Understanding the Message

Yesterday, I was buying a book at Borders and was listening to the employees discuss Sarah Palin's capabilities as the Vice Presidential nominee. One of the statements that was put forth was that Sarah Palin had only worked 12 hours since becoming Governor of Alaska.

As I ran through the checkout line I mentioned that this was an incorrect characterization. You can like or dislike Mrs. Palin for lots of different reasons but its obvious that work ethic is not an issue.

Recently John McCain appeared to take a step back in his message when at Townhall meetings he indicated that we do not have to fear Barack Obama and that Barack Obama is not an Arab. The first reaction to McCain's correction was "Gasp. Does John McCain realize that he's behind and the people are taking his messages to heart? What the heck is he doing?" What he was doing was pointing out that there are lots of reasons to be against Barack Obama but fear and racial orientation are not the things that should be driving our selection process.

This wasn't about changing the tone of the campaign or redirecting the message. McCain was simply trying to make sure that we understand what the message is. This is subtlety that is easily lost on us as we make the final run to election day.

Who Would You Rather Rip You Off

The Obama campaign has an ad suggesting that once he's in power we won't have oil companies or bankers ripping us off anymore. It just makes me all warm inside knowing that Barack is taking a personal interest in our economic well being. That he cares and is looking to change the system and address past offenses.

Of course it would make me feel a whole lot better if in addition to caring and offering "change" he actually understood what the hell he was talking about and wasn't offering to simply enhance the ripping off process.

Obama is right on when he points out that the bankers ripped us off. Of course since Barack is buddies with many of them and either takes their advice or their money, you'd have to figure he knows a little something about how the process works. The folks at Fannie Mae supported billions of dollars in bad loans, knowingly cooked the books to provide a distorted view of their operations, gave millions of dollars in bonus to people who did not deserve them, and stuck the American tax payer with a HUGE tab. To bad Obama didn't exercise any of his concern in his role as Senator to prevent the fleecing of America.

WAIT!!!

The reason that he didn't do anything about this travesty was that he actually favored Americans getting ripped off. It was good for his buddies, good for the policies and organizations he believes in, and matched his beliefs on exactly what the role of government should be.

This is really the core of it. We weren't just ripped off by the bankers. We were ripped off by the Democrats policy of giving loans to people that couldn't pay them back and ripped off by the people that borrowed (read stole) the money that they knew they'd never be able to or have to repay.

When Barack Obama moves from being a Senator to being President this is exactly the kind of policies we should expect. A President that cares enough to spend your money on policies and programs that we can't afford without regard for the people that will be writing the check. I feel better already.

Why to Vote for Obama

Near as I can tell there are three reasons that you should be voting for Obama.

• He gives a good speech (at least with a teleprompter). W's way with words has long been a sore point for denizens that don't want the rest of the world thinking of the US as a band of redneck hicks.
• He cleans up well. Obama has fair amount of charisma in both his presence and his speech. He's not a bad looking guy, dresses well, and is engaging on the campaign trail.
• He's black. If you're voting against him, you're probably racist; if you're voting for him, you probably think it is about time we had a black president.

It is worth noting that none of these items has anything to do with the substantive issues that are facing our Republic today. The fact that Obama is either wrong (e.g. how to handle Iraq) or lying (e.g. middle class tax cut) or misleading (e.g. health care) on the vast majority of key issues seems to be totally lost on the majority of the registered voters.

The unfortunate thing is that unless things take a dramatic turn in the next 25 days, the people that do care about the issues are going to get the type of government that majority of Americans deserve.

Put a Fork In Him ... He's Done

This pains me but John McCain is about out of time.

The two years of campaigning leading up to the general election are about done and it looks like Senator McCain is likely to remain a Senator.

There are still a couple of outs ... the election turnout could go bad for Obama (though with ACORN in the game encouraging folks living and dead to vote early and vote often this seems unlikely). John McCain could say or do something that so grabs the conscousness of the America public that people of both parties flock to him (hasn't happened yet, but hey ... you can always dream). Barack Obama could do something incredibly stupid to tank his campaign and see the biggest change in the polls since Bush 41 kicked butt in Iraq.

