrow if you have not participated in the early voting process. You'll feel a whole lot better that you exercised your right.

In a Country Well Governed, Poverty Is Something to Be Ashamed Of. In a Country Badly Governed, Wealth Is Something to Be Ashamed Of.

Senator McCain's lead pollster, Bill McInturff, said "We're going to get a downscale, less well-eduacted, rural, older, white voter that, I believe, is going to vote and break towards John McCain and make the race closer." That may be the most honest thing ever said by a McCain aide, but it just highlights the division that the McCain campaign has been running on since Barack Obama proved to be an admirable challenger.

Since an overwhelming majority of people rank the econmy as the number one issue in this campaign, McInturff's assertion that these voters will break McCain's way can be seen in two different ways. One, these less well-educated, rural, older, white voters are racist and will vote for McCain by default. Two, these less well-educated, rural, older, white voters believe that the Republican platform of less regulation and benefits to the corporate class help the economy. Neither of these lines of thought are particularly flattering to these voters.

McCain's contention is that America has the second highest corporate tax rate among OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries at 39.3% is true, but is only half the picture. The United States has so many tax benefits and special preferences for businesses that two-thirds of the corporations doing business here paid no taxes from 1998 to 2005, while collectively reporting $2.5 trillion dollars in sales according to the United States Government Accountability Office in a July 2008 report.

McCain wants to reduce the corporate tax from 35% to 25% and permananetly slash the capital gains tax from 15% to 7.5%. He says that both of these measures will help the U.S. economy by creating jobs. But two-thirds of corporations already don't pay taxes and two-thirds of people who pay capital gains taxes are millionaires. In addition, McCain's personal tax cuts are just a retread of the Bush tax cuts. The last eight years should demonstrate clearly that these did not create jobs, they only created wealth.

The middle class does not benefit from the generation of wealth. The OECD released a report on October 21, 2008 showing that the United States has the highest inequality and poverty in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000. The Internal Revenue Service data from tax returns filed between 2002 and 2006 show that household income grew by $863 billion during the period. The 15,000 families at the top of the income scale saw their annual incomes go from about $15 million a year to nearly $30 million. They alone accounted for more than 25 percent of all of the growth in income for the entire country. The remaining 1.7 million families in the top 1 percent of households accounted for nearly another 50 percent.

According to the Economic Mobility Project, only 7% of children born to parents in the bottom wealth quintile make it to the top quintile in adulthood and 36% of children born to parents in the bottom wealth quintile remain in the bottom as adults. If McCain believes in "spreading the opportunity around," then why doesn't he have a proposal that will?

As George W. Bush said, "This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” Isn't this McCain's base too?

(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding?

In the past four days my wife has received six mailers from the Colorado Republican Committee urging her to vote Republican next Tuesday with these laughable claims:

• Republicans will keep their commitment to hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice.
• Republicans have pledged to pursue terrorists until Islamic radicalism is defeated.
• Republicans continue to support America's military men and women.
• Only the Republicans have proven they will never retreat under pressure from terrorists - or the nations that harbor them.
• Only the Republicans are committed to keeping America safe.
• Democrats have voted to cut off funding to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Democrats have pledged to meet with foreign dictators and tyrants with no preconditions.
• Democrats will embolden terrorists around the world who continue to plot against America and attack innocent victims in all corners of the world.
• Democrats want to surrender in Iraq.

The last one is my favorite. Doesn't anyone remember that President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and unveiled that huge banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003? How can we surrender when we already won over five years ago?

Senator McCain has said this year that he thought President Bush acted prematurely, but he is lying. Here are some of his quotes from 2003:

• “I believe that this conflict is still going to be relatively short.” - March 30, 2003.
• “It’s clear that the end is very much in sight.” - April 9, 2003.
• "Their morale could not be higher. This is a mission accomplished." - December 14, 2003.

After almost two more years of limited progress, Senator McCain said “I think the situation on the ground is going to improve. I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent.”

He should be despondent, but he keeps talking about how the surge has worked. Doesn't he know that almost 97% of American deaths in Iraq occurred after our mission was accomplished? Does he realize that almost 66% of American deaths in Iraq occurred after the start of Bush's second term in January of 2005? The surge may have reduced American deaths, but the deaths of innocent Iraqi citizens are up and show no signs of decline outside of Baghdad. And now Iraqi Christians are targets of violence.

These mailers are a simple reminder that the Bush Doctrine and his entire foreign policy was an utter and complete failure on every front except one: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, James Baker, Richard Perle, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Paul Bremer and other Republican insiders are now all noticeably wealthier than they were before we invaded Iraq. How? Well, they all have millions of dollars at stake in private sector companies that received uncontested contracts from the government to build the weapons we used to destroy Iraq or to rebuild the entire government infrastructure of Iraq after we dismantled it.

So, what's so funny about peace, love and understanding? Nothing.

The Jealous Are Troublesome to Others, but a Torment to Themselves

Senator McCain reminded everyone that Barack Obama's television special was paid for by broken promises. Besides being a great demonstration of jealousy this is just another misleading statement aimed to make voters question whether Obama is the right choice.

Barack Obama filled out the Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire in September of 2007. This survey asked "If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?" Obama answered "Yes." But he also elaborated that "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce."

Obama said he would stay in the federal public financing system if he did win the primary fight, as long as his GOP opponent did the same. McCain agreed immediately. The system gives candidates $85 million, funded by the $3 check-off fewer and fewer taxpayers choose to pay on IRS forms. But that's the only money candidates who take the funding can spend after the nominating conventions. They can't use campaign contributions from private donors.

Senator Obama wanted to not only keep the candidate's own campaign finances in accord with the agreement, but he insisted that the Democratic and Republican National Committees stay below the limit as well as privately funded 527s (famous for the John Kerry swift boat ads in 2004). This agreement was never reached; without that truce, Senator Obama walked away from the table and raised his own money.

During the primary season, Senator McCain took out a loan to save his flailing campaign. At the same time, he also declared himself eligible for a public-financing program that gives candidates matching funds, keyed to the level of their private fundraising, for primary campaigns. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) imposes strict spending caps in the process. McCain broke the law because he spent more than the $51 million the public match allows during the primary season. If the FEC would have had enough members for a quorum, McCain would not have been able to spend a penny on his campaign from the time he passed the threshold in February until after the Republican National Convention in September.

Both men used the system to their advantage and they both appear a little hypocritical. McCain's broken promises story lacks authenticity though because he would be doing the exact same thing if he were in Obama's shoes. You don't think he would have turned down the television slot right after Obama's ad, do you?

Always Vote for Principle, Though You May Vote Alone, and You May Cherish the Sweetest Reflection that Your Vote Is Never Lost

My party's candidate has no real chance of winning a general election and I have never voted for the Libertarian candidate for president (sorry if you're hearing it here first, Bob). Normally, I tend to lean Republican because they espouse my views on meritocracy; I don't support unions and I believe in personal accountability. I am a firm believer in civil liberties, but Republicans have never scared me with all their talk about overturning Roe v. Wade and all the Bible thumping because I believe that the Constitution of the United States will win over their agenda time and time again.

My family moved to Colorado a little over a year ago. I registered to vote as a Libertarian and my wife registered as a Republican. Since Colorado is a battleground state for this presidential election, we are getting besieged with mailers from both sides of the aisle. I am getting mailers from the Democrats and my wife is getting mailers from the Republicans. I find this to be fascinating. Either the Republicans think I am in the bag for them because of my party affiliation or they are not trying to sway swing voters. The Democrats, on the other hand, look at me as a viable option to vote for their candidate.

It turns out that they are right. I have not parted from my general philosophy, but I feel that the government needs to make amends for the atrocity of the last eight years (and a few more from the 1990s too). I still believe an individual is the most responsible for his or her success and happiness, but Clinton and Bush both played so heavily to the wealthiest citizens (at least Clinton tried to hide it) that I think that the pendulum needs to swing back the other way in order to straighten out this mess.

