The problem with campaigns is that people believe some of the crap that spews forth, even when the statements are disproved.  Like Palin is still saying that Obama has these “associations” that people need to know more about.  While Obama has answered those questions and media outlets have investigated the allegations, Palin will not stop.  These statements of Palin are not meant to inform.  The McCain campaign does not give a wit’s end about the truth of these statements.   And they shamelessly continue making the statements long after they are disproven.

Then you have McCain and Palin making ridiculous statements that Obama wants to: raise taxes, not true; wants to prevent off shore drilling, not true; wants to stop the use of nuclear power, not true; the use of coal energy, not true; wants to destroy America – not TRUE; voted to raise our taxes, not true.  It is sickening.

Do we hear Obama or Biden repeating incessantly that Cindy McCain stole drugs and was addicted?  Do we hear incessantly that McCain was one of the Keating 5?  Do we hear incessantly that Palin was found to have unlawfully used the power of her office?  While any one of these things, with the exception of Cindy, should disqualify either of these two clowns, the Obama-Biden ticket has focused on the issues.

Get out there and vote.  If you have voted – get out there and offer to drive people to the polls.  Find some way to put America back on track.

Go to:  http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Anyone who has watched, read, or heard anything about the recent McCain battle cry knows the McCain Palin campaign has gotten all indignant about Joe and his conversation with Obama.

What is McCain saying?  Is he advocating a flat tax? Does he want to repeal the Social Security Act?  Does he want to eradicate Medicare? And Medicaid? And public school funding?  And highway funding?  Dismantle the military?  Really?  This is not to suggest that any of these programs does not deserve a check up, at the very least for efficiency sake.  Something Obama agrees is needed.

Someone should ask McCain what he is talking about when he advocates against “spreading the wealth.”  Also, McCain should have to explain why it is that the next round of tax cuts which will provide yet another tax break for the wealthiest 1%, should not be canceled.  McCain-the-hypocrite says Obama’s proposed tax cuts are irresponsible, and yet he is comfortable lying at each rally he attends.  Not once has he explained that the rich are already going to get a tax cut, and worse he is advocating another capital gains tax cut on the premise that it will create jobs.  Just like the last 8 years did.  NOT!  That trickle down theory does not work, or at least has not worked under the recent circumstances.

And while we are again on the subject of taxes, a person making $250K a year, enjoys an income of about $20K a month.  And businesses with $250K in income, make far, far greater amounts.  To achieve that income on which taxes are paid, a business first deducts all its expenses, which includes salaries and all expenses to create that income.  Under Obama’s plan, individuals would pay only an additional $60 a month.  Sixty dollars a month!  If I could pay an additional $60 a month to fix the financial woes of this country I would step up to the plate.

Hey, McCain and the GOP: fail to spread that wealth.  Go ahead.  Do it.  But when your stores (those where the incomes do not exceed the threshold) shut from lack of customers, when your stocks plummet from lack of sales, do not complain to me while standing in that soup line.  I won’t want to hear it from you.

Unbelievable, but true.  If you have not heard about this you absolutely must hear it.  Sarah Palin believes that the person on the phone is Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France.  For 7 minutes she talks with this supposed world leader.

The comments of the fake Sarkozy are so obviously not those of someone who is going to be a VP.  Actually, I am not sure she is really capable of having anything to do with the global stage.

Palin does not realize that the “Punker” calls the Canadian Prime Minister by the wrong name.  She doesn’t catch on about any of it.  Absolutely stunning.

And did I mention also PATHETIC.

The title says it all.  Yesterday, Ron Reagan formally and publicly endorsed Obama.  Thank you Ron Reagan.  ‘Nuff said.

At one time I was a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  OK, I was a huge fan of Schwarzenegger, the actor. Unlike the characters he portrayed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger is a bully.  I was flabbergasted to hear his words at a McCain rally.  There he was making cutting remarks, not about Obama’s policies, but about Obama’s physique.  That is stunning.  Schwarzengger, a grown man, acting like a bully.  How can we expect our children to play fair and be accepting of others, when adults act in this fashion?  Would it be alright to mock a fat candidate?  How about a disabled candidate?  How about a candidate with a disfiguring disorder?  Governor, you are an embarrassment.

