Two days to go....to either stay afloat or to sink like a McBrick

This evening I watched (on MSNBC) Obama with Bruce Springsteen at a rally in Ohio. Obama was in fine form, and gave what I consider to be his best speech in this election cycle. He referred to McCain running Bush's economic policies and Cheney's military policies, as a two-fer.

Dick Morris and his buddies are running a TV commercial that shows clips of Jeremiah Wright and associates Obama with him.

It is clear that the country is in such a bad shape that even if Obama wins, the best he can hope to achieve is to keep things stable or perhaps get some minor improvements. If McPalin win, the middle class will continue to be trampled by the ELEPHANTS. McCain plans to cut taxes and cut spending- the perfect recipe for the aging infrastructure, the neglected education, and a health care system on life support.

If Obama wins, I hope the first thing he does is to improve the political system and its transparency. The corruption in these elections is simply gross. People need to be held accountable.

McPalin Highlight their Lack of Education - don't know that "Social" is first in 'Socialism"

McCain, # 894 out of 899 in his graduating class, has taken a number of shots at educators, calling them elite. This follows the example of GWB who for years dismissed the calls from the vast number of scientists who had been raising warnings about global climate change. Mr. McCain, you never paid attention to studies, but there are people who spend many years studying specific topics and are knowledgeable.

On Socialism. Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives the following definitions for socialism:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Mr. McCain, Obama has never advocated anything that falls into 1 or 2 above. Published reports indicate that even today, there is unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done, and in fact, women could receive up to 20% less than men for a similar job. This could be socialism, but it has nothing to do with Obama.
Any government, by definition, serves society and not any one particular individual. By this broad definition any government is socialistic. You keep harping about the need for more regulation of the financial industry. That is socialistic.
In simple terms, government collects taxes from the people. Once the money comes in, it goes into the governmnent's coffers where all the money is pooled. The government does not differentiate taxes received from one person from the dollars received from another. Money gets pooled, and this pooled money then gets spent. This is socialism. However, in the case of U.S. government, since the government (of GWB) has been borrowing money for spending, it is depending on foreign countries for its socialism.
WHen Obama wants to raise taxes for those making >X amount of money, it is raising revenues for the government. McCain, separate that from providing tax cuts to the middle class. A tax cut just means that government collects less money from people. It is NOT giving back money, it is taking less money. This is NOT socialism, and is NOT redistributing wealth. If Obama borrowed money and provided a check to everyone in the country that could be considered socialism. Isn't that what President GWB did a few months ago, with support from Congress? You plan to cut taxes for everyone. That is not socialism either, McCain.
If Obama collected money from one group and sent checks to another that is redistributing wealth. Since the government has been in debt for decades, and since YOUR president GWB has jacked up the deficits, there is NO government wealth to redistribute, McCain. Since the Bush tax cuts and deregulation have given us this mess (fiscal and moral deficits), Obama is looking at a solution that will help people just survive. Yes, you don't have a problem, what with 8 houses and a wife who spends $300K on one dress. Many of us have to deal with day-to-day survival.

One simple reason to vote against McPain and the Republicans: These Morons are Proud to be Ignorant, and say one thing and then do the opposite. McPain is the recipe for McSized deficits- fiscal, intellectual, and moral.

See-through Palin: Empress who spent $150K but has no clothes

Reports have come out that Palin went on a Shopping Spree in September

Jeff Larson is a prominent Republican consultant whose firm has been tied to the onslaught of negative robocalls from Senator John McCain’s campaign. Mr. Larson was also the chief executive of the local host committee for the Republican National Convention. Now it appears that Mr. Larson may have been the personal shopper for Gov. Sarah Palin’s lavish shopping spree — or at least he initially picked up the tab. Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. Larson was reimbursed by the Republican National Committee in September for more than $130,000 in purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, Barney’s New York, and Atelier New York, a men’s clothing store. The spending spree, first reported by Politico.com, was apparently to outfit Ms. Palin and her family. Should she decide to keep the clothing, its value would have to be taxed as income. I.R.S. rules allow for employees to deduct the cost of uniforms worn for work — as long as the clothing has no use other than one’s job. Back Story with Leslie Wayne (mp3) But if the same clothing can also be worn day-to-day, the cost cannot be deducted from income. And if paid for by someone else, as in this case, the value of the clothing must be reported as taxable income, Robert S. McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a nonpartisan tax policy research group, said on Wednesday. “If the clothes were only used for work, it would not be taxable income,” Mr. McIntyre said. “But if you can use them to go to lunch with your husband, it would.” The Republican National Committee confirmed the reimbursements to Mr. Larson, but said that the clothing bought for Ms. Palin and her family would eventually be given to charity. Mr. Larson did not return messages left for him today at his business in Minnesota. Apart from Mr. Larson, the McIntosh Company in Dallas, which appears to be a fund-raising firm run by Alison McIntosh, who has been identified in news reports as a fund raiser for the McCain campaign, was apparently reimbursed for $4,537 in purchases at Macy’s in Minneapolis, according to the commission records. It also appears that a woman by the name of Lisa Kline was reimbursed for several hundred dollars in purchases made at high-end children’s stores in Minneapolis, the Gap and Macy’s as well as a sewing supply store in New York. The full shopping list for Ms. Palin and her family, according to records of the Federal Election Commission, looks like this:

• $75,062.63 spent at Neiman Marcus on Sept. 10.