Senator McCain has charged that Barack Obama is too liberal and radical to be president, but some of the most radical ideas have come from the Republicans: Theodore Roosevelt created the Interstate Commerce Commission and passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, Dwight Eisenhower spent a ton of money developing the interstate system in America, and Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. These were all radical and liberal ideas in their time and they were all done for the benefit of the entire country, not the base ideology of a political party.

The country is tired of division and wants someone who will bring us together with the best interests of everybody in mind. I don't mind paying more taxes or getting less of a tax cut if the money is spent to develop alternative fuel sources, educate our children and give everybody access to health care. I do not want to pay for an unnecessary war, to spy on our country's own citizens and to help wealthy people get wealthier at everybody else's expense.

That's why Obama is pulling away in the suburbs, a stronghold of Republican idealism for the last thirty years. That's why my wife will be voting for Obama. That's why my friends Jay and Catherine, who live in what Joe McCain calls "communist country" in Virginia, will be voting for Obama. That's why my friend Dave, a small business owner who sends his kids to a parochial school, will be voting for Obama. It's not about ideals, it's about principle.

Thanks to John Quincy Adams for the title quote.

...It Was the Worst of Times

Senator McCain’s biography has been the stuff of legend. In fact, he wrote in one of his many books that his POW stay gave him a story to sell to the American public. But his campaign managers and advisers cannot seem to explain why the patriotic and tough McCain would be good for America.

They thought they were going to run a campaign on the importance of experience, particularly in international affairs. They were going to stick to the success of the surge (a highly disputed fact)in Iraq and portray McCain as the sure-handed and clear-minded patriot. They assumed that this would appease independent voters, so they tried to unite the GOP base behind McCain (a faction that is not excited about his candidacy) and acquire some disenchanted Hillary Clinton supporters by choosing a female governor with ultra-conservative values to be his running mate.

Two weeks after the Republican National Convention, this seemed to be a winning strategy, but the recent financial crisis unraveled that entire line of campaigning and caused Senator McCain to trash his own legacy in a desperate attempt to get elected. After being passed over so many times in the past for the one position that would make him more revered than his grandfather and his father, McCain absolutely refuses to let the dream die. He will not go down easily. He is still out on the campaign trail doing everything he can think of to claim victory. Some national polls even show him closing the gap on Senator Obama.

All of this is amid rumor and innuendo that his campaign is spiraling out of control. Governor Palin's aides insist that she is doing her own thing now because she feels that the McCain campaign did not handle her introduction to the nation properly and McCain aides claim that she is a know-nothing that will not listen to anybody. McCain and his staff continue to say that she was properly vetted, but it seems unlikely since she constantly stumbles on the most basic of talking points during interviews (she still doesn't know what the vice president does and she could not tell Brian Williams what a precondition was) and she is known to cast her most trusted allies under the bus for a chance at their job (ask the former mayor of Wasilla and the city councilman who recruited Palin into politics).

The old adage is to judge the candidate on how he runs his campaign and who he selects for vice president because those are the first executive decisions he makes. If these are the type of decisions he makes and he wins, we are fucked!

Its not Who Votes that Counts, Its Who Counts the Votes

Senator McCain said on Meet the Press yesterday that he guarantees he will be the next president. This is quite a departure from his and Governor Palin's stump speeches, where the candidates are often quoted saying that Senator Obama has already written his victory speech and is measuring for drapes in the White House. This bravado scares me because it was only eight years ago the Vice President Gore won the election only to have it ripped away from him by the Republican political machine in Florida.

There are already many reports in different states that the voting equipment is faulty and not recording the votes correctly. In 2002, the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) set standards for voting systems, created independent bodies to oversee elections and ordered states to provide provisional ballots to voters who eligibility is challenged at the polls. That all sounds great in theory, but the truth is that the HAVA has actually made it harder for people to vote.

According to the U.S. Election Assistance Committee, at least 2.7 million new voters have had their applications rejected since 2003 for numerous reasons, including unreadability and changes in signature. Some states, including Iowa and Florida, will reject registrations if there is not a perfect match to other government databases. This could possibly leave your right to vote up to the person entering your data into these government databases; if they make an error your name can be purged from voter rolls because it doesn't match your voter registration. For example, my wife had to purchase a copy of her birth certificate in order to get a driver's license and register to vote when we moved to Colorado because she signed her Nebraska driver's license with her middle initial instead of her middle name.

Jack Abramhoff, a well-known Washington lobbyist, worked to cram the HAVA with favors for his Republican clients. He and the primary author of the legislation, Republican Congressman Bob Ney (he of "freedom fries" fame) from Ohio, were imprisoned for their role in a conspiracy to defraud the United States because Ney received many favors from Abaramhoff. Republican election officials have used the provisions in the HAVA to restrict voters and not count votes under the guise that there is rampant voter fraud in the United States. According to recent analysis by Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voter fraud from Barnard College, federal courts have found only 24 voters guilty of fraud from 2002 to 2005.

If polls are any indication, Senator Obama is going to win this election in a landslide, but maybe Senator McCain knows something we don't know. If McCain wins in Pennsylvania, we may be in for a long night and an even longer four years.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Governor Palin gave her first policy address last Friday. Despite Senator McCain's promise to freeze all government spending, Governor Palin assured the people at her press conference that a McCain/Palin administration would indeed spend federal funds on families with children with disabilities ($45 million was the amount she mentioned). When someone asked her where the money would come from, she chuckled and said "You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

The only problem with her condescending attitude towards this project that she has no idea what that study funds. This study is funded to determine how to stop the destruction of crops by fruit flies; susceptible crops include citrus, coffee, eggplant, guava, loquat, mango, melon, papaya, passion fruit, peach, pepper, persimmon, plum, star fruit, tomato, and zucchini. Jobs and revenue lost from fruit fly infestation cost farmers and the United States hundreds of millions of dollars each year. A similar study of fruit flies in Hawaii is showing a 32% profit on the investment, so funding this program is important to a lot of citizens and it is cost effective too (the particular study she chose to highlight and poke fun at only cost $211,509).

Moreover, not only is this study good for farmers and the economy, one of the benefits of this research is that scientists are learning more about human disorders like autism. Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown neurons, or nerve cells, communicate with each other through contact points called synapses. When these connections are damaged, communication breaks down, causing the messages that would normally help our feet push our bike pedals or our mind locate our car keys to fall short. A protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly. This discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

Governor Palin has proven once again why she is not qualified to be vice president. Her hypocritical stance on earmarks or pork-barrel spending, Alaska ranks number one among all states in earmark spending per capita and is over 150% higher than the runner-up, and her lack of understanding about the issues we face as a country is astounding.

The Hardest Thing in Life Is to Know Which Bridge to Cross and Which to Burn

I live in the 6th Congressional District of Colorado. This is thought to be the wealthiest district in Colorado. It's a district where Republicans make up 44% of the electorate and Democrats make up only 24% of the electorate. It's a district that has never elected a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives. In the 2004 presidential election and the 2004 congressional election, President Bush and Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo won nearly 60% of the vote.

But this year, along with the scent of winter snow emanating from the Rocky Mountains, there is a distinct smell of change in the air. There are very few signs of support for the McCain/Palin ticket - almost no signs in the lawns and practically no bumper stickers on the cars of my neighbors. On the other hand, the Obama/Biden campaign just opened another office in the affluent Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. And the latest local news poll shows Obama leading in Colorado by 12 points. This is an amazing accomplishment since Colorado has only supported a Democrat for president one time in the last 40 years (Bill Clinton in 1992).

Then again, maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise. In 2006 Colorado elected Governor Bill Ritter, a Democrat, by a wide margin, including a 3-point victory in my district. And during 2004, the Democratic Party captured a U.S. Senate seat, another U.S. House seat and was also able to take control of both houses of the Colorado General Assembly.