In all likelyhood .... "Not gonna happen". America survived 8 years of W and can probably survive 4 years of Obama as well. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Why Obama Is Wrong For America

Here are 5 reasons:

1. National Security and Foreign Policy -- Obama has repeated demonstrated that he is not the right man at the right time to manage our foreign policy . His willingness to surrender in Iraq and create a power vacuum in the middle east; his naivety in understanding how to communicate with the truly evil regimes of the world; his playing both sides of an issue: in Iraq where he attempted to negotiate a delay in troop withdrawals until after the election and in Canada where he told the Canadian government one story about NAFTA and American workers something else.
2. Background and Affiliations -- Obama has not addressed his past in a way that makes sense. Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and ACORN just to get started. So far Obama has been able distance himself from these folks but it is clear that they have had significant influence on him. These are not influences that will make America stronger.
3. Taxes -- Obama is flat out lying on taxes. First, there is no way that he will be able to fund all of his spending initiatives without raising taxes. Second, he totally mischaracterizes who pays taxes today. The top 10% of wage earners pay 65% of the income taxes; the top 50% of the wage earners pay 96% of the income taxes; This means roughly 50% of taxpayers pay no income taxes at all. Just how much more skewed does this need to be to create "fairness".
4. Leadership -- What exactly has Obama done that provide examples of strong leadership? Answer: Nothing. He played partisan politics in the bailout / rescue / screwing of the American taxpayer; he has only been in the Senate for 3 years and he has spent 2 of these years running for President; from community organizer to State legislator to US Senator he has not come up with new ideas or been a driving force to make things happen under his watch. Other than a charismatic smile and being well spoken, there is simply not much there.
5. Socialism -- When you look deeper into the things that Obama holds near and dear, the kind of change Obama is proposing can best be summed up in one word. Socialism. That is the kind of change we can do without.

Good Thing There's An Election Coming

When you look back on the legacy of the Bush administration, you kind of have to wonder. Does Barack Obama have it right when he says the last thing we need is four more years of W?

Actually, I think Obama has it exactly right ... four more years of the of George Bush would be devastating for America ... but not for the reasons Barack is running on.

Let's start with the Bailout / Rescue / Screwing that the we got this week. There is no question that the policies (primarily Democratic, but with lots of blame to go around) of making credit highly available to people that should not have had access to it has created a serious problem for our financial markets and that something had to be done.

Now other than pointing out that we had a serious problem (as opposed to "crisis") and pulling the parties together ... was there any other leadership that was offered? Not that you could tell. Did it occur to him that we'd been through this before? Did it occur to him that the private market had resources to help deal with this as well (thank you Mr. Buffet, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo)? Did it occur to him that we didn't need to add billions of dollars of additional earmarks to this proposal?

But this was just the latest example of a situation were W provided weak leadership.

Barack Obama says that John McCain votes align with George Bush 90% of the time. I think in the last debate Sarah Palin indicated that Barack Obama voted with George Bush 96% of the time (that's what I heard, I'm not sure whether that's what she meant). The truth is W is a go along to get along guy on most domestic issues -- and you can see his direct impact in the huge amount of growth of domestic spending in the last 8 years (something that somehow Barack never points out)

It took him over 5 years (over one whole term) to break out the veto pen for the first time. George Bush votes with EVERYBODY. He has stepped it up a bit but still has only 28 total vetoes and 33% of those have been overridden by Congress. We haven't seen this type of leadership since Warren Harding.

America could definitely use some fresh leadership that would take us in a new direction.

VP Debate

Basically another draw.

Palin scored more points and showed that she can speak publicly. So on the "one heartbeat away" question she scored.

If you were undecided before ... you're probably still undecided.

Nothing happened to make you change you vote one way or the other.

It is about time the gloves came off in this campaign. We are two years into it and still have undecideds. The politically correct / polite approaches are not going to work. If you want to win you are going to have to bring a sledgehammer -- this is especially true for McCain Palin since they are losing.