• $41,850.72 to Saks Fifth Avenue in New York on Sept. 10.

• $7,575.02 to Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis on Sept. 10.

• $5,102.71 to Bloomingdale’s in New York on Sept. 10.

• $789.72 to Barney’s New York on Sept. 10.

• Charges of $4,396.94 and $512.92 at Macy’s in Minneapolis on Sept. 10.

• $4,537.85 to Macy’s in Minneapolis on Sept. 22.

• $349.50 to Lord & Taylor in New York on Sept. 25.

• $4,902.08 to Atelier New York, a men’s clothing boutique, on Sept. 10.

• Two separate charges of $98 to Pacifier, a high-end baby store in Minneapolis, on Sept. 10 and Sept. 25.

• $98.50 to Steinlauf & Stoller, a sewing supply store, in New York on Sept. 25.

• $133 to the Gap in Minneapolis on Sept. 25.

The money for the clothing came out of the budget of the Republican National Committee’s co-ordinated campaign fund, not the McCain campaign, an an important legal distinction, said Kenneth Gross, a campaign finance expert at Skadden Arps in Washington. Had the money come from the McCain campaign, it would be a conversion of campaign funds into personal use, which is prohibited. The same rule does not apply to money from party committees.

“The R.N.C. is not made up of campaign money,’’ said Mr. Gross. “It’s not subject to the same restrictions as campaign money. The R. N. C. cleverly used the party committee’s money to avoid the liability that would have occurred if campaigns funds were used. It’s a fine line, but it separates what is legal from what is not.”

This on top of Mrs. McCain and her Convention outfit - from her über-pricey earrings to her Oscar de la Renta designer dress to her shoes to the tune of $300,000.

And these folks are talking about working class/middle class people? We could surely appreciate a law that punishes deliberate deception by sending the perpetrator(s) to Alaska for life, to wait and watch for Putin's head to pop up.

Fear-mongering, hatred spewing, race baiting, divisive rather than unifying

That defines the Modern Day Republicans.

Sarah Palin is going around calling Obama a Socialist- again using 'labels' to promote hatred. McCain is shouting that Obama is redistributing wealth. Both of them keep saying that Obama is hiding something. Now these two, through their surrogate Rep. Michele Bachmann, claim that Obama and his supporters are Anti-American, and they should be investigated, McCarthy style.

That McPalin will stoop to this evil act, and perhaps to even worse crimes, to win is fathomable. The fact that more than 40% of the voting populace seems to support these dastardly allegations through their support of McPalin should be enough to get the rest of the public, in the USA and in the rest of the world worried.

Uncool to be 'Smart' in the USA

Recently the NYT ran an intelligent article titled "Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds." The author, Ms. Rimer, writes that "United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued..... A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field. “We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math — that’s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,” said the study’s lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world’s most-demanding math competitions. “Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, ‘If I’m not an Asian or a nerd, I’d better not be on the math team.’ Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they’re not even trying.” .....“There is something about the culture in American society today which doesn’t really seem to encourage men or women in mathematics,” said Michael Sipser, the head of M.I.T.’s math department. “Sports achievement gets lots of coverage in the media. Academic achievement gets almost none.”"

While this article refers to math competencies, the current campaign run by McPalin is based on propagating the culture that says that being smart and 'good' is 'not good.' The emphasis on 'Joe the plumber,' asserting that 'Obama palls around with terrorists,' calling Obama a 'socialist' and other names all indicate a complete disregard for intelligence. Obama can talk coherently and make a point- so McCain refers to him derogatorily as 'eloquent.' Obama can speak in complete sentences, so he 'cannot relate to the hockey moms and the six pack Joes.'

Now wonder the country has become a basket case over the past eight years - no person with intelligence would want to be associated with this pathetic 'I am proud to get an F' culture.

Joe Six Packs and Hockey Moms..Moving the Country back to the Dark Ages

A few years ago, I was returning from Phoenix one late night on a Southwest Airlines flight. Landing at Midway airport is never fun, as it is in the middle of the city and the runways are relatively short, and landing in the dark is always more challenging. The landing was so smooth that there was not even the tiniest of bumps, and no one realized we were on the ground until the breaks were applied. This was the finest landing I have ever experienced. All the passengers gave a rousing ovation to the flight crew, and then the flight captain, a lady, came out and acknowledged the greetings. That pilot demonstrated experience, steadiness, and intelligence in performing a difficult task so smoothly.

Any accomplished person like that pilot would be shocked and distressed to see the performance of Sarah Palin and John McCain. The amazing part of the American 'political culture' is this- A candidate demonstrates education, intelligence, eloquence, skilled oratory and good general knowledge, and the opposing party works overtime to spread fear, hatred and animosity about him- emphasizing that he is not one of the 'Common Dumb Man or Woman.' True to form, the McPalin gang is now trying to brand Obama with his middle name, blatantly trying to mislead the Joe Six packs and the hockey moms to believe that he is somehow a 'terrorist.' The gang is also using other insinuations to label Obama as 'untrustworthy' and 'a foreigner.'
The elections of 2000 and 2004 have demonstrated that betting on the success of this disgusting strategy, based on the brains (or lack thereof) of the Joe Six Packs and the Hockey moms, has been a very rewarding one, for the bettors. The question now is - given the disastrous eight years under Bush, with the trend line pointing down and the bottom yet to be reached, will these brain-dead Joe Six Packs, the Hockey moms and the Soccer moms get an awakening?