A lot of this is attributed to the growing population - Colorado has gained an electoral vote in three of the last four national censuses - and the importance of carrying the Latino population - nearly 20% of the population and a group that favors Obama by over 40 points. Furthermore, Colorado has more college degrees per capita than any other state, while it lags behing in the number of Colorado-born citizens that attend institutions of higher learning. Colorado isn't like a lot of the other western states anymore; this is an increasingly educated and forward-thinking population that is cutting ties with the old guard.

Senator McCain made two stops in Colorado yesterday and claimed that he "knew the West." I watched both of his stump speeches yesterday and did not hear one solid proposal from Senator McCain. He devoted his entire time to smearing his opponent and trying to influence the supporters his local campaign managers rounded up that Senator Obama wasn't prepared. If Senator McCain "knows" so much, then how come he doesn't know that Colorado voters want to hear what he plans to do as President of the United States and not what he plans to disagree with as a United States Senator.

Senator McCain still has a chance to win the nine electoral votes in Colorado - the Republican Secretary of State (and Republican nominee for the 6th Congressional District of Colorado), Mike Coffman, has done a lot to purge voter rolls and very little to ready the state for this election - but the sun is setting fast on this once-Republican stronghold.

Content Makes Poor Men Rich; Discontent Makes Rich Men Poor

During the Carter administration, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, intending to reduce discriminatory credit practices against moderate- and low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as "redlining." The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation. To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul and the Christian Science Monitor have been two of many who have insinuated that the CRA forced financial institutions to make loans to people who should have been rejected as risky. Basically, the tenor of these comments is that we should have allowed banks and thrifts to discriminate. The implication is that moderate- and low-income neighborhoods should have been left to squalor and the trend of "white flight," as it was coined in the late 70s and early 80s, was a movement we should have supported.

Unfortunately for Republicans and conservatives, the facts don't support the argument. First of all, there was no quota to be fulfilled by the CRA. The CRA encouraged people to do business, but it made no requirement that banks and thrifts give out loans to people who should have been rejected. Second, there is no statistical evidence that people of moderate- and low-income default on their mortgages more often than the middle class. In fact, here's an example of the opposite: the Nehemiah housing project in Brooklyn and the Bronx has built over 3900 houses in 27 years and fewer than 10 people have defaulted on their mortgage. Third, it is subprime mortgages that are considered the root cause of foreclosures and half of subprime loans came from those mortgage companies beyond the reach of CRA, while a further 25 to 30 percent came from bank subsidiaries and affiliates.

Republicans and conservatives can try to pin the blame on the donkey here, but the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which repealed Shad-Johnson jurisdictional accord of 1982 that specifically banned regulation of credit default swaps (insurance policies against default on risky investments like mortgage-backed securities), bares a lot more of the blame than making loans to parties that were discriminated against in the past. You can couple that with the decision by the Securities & Exchange Commission's (SEC) to waive its leverage rules. The SEC had a maximum debt-to-net-capital ratio of 12 to 1 in 2004, but they allowed Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley an exemption to that rule and they promptly levered up 20, 30 and even 40 to 1 with mortgage-backed securities.

There was a culture of reckless lending and there is plenty of blame to go around. Financial institutions made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: they could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them (frequently using borrowed capital). But lending money to poor people doesn't bankrupt a system; lending money to rich people who use it foolishly does.

Giving Every Man a Vote Has no more Made Men Wise and Free than Christianity Has Made Them Good

I read a post on St. Louis Review Online by Bishop Robert J. Hermann that reinforced my belief that religion is a great personal moral barometer, but has no place in politics. Bishop Hermann wrote, "Judgment Day is on its way. When my time comes, I will be measured by my Savior for the decisions I have made. I will either be acknowledged by Jesus or denied by Him in the presence of our heavenly Father. The question I need to ask myself is this: What kind of witness will I give to Him when I go into the voting booth this election day?"

Bishop Hermann went on to write, in essence, that he cannot support a candidate with better economic answers or worldview policies if he does not fall on his side, and presumably his church's side, on the abortion issue. I cannot believe that the Bishop, worried about the judgment of his Savior, can be so narrow-minded, naive and selfish. Does his God not care that President Bush sent men and women to die for absolutely no reason in a foreign land? Is that acceptable because President Bush is anti-abortion? And what did he accomplish with his political stance? As far as I know, abortion is still legal and upheld by the Constitution of the United States.

Other religious people have a better understanding of this issue in comparison with the overall tenor and importance of this election. In an exclusive post for Newsweek, three Catholic authors backed up their case for endorsing Barack Obama. "In the closing weeks of this election, abortion is among the crucial issues for Catholic voters, but promoting a culture of life is necessarily interconnected with a family wage, universal health care and, yes, better parenting and education of our youth. This greater appreciation for the totality of Catholic teaching is at the very heart of the Obama campaign; it is scarcely a McCain footnote."

For my family, fringe Catholics if you will, it comes down to the above argument. Saying that you are anti-abortion (is anybody really for abortions?) is just drawing a line in the sand on a beach where no one is playing. Not one person who has ever occupied the White House has ever asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's just a convenient political stance to take in order to pick up votes.

It is a shame to waste your vote on a single issue. It's an even bigger shame to give your vote to a candidate that is against you on every other thing you stand for but one.

Quit Bolshevik-ing People

Governor Palin and Senator McCain, taking a page from the great thinker Joe the Plumber, have started to insinuate that Barack Obama is a socialist. Anybody who knows what socialism really is knows that this charge is ridiculous. Even McCain surrogate Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania, could barely keep a straight face on Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday when he spit out the party rhetoric that some of Obama's policies were headed toward socialism.

The definition of socialism is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. I have been following the Obama campaign for a long time and I have not noticed any mention of socialism or identified any similarity between his platform and socialism.

As I have written before, progressive taxing is an American tradition - a tradition that has support from both sides of the aisle. Governor Palin either doesn't know the definition of socialism or she is just playing stupid, like Senator McCain, in an attempt to disparage the reasonable and pragmatic platform of Barack Obama. The claim that raising the taxes 3% on the top two tax brackets somehow indicates socialism shows a complete lack of understanding of this philosophy. They are simply trying to tie Obama to a word that has had a bad connotation in this country since the Red Scare and McCarthyism.

There is nothing wrong with socialism; in fact, most of our allies in the world use socialism in certain areas of their government to great success. Since most people probably don't know the definition of socialism and its widespread use all over the world, this ploy might serve the Republicans well in convincing people that the "dangerous" and "risky" Obama wants to change our capitalist society into a communist state and withhold our freedoms.

Spreading the wealth around does not mean taking from one man's pocket and putting it directly into another man's pocket. Spreading the wealth means using tax dollars to jumpstart programs that will create jobs and grow the economy. In addition, tax breaks for the poor and middle class will encourage them to spend money and put capital back into the system, while tax breaks for the upper class usually leads to the consolidation of wealth and keeps it out of the economy. Calling it welfare (nice racial connotation there, Senator) is a complete distortion of the facts and just another attempt to smear Obama.

For someone who claims to know history well, Senator McCain certainly doesn't seem to know a lot about the economy. By just looking back to the 1980s, McCain should be able to see that the tax cuts of President Reagan did not create a stable economy. Reagan cut the top tax bracket tax rate from 70% to 28% and slashed corporate and capital gains taxes, but economic growth and job growth rapidly declined throughout the decade and the national deficit grew at an astonishing pace. On the other hand, President Clinton cut the taxes for the middle class and poor and he raised the tax rate of the highest tax bracket to 39.6%, the same rate Obama proposes. During the Clinton administration:

• the economy grew 4% per year
• median family income was up $6000 per year
• 22.5 million jobs were created (92% in the private sector)
• unemployment was at its lowest level in over 30 years
• government spending decreased and created a surplus
• the U.S. reduced its debt by $363 billion from 1998 to 2000 and was on pace to be cleared from the books by 2009

If that's the new definition of socialism, then consider me a socialist, comrade.