Then there is Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina running a TV ad against Kay Hagan, calling her Godless.  First, Ms. Hagan is a church-going Christian.  Second, what if she was?  There is no religious test to holding a political office.  It is in the CONSTITUTION!  Look it up.  America has atheisits, and they are Americans.  They are not disqualified.  This is more of the same rhetoric.  Yes, there is still an underbelly of the GOP calling Obama a Muslim.  He isn’t a Muslim, however, it should not matter.  Muslims are Americans too!

Michele Bachmann, a US Congresswoman (and a nutcase), recently remarked that there are patriotic people and unpatriotic people in the US Congress.  That is nuts.  What she is saying is that non-GOP folks are unpatriotic.  That would include all Democrats, and every other political organization.  It would also include all non-Christian religions.  Folks with this mindset believe in their heart of hearts that you must be a Christian to be an American.

McCain’s campaign is largely responsible for the growing hatred, this 2nd generation McCarthyism, and a potentially growing divide can be expected in American life if this tide the campaign has started continues.  Remember, McCarthyism destroyed the lives of thousands of people.  Innocent people were imprisoned.  There was an Un-American Activities Committee.  To think that all of those supposed intelligent folks would disregard the protection of the Constitution is hard to imagine.  It is 2008 and we have the benefit of hindsight.  Yet, the current GOP campaign to elect McCain appears to embrace this concept of painting people with the Un-American brush, simply because they want to win.

Ironically, the folks who would call people Un-American because of their religious views, or because of party affiliation, or because of any other factor that makes them different from the white, GOP evangelical Christian faction, fail to embrace the values of being an American.  (Don’t send me hate email – I am definitely using the stereotype here). They fail to embrace the values explicitly provided in the Constitution and our Bill of Rights, values like the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the important lack of a religious test to hold office, and our right to vote for our representatives, just to name a few.

Is it worth it to these folks, to win at any cost?  To trample the Constitution?  To ignore the struggles of our forefathers?  To deny actual Americans the constitutional rights, we allegedly are fighting (and dying) to deliver other parts of the world? It is completely ironic to me that so many of these individuals hailed the opportunity to bring fair elections to other parts of the world, yet they actively engage in activities to thwart people from exercising the right to vote.  In a word – pathetic.

This organization is sending inflammatory material regarding political candidates.  I went to their website and found it full of lies, like this:  that the United Nations Population Fund does nothing of the sort.  I am not an advocate to outlaw abortion.  My point here is that this group says anything including falsehoods.  In their make believe world this is justified.  It is outrageous and prevents a serious discussion about how to address an actual issue.  Shame on them!  There is even a slogan encouraging their members to think like Karl Rove.

In fact: Does UNFPA promote abortion?

No. Guided by paragraph 8.25 of the Cairo Programme of Action, UNFPA does not support or promote abortion as a method of family planning. It accords the highest priority and support to voluntary family planning to prevent unwanted pregnancies so as to eliminate recourse to abortion. UNFPA supports governments to strengthen their national health systems to deal effectively with complications of unsafe abortions, thereby saving women’s lives (every year, an estimated 74,000 women die as the result of unsafe abortions).

It is intellectually dishonest to suggest that Obama’s economic plans are socialist!  The lows that that other campaign has stooped to is unbelievable.

What is wrong with spreading the wealth around – isn’t that what we do now?  You and I pay more taxes proportionate to our incomes, while big business pays much less, if any (50% pay zero), all in the hopes that by doing this businesses will grow and provide us more jobs.  So far this economic theory has not yet been proven.  At the same time as these big businesses are not paying their fair share, they enjoy unheard welfare programs.  Programs like being able to log on government property, mine government property, farm subsidies to millionaire agribusiness conglomerates, tax shelters, beach replenishment programs for resorts, shifting pollution problems away from the business polluters to the taxpayers, and the list goes on and on.

Obama has set out his tax plan.  It is on his website.  It has been evaluated by non-partisan groups.  It is not radical and will save 95% of working families more than those families would receive under a McCain plan.  Obama has repeatedly stated that the highest tax rate should return to the level it was under Reagan, a Republican.

Look, the GOP has never, ever been the party of small business or working folks.  Period.  It is just amazing how the GOP manages to get people to vote against their own interests by dazzling those same folks with some tidbit they want to hear, never mind if it is true.  After 8 years of being burned, you would think people would have learned by now.