The Caucasian Card

General Colin Powell told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press that he would be voting for Barack Obama on November 4th. Powell said that he felt Obama was a transformational figure that he would bring a fresh set of ideas to Washington and that he was reaching out to a far more diverse crowd in an inclusive way. He also commented that he felt the GOP was getting narrower and narrower and that McCain's negative campaigning was a polarizing issue. Not one time did he say he was voting for Obama because he was African-American, yet almost immediately after he made his feelings known publicly, conservatives and right wing pundits began saying that he was endorsing Obama because they are both African-American.

Rush Limbaugh said "This was all about Powell and race, nothing about the nation and its welfare." He also said he was going to check and see which inexperienced white liberal candidates he endorsed in the past, as if that would prove it is all about race.

Colin Powell articulated a lot of the same things that I have been saying in this blog over the last month or so, but apparently, just because he is African-American his is a vote cast for race. Limbaugh's statement is a discredit to every person who will vote for Obama because, in essence, he is saying that we are only voting for him based on his race. If you are African-American, you will vote for him because he is African-American and not white. If you are not African-American, you will vote for him because the first 43 presidents have all been white and you feel bad. If that's not the case, then his criticism of Powell holds no merit.

I am not voting for a man based on anything other than his character and his position on the issues. Barack Obama has shown tremendous capability and character throughout this campaign, while his opponent has been a desperate and divisive politician, relying on stereotypical falsehoods in an attempt to get elected.

I resent the fact that race is even an issue in this campaign. Only one person can be responsible for that though, and it isn't the African-American. Barack Obama cannot hide the fact that he is not white, but John McCain can say that it isn't relevant. Unfortunately, he hasn't and never will.

As American as Apple Pie

I was reading comments to a story about Joe the Plumber and I saw a comment that stated that the Second Plank of the Communist Manifesto is "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." The person making the comment continued that we were all voting for Communism if we vote for Barack Obama.

As I have read the Communist Manifesto, I had to agree that that is indeed the second plank. Of course, the other planks necessary for communism (abolition of property, abolition of inheritance, etc.) are absent from his argument, thus making him appear moronic and uninformed. This ignorant post did serve another purpose for me though because I started thinking about the history of the progressive tax in America.

History shows that America believes in the progressive tax. In fact, we believe in it so much that we amended the Constitution of the United States to include it. Amendment XVI states "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever sources derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." Amendment XVI was passed by Congress on July 12, 1909 and ratified by the states on February 3, 1913.

Akhil Amar explains in his acclaimed book, America’s Constitution: A Biography, “both sides in the national income-tax debate understood that [national income] taxes had been, and were likely to be, progressive income taxes — in particular, taxes that targeted the rich. Such taxes openly sought to democratize the economy."

President Taft, a Republican, proposed this amendment in 1909 and Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, supported it during the ratification process. Even Teddy Roosevelt, John McCain's hero, said "The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. Not only should he recognize this obligation in the way he leads his daily life and in the way he earns and spends his money, but it should also be recognized by the way in which he pays for the protection the States gives him."

Joe the Plumber and Governor Palin can talk all they want about spreading the wealth being a socialist comment, but history shows that it's an American concept.

They'll Nail Everyone Whoever Scratched His Ass During the National Anthem

The McCain campaign has been claiming that Barack Obama is not like you or me. He's a scary, dangerous outsider with leftist leanings who associates with terrorists and hates America. After accusing Barack Obama of just that during an interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews on Friday, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said "The news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look - I wish they would - I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they pro-America or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose like that." (Check out the interview for yourself: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27243547#27243547)

I have read some comments that Chris Matthews was goading the Congresswoman into her statements, but I think that his line of questioning was germane. If Barack Obama is un-American, then how can anyone who holds the same views or is associated with him not be?

I would like to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was just trying to get out the message, but when pressed by reporters on the same issue, even Governor Palin said "I know Obama loves America.I'm sure that is why he's running for president. It's because he wants to do what he believes is in the best interest of this great nation. ... I don't question at all Barack Obama's love for this great country."

Coupling that with John McCain's statement that Barack Obama is a decent American, I have to wonder why their campaign continues to insinuate through ads and robo-calls that Obama is a terrorist who voted to let babies die. You cannot be on both sides of the fence on this. He's either a threat to our nation because he is anti-American or he is a decent man running for president because he has the best interest of his country in mind. For me, there is no in-between on something this inflammatory. This is not equivalent to being misleading on Obama's voting record, this is a poorly veiled cry for McCarthyism.

James William Fulbright said this about Joseph McCarthy, "The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control." That still rings true today.

P.S.
Congresswoman Bachmann toes the Republican line with the best of them - she believes global warming is a hoax, favors privatizing Social Security, supports federal and state amendments to ban gay marriage, claims that evolution is a theory that has never been proven, and thinks we should stay the course in Iraq - but her inability to differentiate a flawed political attack and reality is astounding. If you, like I and many others already did, would like to contribute to her opponent in this November's election to help keep her Christian fundamentalism out of Washington, please visit this site: http://www.tinklenberg08.com/home.html

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

During the final debate, John "Chicken Little" McCain said ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history.” This is utter nonsense.

ACORN is a non-profit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people because those people cannot afford to hire lobbyists to go to Washington and schmooze with politicians. They mounted a major voter-registration drive this year by hiring more than 8,000 canvassers. Out of the 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor and minorities, approximately one percent are thought to be fraudulent. By law, ACORN must turn over every single registration to the state, but they also divide these registrations into three categories - good, need more information, and suspicious.

This information, though widely available, is not mentioned by the McCain campaign. By accusing Barack Obama of having ties to ACORN and then saying that ACORN is trying to steal the election for Obama, McCain is trying to do two things: 1) he is trying to encourage outrage amongst voters and change their mind; 2), he is trying to delegitimize an Obama victory. There are no good consequences to either of these actions. He either picks up a few cheap votes on fear or he divides the country based on the claim that Obama stole the election.

This is just a continuation of Republican politics as usual - divide, scare and conquer. They can throw out the charge of voter fraud all they like, but it really isn't even voter fraud unless someone named "Mickey Mouse" tries to vote in Florida, in which case it would be "Mickey" who is doing something illegal (unless, of course, he really is Mickey Mouse), not ACORN or Barack Obama.

The Grand Old Party is no stranger to trying to manipulate votes. It has been involved with all kinds of voter fraud and attempts to purge voter rolls. For example, in Nevada, a firm that the Republican National Committee hired to register voters, Voters Outreach of America, was found to be throwing out registrations for Democrats while turning in forms for Republicans. In Florida, a Republican-majority legislature passed a law that so severely regulated voter registration drives that before the 2006 primary, Florida’s League of Women Voters stopped registering voters for the first time in its history. The League feared mistakes on just 14 voter registration forms could result in penalties equal to its entire $70,000 budget.

Moreover, the new robo-calls from the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee are just an extension of voter manipulation. McCain knows he cannot win on the issues (his campaign members have admitted as much), so they only have one bullet left in the gun - tear down and degrade the opponent. Although people will tell you that negative attacks don't work, the ballots tell a different story.

Chicken Little may say that the sky is falling, but, in reality, it's just a little acorn.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court ruled today that the Republicans cannot suppress the voter registrations from Ohio that ACORN submitted. They were trying to suppress all of them because a few were fraudulent. Who's trying to steal the election?

Here's an intersting book on voter manipulation:

"How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative"

by Allen Raymond.

No One Can Be Reasonable and Angry at the Same Time

Republican pundits have been calling for John McCain to hit Barack Obama hard on the issues of zero importance: Bill Ayers, ACORN, Tony Rezko, etc. And McCain, at the urging of his base, finally went after Obama on some of those issues in last night's debate. Unfortunately for the McCain/Palin ticket, nobody but your base and Fox News seems to care or think that Obama's innocuous relationship with Bill Ayers is big news or that ACORN is trying to steal the election.

Despite the howls of joy and sighs of pleasure from the right wing conservatives last night, the American people overwhelmingly declared that Obama won the third and final debate. McCain kept trying to insinuate that Obama has some shady dealings in his past, but he can't pinpoint one single thing that would indicate that Obama is lying about these accusations. These accusations appease the Republican base while alienating everyone else.

I think John McCain is stunned that he is losing this election and that is why he appears angry, rude and condescending. When Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination, McCain finally felt it was his time. He preferred Obama as an opponent over Hillary Clinton because he thought he could ride into the White House with little or no resistance over a divided Democrat constituency without having to turn negative or do too much to woo his own base. But he was not prepared to deal with a pragmatic man with ideas that resonate with the middle class and independent voters.

McCain's flip-flopping on economic issues (the fundamentals of the economy are strong; we are in the biggest financial crisis of history; I'm suspending my campaign until a bailout is passed; we need to keep capital in the market so I am proposing that people should be able to take money out of their retirements accounts penalty-free, etc.) and schizophrenic and hateful campaign have turned a capable leader into a caricature of himself. He wants to be president so bad that he will do anything to win, including launching an enormous wave of phone calls in battleground states today with this script:

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC (Republican National Committee) because 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. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500."

John McCain is angry and he is hurting, but not for the reason that Americans are - it's his pride and his ego.

Money Is Like a Sixth Sense - and You Can't Make Use of the Other Five Without It

Jack Kemp and Peter Ferrara wrote in the Wall Street Journal on October 8th that the bottom 40% of earners do not pay federal income taxes. This line has appeared in a myriad of opinion pieces railing against the new taxes that Barack Obama supposedly will (but has not yet) propose, so I decided to do a little research.

Since they inserted this line without any documentation, I searched and searched until I found an article by Ferrara where he attributed this information to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). I looked at all kinds of reports from the CBO, but I could not find any documentation to support this claim, so I turned to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I found a report on 2006 taxes that helped clear up my dilemma.

What I uncovered in this report is that the top 50% of earners pay 96.89% of taxes and the bottom 50% pay 3.11% of taxes. With a federal budget of $2.7 trillion, the bottom 50% paid $83.97 billion in taxes and the top 50% paid $2.616 trillion.

That sounds completely unfair and unjust until you see that the bottom 50% of earners have only 12% of the overall income share and that overall wages rose 1.9% (the lowest since World War II) compared to the 12.8% rise of corporate profits (the largest share of any year on record). 2006 was the first time ever that corporate profits have captured a larger share of the income growth in a recovery - 46% - than wages and salaries have.

The division between the wealthy and the middle class was one of the contributing factors to the the Great Depression (Rush Limbaugh may claim that it was due to government meddling and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and nothing else, but I'll stick to the facts from historians like Howard Zinn), and the conventional wisdom of that time was that a balanced budget without social services would help us get out of it. That didn't work and then FDR came into office and presented the New Deal. Due to timing and the historical era, the New Deal didn't fix all of the problems, but it certainly helped.

I heard John McCain say he wanted to put a freeze on government spending at the debate last week, while Barack Obama has been proposing increased infrastructure spending in order to create jobs through public works programs and alternative energy exploration. These programs come with the caveat of safer roads and bridges and hopefully a decrease on our dependency on fossil fuels. I'm sure McCain will put out some sort of economic proposal (I waited all day yesterday for it), but it will only be a safe plan so that he doesn't upset the House Republicans and basest element of his party (government bad!).

According to economist John Maynard Keynes, government debt during economic slowdowns is not bad because it keeps consumption levels high. Keynes also approved of taxing the wealthy because it keeps their money in circulation instead of in the bank. There have been many challenges to Keynesian economics over the years, but it seems that his philosophy is extremely poignant now. Whereas, the economic philosophy of Milton Friedman (the one introduced by President Reagan as he read Friedman's book on the campaign trail in 1980) has seemingly let us down.

Economic philosophy and policies can be argued ad nauseam, but the one thing that is evident to me is that the American economy will need a little assistance from the government in the not too distant future. When the pendulum swings to the right, it has got to come back left eventually - and eventually is now.

Considerable information and data pulled from:

http://www.cbpp.org/8-31-06inc.htm

This Would Be the Best of All Possible Worlds, if There Were no Religion In It

There was a recent poll released by Yahoo News and the Associated Press, in conjunction with Stanford University, that concluded that if there were no racial prejudice that Barack Obama could receive about 6 percentage points more support. Lots of bloggers and opinion pieces have been written about this poll recently and CNN's Campbell Brown devoted her entire show to it last Friday.

I found a piece by conservative political commentator Glenn Beck on this survey that interested me a great deal. It should come as no surprise that Beck was discounting this poll as unfair and ridiculous (he did have some legitimate claims), but what interested me was that he said, "You ask me do I consider myself Christian first or an American first? I'm going to say Christian first and here's why. I say a Christian first because my Christianity, my faith actually builds my faith in this country. My faith in God actually builds the faith in our founding and our founding documents."

If you want to consider yourself a Christian first, I find no fault in that. However, in regard to government, I find that statement to be offensive. The first line of Thomas Paine's 1776 revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense is: "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins."

Evangelicals will suggest that we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles by:

1. Displaying a list of quotes that contain the word God from prominent men in history, including our Founding Fathers.
2. Asking why "under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" is on our paper money.
3. Saying that God is mentioned in all 50 state constitutions.
4. Claiming that either the Ten Commandments are posted in the Supreme Court or that our legal system is based on the Bible.
5. Citing Christian references in the Declaration of Independence.

All of these claims can be contradicted.

1. There are just as many quotes from prominent men in history against religion, including our Founding Fathers (and including the title of this blog, a quote from John Adams).
2. "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 by a McCarthyist Congress and "In God We Trust" was added to paper money in 1956.
3. All 50 state constitutions do have the word God (mostly in preambles thanking God), but there is no mention of Jesus or Christianity.
4. Only three of them are relevant to modern law and those offenses were invented long before religion.
5. The Declaration of Independence was a document to dissolve political ties and has nothing to do with government.

I have nothing against Christianity. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of all to practice any religion they see fit, as long as it doesn't impose on anyone else. But when Reverend Arnold Conrad prayed for McCain to beat Obama in the election "...because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons," it makes me think that we have lost our way as a country.

This is not a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. If it were, the only document that really matters, the United States Constitution, would declare it proudly. This is a nation founded on liberty and freedom from tyranny. And since this is an election between men, not Gods, religion has no viable place in it except distorted influence.

You Measure a Government by How Few People Need Help

In March, the Pew Research Center found that 56% of high school-educated white voters see newcomers as threatening, compared with less than a third of those with a college degree. White voters who haven't graduated from college, according to a Pew poll in September, were more than twice as likely to think Obama is Muslim as those who have. And not coincidentally, it is among these less educated white voters that McCain is strongest. Among non-Hispanic whites who have attended graduate school, according to Gallup this month, Obama leads McCain by 13 points. Among those with a high school diploma or less, he trails by 12.

Why is this significant? Well, white working class people make up about 55% of the electorate. That is why McCain and Obama are fighting so hard to attract these voters. McCain is trying to win them over by saying that Obama is an outsider who has nothing in common with you and Obama is telling them that electing George Bush to two terms in the White House has cost you jobs and money. While Bush isn't going to be on the ballot in November, Obama has done a masterful job of linking McCain and Bush.

In What's the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank said that the working class whites were suffering from a form of derangement because they believed that their woes derived from the decline of traditional values—patriotism, organized religion, self-reliance, the heterosexual two-parent nuclear family, etc.—when the true source of its troubles is a set of economic policies that favors the rich. Republicans have come to win blue-collar votes in elections by portraying Democratic tolerance of racial and cultural diversity as depravity.