It is hard to understand in a country such as ours that we cannot figure out how to hold fair elections.  Why should anyone have to wait in line 8 hours to cast a vote?  That is what some places are predicting for poorer areas because there just aren’t enough polling machines or places.  Why should anyone’s vote be rejected, if they are a US citizen? I fully appreciate the need to register people because of our electoral college system, however, using that system to disenfranchise individuals is wrong.  It is hard to understand how any assertions of voter fraud can be made based on falsified registrations when there hasn’t been an attempt to vote.  Voter fraud is based on actually voting.  Falsifying registrations is based on stupidity, desperation for money (such as being paid by how many forms are turned in), laziness, and actual political motivation.

But the political motivation is the interesting part.  It could happen like this:  individuals who support a political party could falsify registrations in order to place the other political party in a bad light.  Those individuals simply have to make up names, then complain to election authorities that there are false registrations, and then sit back and watch the fireworks.  That is one possibility to explain how it came about that the Nevada Secretary of State Elections, Ross Miller, ended up coordinating a raid on Acorn and a few other organizations to remove computers, and boxes and boxes of completed voter registration forms.  Mickey Mouse and Evel Knieval are not going to show up to vote!  But guess what, some people whose names are legitimately on those registration forms will show up and will be told they are not registered to vote.  Perhaps they will receive a provisional ballot, perhaps not.  In the last two presidential elections we saw thousands who were turned away, or left the polling place as a result of not having their names on the rolls.  There is an old joke “vote early, and vote often.”  Perhaps the new phrase will be “register early and often” just in case one of your valid registrations is among a box of registrations that for political reasons were seized as a result of a trumped up allegation.

Then there are the states that are actually purging the voter rolls.  State Boards of Elections may remove names from rolls under certain circumstances, such as death, a voter’s move out of the precinct, and the often used excuse, “culling.”  That is when an individual is not expected to vote because they haven’t voted in the one or more election cycles.  But the way these states have gone about culling this election season is illegal because it is a violation of federal election law to cull voters’ names 90 days or less before an election.  Nonetheless, last month several (traditionally red states) systematically removed the names of hundreds of thousands of voters.  That is outrageous.

There are lots of ways to rig an election, lots of ways to play unfair.  Robo calling and acting as if you are your opponent is a typical one, and playing into the prejudices of others is another.  Phone jamming is another – one party calls the phone number of a hotline repeatedly so that no legitimate callers can get through or ends up blocking the phone lines of a political party’s office.  It actually happened in New Hampshire and someone from the RNC went to prison for it.  It is a federal offense.  In fact, he has written a book on the tricks used to “engineer victory” for the GOP.  Notice that the word used is “engineering an election.”

Then there are the machines – there have been many conspiracy theories concerning these voting machines, which may or may not be warranted.  Diebold is much more concerned with getting paid than the actual results of an election.  And curiously the features of the machines are specific to the purchaser.  You can easily find Diebold documents on the internet that explain certain features of the machine. Features like being able to obtain access to the second set of results which can then be tampered with.

This year there is 1 new way employed, and 1 old way being redeployed.  First, certain party people are obtaining court records of people who have had their mortgages foreclosed.  Then after compiling a list of those names by precinct they intend to show up to those polling places and challenge the validity of the individuals whose names appear on the list.  The argument will be that they no longer live at the address of record.  The thing is for most places there is a time frame during which you can still vote if you have moved within a period of time.  But those who are confronted are unlikely to know their legal rights.  It will not be surprising to learn that this happens more often in economically depressed areas and areas of greater minorities.  Second, by mailing a piece of mail with a indentication on it so that it is not forwarded, a potential address of a registered voter can be challenged as having changed since the last election.  However, these cards are sometimes just not delivered because they contain typographical errors, or delivery was not actually attempted, or for some other reason.  Such voters are challenged and if the challenge is successful are required to vote provisionally or they leave having not voted because they do not know their legal rights.

In 2000 there was a national demand seeking a change in the way America votes so that all votes are counted. (No more hanging chads).  Then in 2004, there was a repeat of votes not being counted, and people not being able to vote for lack of machines.  That led to yet another cry to make changes so that the voting system works. Now it is 2008, and sadly we are no better off than we were 8 years ago.  Something must be done so that all Americans can vote on election day.

Volunteers are needed as poll watchers and voter suppression watchers to help prevent against disenfranchisement.  Consider volunteering on November 4th to protect all Americans rights to cast a vote.