In an earlier post I mentioned that GOPAC, the Republican training ground, teaches GOP candidates to appeal to these fundamental values while not alienating independent voters in order to get into office. Once they are there, they set their conservative cultural agenda aside and concentrate on cutting taxes, reducing regulation, busting unions, and so forth. The white working class continues to fall for the bait-and-switch because the Democrats lack the courage to lure it back with appeal based on economy (fortunately for Obama, the GOP cannot win on socially conservative issues when the economy is this bad).

In their book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam point out that the most reliable Republican voters are socially conservative, suspicious of big business and favor a larger government role in helping families manage economic risk. But McCain and the GOP are nothing more than Milton Friedman disciples who work for the rich and he and they cannot change their stripes in the middle of a campaign (but they sure do try).

Obama does not need to win over the entire white working class to win this election. He simply needs to reduce the sizable deficits of Gore (17 points) and Kerry (23 points) within this group. And while Obama may be just another politician with great public speaking skills and incredible timing, his health care reform plan, alternative energy commitment and tax cuts to the middle class speak to me more than any shallow promises of the Republicans I have voted for in the past. Obama has ideas, not just platitudes.

Although my wife and I may no longer fall into the white working class, we are both from Iowa and were raised with the values that permeate this voting block. While there may be some who are racist, ignorant and intolerant, most of them simply want to provide for their families and have a good life.

We Have Just Enough Religion to Make Us Hate, but not Enough to Make Us Love

As I wrote earlier today, there are people in this country who are convinced that Barack Obama is a Muslim and that he is involved in some sort of convoluted terror plot to take over the United States. This would be the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world; a man who can hide these undesirable and dangerous connections for the first 47 years of his life, manipulate all of his friends and family into believing he is actually another person, work his way up to the highest office in American government before turning on the people who elected him and imposing some kind of religious domination on an entire culture and country. It is so implausible that it has to be some sort of elaborate fiction.

Guess what? It is. Millions of people have read the Left Behind book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Pundits have pointed out the similarities between the Antichrist character of the books, Nicolae Carpathia, and Obama. The McCain campaign even did an television ad called "The One" depicting images evoking the cover art of the books and featuring an image of a Moses-playing Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer. In the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

It's not hard to see how some Obama haters might be tempted to make the comparison. In the Left Behind books, Carpathia is a junior Senator who speaks several languages, is beloved by people around the world and fawned over by a press corps that cannot see his evil nature, and rises to absurd prominence after delivering just one major speech. Hmmh. But serious Antichrist theorists don't stop there. Everything from Obama's left-handedness to his positive rhetoric to his appearance on the cover of this magazine has been cited as evidence of his true identity. One chain e-mail claims that the Antichrist was prophesied to be "A man in his 40s of MUSLIM descent," which would indeed sound ominous if not for the fact that the Book of Revelation was written at least 400 years before the birth of Islam.

Even one of the authors of the Left Behind books says that this is a stretch of the imagination. “I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the Antichrist,” says LaHaye, “but from my reading of scripture, he doesn’t meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the Antichrist will be an American.”

Governor Palin is right when she says "I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that...I see America." Obama sees no religion or race in America and that is what makes him the best choice as leader of our country. George Bernard Shaw wrote:

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’

It's time that we started dreaming of what America could be; it's not time to look back and aspire to what be America once was.

Hatred Is the Coward's Revenge for Being Intimidated

I was watching the Oliver Stone film JFK the other day with my wife. In one of the first scenes of the movie, Kevin Costner as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, goes to a restaurant to watch Walter Cronkite deliver the news that President Kennedy has been assassinated. One of the other patrons in the bar applauds when he hears the news and Costner's character says, "God, I'm ashamed to be an American today."

That kind of sums up how I have felt this week watching people at McCain/Palin rallies. They have screamed "terrorist," "kill him," and "traitor" when Barack Obama's name is mentioned. They have hurled racial epithets at an African-American cameraman covering an event. And a woman told McCain to his face that Obama was an Arab. To his credit, McCain rebuked that comment, but it is too little too late for me.

In 1919, the United States Supreme Court ruled on Schenck v. United States. Oliver Wendell Holmes's opinion contained the line "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic..." This means that speech can only be banned when it was directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action. This is exactly what the McCain/Palin campaign has been doing this entire week with their insinuations that Obama is or has ties to a terrorist.

McCain and company must know that the word terrorist is pretty touchy in this country after 9/11. They must realize that they are running against someone with African name (some even call it a Muslim name). They certainly understand that by ignoring those profane comments coming from their supporters that they are only condoning it. They have to be aware that this is irresponsible and cowardly.

Well, Governor Palin certainly doesn't. She says, "With only 25 days to go, it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited." Really? How is it not mean-spirited? How can you knowingly slander a man and then say it's just good clean fun? Oh, I know. Because he won't talk about his relationship with Bill Ayers except with every news organization that asks him about it! He even called into a radio show in Philadelphia to talk about it. I guess Palin really doesn't read a newspaper.

Even fervent Republicans are dismissing this. Conservative columnist George Will wrote in the Washington Post, "the McCain-Palin charges have come just as ... many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts--telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans' accounts have recently shed. In this context, the McCain/Palin campaign's attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama's Chicago associations seems surreal."

Conservative blogger Ross Douthat of the Atlantic has written, "I find the 'Ayersing' so frustrating: I suspect that the strategy won't just fail to help McCain, but will actually further weaken the GOP in down-ballot races, by fueling the perception that the party's deeply out of touch."

David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, recently wrote, "Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical?"

Even the chief prosecutor of the Weather Underground in the 1970s, William C. Ibershof, wrote a letter to the New York Times. He wrote, "Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago."

The problem is that these people are smart and the people attending the rallies are not. I never like to say that people are ignorant, but I cannot resist when I see such stupidity and volatility arise from what amounts to as little more than a taunt. I have spent the last few hours jumping around conservative blogs and picking my jaw up off the floor when I read the racist and incendiary comments. These people are like wild animals on the trail of prey. They are eating it up and begging for more. They are convinced that these innuendos and aspersions will get their candidate to the White House.

This type of behavior makes me hope this other quote from JFK is true: "Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth."

A Fool In Love

Near the end of the first presidential debate, John McCain said "I know the veterans. I know them well. And I know that they know that I'll take care of them. And I've been proud of their support and their recognition of my service to the veterans. And I love them. And I'll take care of them. And they know that I'll take care of them."

I wanted to see if that was true, so I did a little research. I started with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America website (http://www.veteranreportcard.org/index.html). On this website they grade the performance of Congressmen and -women on how often legislators took the pro-veteran position and voted with IAVA Action including the new GI Bill. Senator McCain received a "D" grade while Senators Obama and Biden both received a "B." McCain's grade was due in large part that he missed 6 of the 9 votes. Furthermore, McCain’s votes have given him the lowest favorability rating of any Senator from the Disabled American Veterans - a 20 percent rating.

Kevin Altman served in Iraq from December 2003 to December 2004, and again from January 2006 to January 2007 and sustained 10% hearing loss and chronic tinnitus from repeated close proximity, high-velocity concussion blasts. He said “For too many of my fellow veterans, care from the Department of Veterans Affairs is too often an uphill fight. Every single veterans organization agrees that the VA is woefully underfunded and overstretched, and yet Senator McCain has been a consistent opponent of increasing VA funding. It really hurts to see a fellow injured veteran consistently vote against us. Not all of us have the luxury of being a wealthy Senator, like John McCain.”

Cindy McCain (speaking of guilt by association, what does it say about your judgment when you are married to a former addict to Vicodin and Percocet who used a doctor employed by her charitable group to obtain those drugs illegally and only avoided jail time after she agreed to court-imposed rehab?) said this yesterday in a speech in Pennsylvania: "The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body." What she failed to mention is that two months later Senator McCain also voted against a similar bill to not fund her son as well.

Next, I looked to see which candidate military personnel were backing with their money. Military members abroad were overwhelmingly supporting Obama by a 6 to 1 margin ($60,642 to $10,665). Obama was also leading in all donations from military personnel and groups by about 10%. Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org, said that this discrepancy is due to McCain's plan, which is just a extension of Bush's failed foreign policy.

The McCain campaign tried to spin this by issuing a statement that said "John McCain has been endorsed by more retired admirals and generals than Barack Obama has military donors." But retired admirals and generals aren't the ones who are in combat right now who would like to come home.

Soltz also said "A vote for him is a vote for the draft. Period. Unless Senator McCain radically changes his worldview, there would be a draft to implement his plans. When you take into account his indefinite military commitment to Iraq, his desire to send more troops to Afghanistan, record lows in recruiting and retention, and possibly more wars he is looking to get into, like “Bomb Bomb Bomb” Iran, his numbers don’t add up without a draft. Whether America likes it or not isn’t relevant - a draft is the only way to do everything Senator McCain wants to do.”

McCain has tried to change his tune on the draft, but has occasionally stumbled at his town hall meetings and referred back to his position that he would "consider a draft if it could be fairer that the Viet Nam-era version in which many avoided any risk of being called up using deferments." But service members oppose the draft because they do not want to serve with someone who was plucked from a lottery next to them when they are in harm's way.

When it comes to judgment about each candidate and the military, I'll defer to the military. And although there are a few groups out there that support McCain (you'll see their swift boat ads soon I presume) , it is obvious that the majority don't agree with Senator McCain's assessment of himself. McCain has once again proved to be out of touch - this time with a group that he claims he loves and will take care of.

FEAR Is an Acronym in the English Language for "False Evidence Appearing Real"

John McCain is in a tough spot right now. He is trying to poke holes in Obama's record while letting his underlings do the dirty work of throwing any negative comment they can think of at Barack Obama and hoping it sticks. It seems that McCain has some conscience even though his campaign of Republican ideologists do not.

With traditionally strong Republican states being declared toss-up or leaning Obama and the lame showing at the debate last night, Republicans are angry that McCain won't fight as dirty as his predecessor. Andy McCarthy wrote this in his blog on the National Review Online: "Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn’t; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he’s qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clearly qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists. If that’s what the public thinks, good luck trying to win this thing."

I don't think it is the McCain campaign as much as it is McCain himself. When asked about McCain not trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers last night during the debate, McCain spokesmen seemed perturbed before answering that the question never came up. Republicans would love to see the scathing attacks of campaigns past make an appearance here and now, or for that matter, three months ago. Governor Palin and Cindy McCain are leading the charge on the campaign trail, but McCain seems reluctant. He wants to win on his own accord it seems, and that is just not a part of Republican politics these days.

Republicans will spin these remarks about Obama and Ayers or Obama and Wright by saying that past relationships important because they speak about the judgment of the candidate. That may be true, but nobody has more skeletons in the closet than a man who has been in Washington for over twenty-five years. It's a dangerous game to play when your candidate has links to Iran-Contra and Charles Keating and was directly involved in those debacles. Unless Obama was helping Bill Ayers plant those bombs, this link to a terrorist is a pretty lame attempt to discredit him. That is why the media has questioned it as racist.

Republicans know that they need a miracle to win as long as McCain distances himself from comments like these from the Lehigh County, Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Bill Platt: "Certainly Barack Obama can learn a thing or two from John McCain about what it means to be a patriot. Think about how you'll feel on November 5th if you see the news that Barack Obama—Barack Hussein Obama—is president of the United States." The Republicans want McCain to say those things, not distance himself from them. Without that kind of politics, Republicans must hope that either Obama makes a mistake of epic proportions or that the voters will not be able to bring themselves to cast a ballot for a black man in Novermber 4th.

Maybe McCain is a maverick after all or maybe he is pulling a page from the Clinton good cop-bad cop playbook. That didn't work earlier this year and I don't think it's going to work now.

In the Future We'll All Have 15 Minutes of Fame and 15 Minutes of Health Care

John McCain's health care plan will continue to give Americans the option of employer-based coverage and every family will receive a direct refundable tax credit of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. In order to pay for the insurance tax credit that he proposes, McCain will tax the money spent by employers on our health care. Currently, the 140 million of us who get health care for ourselves and our families through our jobs do not pay taxes, either income or payroll, on this part of our compensation.

By ending that tax exclusion, McCain's plan actually would lower taxes for people making around $100,000 or less per year. But that only illustrates that the plan wouldn't pay for itself because it cuts certain taxes more than it raises others. In last Thursday's debate, Governor Palin said that McCain's health care reform proposal is budget neutral. How?

Well, in order to keep the plan budget neutral, McCain will cut Medicare and Medicaid spending. This was confirmed last Sunday by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior policy adviser. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, estimates that the McCain plan would cost the government $1.3 trillion over 10 years and allow approximately 5 million more people to get insurance.

Without the tax credit that McCain wants to get rid of and with your new right to find your own insurance, why will your employer offer a health care plan? They probably won't. Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, put it this way: "You'll start to get a cycle where people at the margin start to leave employer coverage for individual coverage. At some point employers will start to ask: Why am I doing this if my workers don't value it anymore? If I don't need to be competitive in the labor market, why should I do it?"

I have heard a rumor that McCain's plan will charge your employer an additional $9,000 if they do not offer a health care plan (I cannot find mention of this anywhere in his campaign literature), but that wouldn't make any sense because every single business that does not provide health care would have to be charged that amount for every employee. Don't McCain and Palin love small business owners who currently don't provide health care?

Anyway, now you have to go out and buy insurance because your employer dropped their health care coverage. You have $5000 (maybe $14,000 if you're lucky) to get a policy for you and your family. McCain thinks that by having this many people flood the insurance market that it will become a pure and perfect market. Unfortunately, those only exist in theory (if you don't believe me, please see stock market).

These are the six criteria for a pure and perfect market:

1. Every industry must have hundreds of firms and potential entrants, each firm with tiny shares of the overall market.
2. Potential entrants must have equal and virtually cost-free access to the industry.
3. Each firm must be completely devoid of any power to influence the price of his product or to alter his market share.
4. The products and services of each firm must be virtually indistinguishable from those of other firms.
5. Profits are non-existent; if they exist there is an imperfection because prices would be too high.
6. Every firm, consumer and investor must have cost-less and "perfect information" about the state of prices, production, employment and markets as well as of each others' intentions.

These unobtainable criteria doom McCain's plan to certain failure. Health care prices will soar (they are already three times the national inflation) and coverage will suck. Wealthy people will have great health care and the rest of us will have to get by on what we can afford. And if you have pre-existing conditions, good luck getting someone to insure you. Thanks goodness for Medicare and Medicaid...oh, wait...at least your death will be painful in your squalid little apartment or van down by the river.

Some People Fight Fire with Fire, but Professionals Use Water

Just as I predicted yesterday, the McCain campaign revved up its personal attacks on Barack Obama. John McCain is raising questions about Obama's background and truthfulness in an attempt to move away from the country's current economic crisis - a crisis he couldn't help solve and a crisis that his politics helped create.

Every politician stretches the truth. They generalize the position of their opponent to illuminate general political differences. Both camps in this campaign are guilty as charged for these types of actions. What McCain is doing now, and what I am glad that Obama is throwing back in his face with his "Keating Five" commercial, is despicable and dishonorable. He is attempting to tie Obama to a former radical, bringing up Revered Jeremiah Wright again and claiming that the people need to know what Obama has accomplished in politics.

Here is what Obama has done in the United States Senate:

• Senator Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored 570 bills in the 109th and 110th Congress.


• Senator Obama has sponsored or co-sponsored 15 bills that have become LAW since he joined the Senate in 2005.


• Senator Obama has also introduced amendments to 50 bills, of which 16 were adopted by the Senate.

Most of his legislative effort has been in the area of Energy Efficiency and Climate Change (25 bills), health care (21 bills) and public health (20 bills), consumer protection/labor (14 bills), the needs of Veterans and the Armed Forces (13 bills), Congressional Ethics and Accountability (12 bills), Foreign Policy (10 bills) Voting and Elections (9 bills), Education (7 bills), Hurricane Katrina Relief (6), the Environment (5 bills), Homeland Security (4 bills), and discrimination (4 bills).

McCain is the lead sponsor of 38 pieces of legislation during the 110th Congress, none of which have been referred to the Banking panel, according to a review of Thomas, a congressional website. Obama, on the other hand, has introduced 130 measures during this Congress. Five of Obama’s stand alone bills fall within the Banking Committee's jurisdiction, including 1) calls for bolstering housing assistance for veterans, 2) amending the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 to provide shareholders with an advisory vote on executive compensation, 3)halting mortgage transactions that promote fraud, 4) authorizing local and state governments to crack down on companies that invest in Iran's energy sector and 5) authorizing a pilot program to prevent at-risk veterans from becoming homeless. So, who's really trying to accomplish something and who is just collecting a salary from the American people?

Governor Palin said this on the campaign trail recently: "Because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that - with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave - to me, that does say something about character." Really? What about your character? Your husband was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002 and you both submitted a video greeting for the AIP's convention this year despite the fact that the AIP founder said this: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Politicians run into all kinds of people in their line of work - some of them are sane and some are demented, some are manipulative and some are manipulated. Just because Obama knows a political radical from the 1970s doesn't make him a militant any more than Governor Palin's association with a group that would like to secede from the United States makes her a traitor.

The First Principle Is that You Must not Fool Yourself and You Are the Easiest Person to Fool

The final 30 days of the presidential campaign are when the candidates become ruthless in their attempts to smear their opponent. Governor Palin fired a loud, but innocuous shot across the bow of the Obama/Biden ship in Englewood, CO this week. Governor Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." This is an overt reference to Bill Ayers, now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was considered a radical in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was involved in a group called the Weathermen. This group took credit for placing about a dozen bombs between 1970 ad 1974 to protest to the Viet Nam War.

Barack Obama and Bill Ayers served on an anti-poverty group together between 1999 and 2002 and live approximately three blocks from one another in Chicago. Ayers also contributed $200 to Obama's re-election campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 2001. Apparently that is enough of a connection to accuse Obama of being a pal to terrorists.

With Governor Palin's current problems with abuse of power in Alaska and Senator McCain's storied history of scandal, this could be the first step on a bridge to nowhere for the Republicans. Senator McCain knows that he is losing traction in the polls and he needs a big momentum changer if he is going to win this election. Like I have posted before, the Republican playbook is full of these diversionary tactics. Republicans campaign on issues that their party agrees with to attract the base and they campaign on fear to attract independents (do you remember this commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4t9O_yFsY from 2004?).

Supporters of both Obama and McCain have been calling for their candidate to take the gloves off in the upcoming weeks. Obama has been running a principled campaign by Washington standards, attacking McCain on things they he has said and done in the past and not focusing on the many scandals that have surrounded him throughout his political career. This approach seems to be working, but the Republicans are sure to step up their smear campaign. In case the Democrats are unwilling to bash McCain for his checkered past, I will do it for them.

During McCain's first Senate term, he attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from five U.S. senators. McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer.

Keating was more than a constituent to McCain though. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees - the most received by any of the Keating Five.

After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights. And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.

Keating had his S&L seized two years after McCain met with the federal banking regulators and was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud. When asked if he thought his campaign contributions influenced the recipients Keating replied "I certainly hope so."

Further spots on McCain's reputation include a romantic link to lobbyist Vicki Isleman, several votes and speeches opposing Martin Luther King Day (he now calls this a mistake), siding with Jesse Helms and voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 four times, and lying about his stance on the Confederate flag in 2000 (McCain said "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles.")

McCain has compromised his principles throughout this entire campaign, so how can anyone believe he won't compromise his principles as president?

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

There has been a lot of commentary linking Governor Palin and President Bush recently. As you can see from this clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv0SIidNeFA&feature=related, Palin and Bush have used a lot of the same material in their respective debates. This is to be expected because they are both alumni of GOPAC (Grand Old Party Political Action Committee), the organization dedicated exclusively to electing Republicans.

In 1979, Delaware Governor Pete Du Pont concluded that the Republican Party had to build a "farm team" if it was ever to become a governing majority, so he started GOPAC. Through countless campaign seminars, workbooks, audiotapes and years of grassroots organizing, GOPAC became the Republican Party's preeminent education and training center. Under Newt Gingrich's leadership in the 1980s, GOPAC taught candidates how to run campaigns and talk about issues in a way that galvanized the far right base while not completely alienating moderate voters. Gingrich's success became evident in 1994 when Republicans won 12 additional governorships (up to 31 from 19) and won control of Congress (which they did not lose until 2006).

Republicans claimed that the resurgence was due to fiscally conservative policies, but a large number of their governors raised taxes or proposed to raise taxes, including Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Detractors say that personality and star power trump ideology and issues.

That is where Governor Palin fits in and what closely links her to President Bush. Both of the candidates portray or portrayed themselves as Washington outsiders and nicknamed themselves "A Reformer With Results." They are or were attractive (it was hard to stay young and attractive for Bush these last eight years) and came out of nowhere to take center stage in a presidential election. Moreover, these were President Bush's campaign promises in 2000:

• Energy independence
• Smaller government
• Quality health care for everyone
• "No Child Left Behind" education policy
• Rebuild our military to re-establish our stature in the world
• Social Security privatization
• Funding for religious charitable organizations, not liberal ones

I hear a lot of those same policies being supported by Governor Palin. She separates herself from the overt failures, like "No Child Left Behind," only to re-brand them and roll them out again. People cannot say that she isn't intelligent because she seemingly learned a lot at her Republican training seminars about how to unite the base and seem harmless and forthright to the independents.

David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, wrote on his National Review blog, "George W. Bush had very slight executive experience before becoming president. His views were not well known. He won the nomination exactly in the same way that Palin has won the hearts of so many conservatives: by sending cultural cues to convince them that he was one of them, understood them, sympathized with them. So that made everything else irrelevant in 2000 - as it seems again to be doing in 2008."

I hope that voters are not swayed by her charm and place in history, but undoubtedly there will be a few. In the Sydney Morning Herald, Naomi Wolf wrote "Just about any woman who was not born into privilege, has small children at home, and is not a cannibal or a satanist would elicit initial roars of approval from women in general, and surely from a group that has been silenced and trivialised for so long. When you've been making the coffee forever, it's nice to imagine leading the free world."

Whether or not this gamble will pay off for John McCain may be irrelevant to Republicans. Of course they want McCain to win, but they now have a new point person to lead them back to the White House should McCain lose. Even better, they have a female George Bush to push their ideology on to the masses. What could be better than that?

David Frum also wrote on his National review blog, "Sarah Palin is exciting and appealing. But what kind of executive is she? None of us have even the remotest idea. We don't know whether she takes advice from a wide circle or a narrow one, whether she tends to decide quickly or slowly, whether her budgets are realistic, whether she is calm or excitable in a crisis. We have no idea whether she is decisive or vacillating, prompt or procrastinating, curious or incurious. These things matter enormously in a president. Yet they do not matter much to us. And that's a big problem."

That doesn't seem to be a big problem for most Republicans who only clamor for an electable leader to be the face of their politics. However, it might be a big problem for women. Naomi Wolf wrote that "Palin's sinking approval ratings show that, while such women thrill to symbolic validation, they are not fools. They have begun to notice how Palin is trotted out like a model at an auto show to be introduced to heads of state as if they are local car dealers, and how the media are allowed to take pictures but not ask questions ("That's me with Henry Kissinger!"). They also notice that the economy is imploding, while Iraq is calming down only because the US is paying insurgents and al-Qaeda sympathisers the equivalent of a monthly car payment per person not to kill its soldiers."

It will be interesting to see if the Republican training school can prepare Palin to run again after her uneven performances this election. In the New York Times, Gail Collins wrote "The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country." While that may be true, nobody loves a fairy tale ending more than Americans.