Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Hell YES!
Barack Obama will be our 44th President of the US. Now change will be possible.
This election restored my faith in America. There were many times I thought we were on the edge of collaspe just as other great nations seem to do from time to time. Obama winning pulled us back from the edge.
Let’s move forward.
Get in your car or walk to your polling place and vote! Do it! Do it!
As we close in on election day, it is important to keep up on the issues and proposed policies of the Presidential candidates. Mark A. Shrider, over on his blog Right on the Mark points out some contrasts between Obama and McCain. Since his look is slanted to the right, I decided to respond to each of his points here:
We get AP investigations into Sarah Palin’s record. We get government computers used to look into “Joe the Plumber’s” private life. Yet, asking a question of Senator Obama’s tax plan or his associations is off limits. Instead of talking about the merits of Obama’s Tax Plan or investigating some of those association the attention is deflected & we never get the answers we deserve.
I don’t think anyone would approve of government workers looking into “Joe the Plumber” but it’s odd hearing complaints from the side of the aisle that approves of weakening all our 4th Amendment rights in the quest to make us “safe”. How ironic.
Sarah Palin’s record was examined just as all the candidates records were examined. If someone wants a job and uses their past record as support for hiring them why should that be off limits.
Palin was further looked at because it seems McCain didn’t vet her long enough before he offered her the job. All he saw was she could appeal to the GOP base (that is white Christian men who fear change). Then to make matters worse for her, McCain’s people tried to pull a Cheney and hush up a real ethics investigation that had started before she was even a blip in the campaign’s eye.
Obama’s tax plan has been questioned by the press – which includes more than the AP. A simple Google search showed at least 552 news articles about in various forms. I also used the tax calculator that is on the Obama website and found out I might get a $550 tax break while my mom would be up for $1000.
The simple answer is Obama plans to cut taxes for those making $250,000 and less. McCain wants to make Bush’s tax cut for the rich permanent
Of course Mark is probably wanting details on the tax plan – meaning what spending will be cut to pay for the tax cuts. I understand why the details are murky – we just put $700 billion on our credit card to bail out the mess left by “free market” conservatives. Who knows what will in fact happen. Obama mentioned that he may have to delay some of his plan until the real numbers are known. I still think Obama’s plan is better for the country as it focuses on the people who are foundation of this country – the middle class and small business – not the rich. We have had 8 years of cuts for the rich so lets try it the other way.
As I’ve said before if associations mean anything then lets talk about John McCain and G. Gordon Liddy, or his involvement with the Council for World Freedom that was involved with the Iran-Contra deal (which included selling weapons to Iran) and Latin American death squads during his time on their board and how about the Keating 5, and his association with the anti-Catholic and antisemitic Pastor John Hagee? Then there is Sarah Palin’s association with the anti-American Alaska Independence Party.
In this country we have freedom of association and it seems by the poll numbers voters don’t care if Obama knows a so-called domestic terrorist.
While those topics have been in the news there doesn’t appear to be any investigations conducted by the AP as they did with Governor Palin. No use of government computers to look into Senator Obama’s private life as was done with “Joe the Plumber.” Instead, we get some government agencies locking up some of Obama’s private information. Where is the mainstream media? Apparently in Alaska & Toledo checking on the enemy.
Mark seems to forget that Obama’s passport file was accessed by a contractor at the State Department. Frontline did a long documentary about both McCain and Obama’s history. Some reporter found Obama’s brother in Kenya living in a shanty and just tonight Inside Edition had a story about Obama’s aunt who lives in a run down building in Boston. Just because these reports don’t paint Obama as the antichrist doesn’t mean the press hasn’t looked.
Yet, John McCain still refuses to release all his medical records. Knowing he has had several bouts of skin cancer and the fact that the health of a President can drive the stock market – it is important we know if he would healthy enough to complete a term. But it isn’t the first time he didn’t release everything. Back 1999 he did the same thing only release a selection to answer questions about his mental health from his 5 years as a POW.
We got ACORN possibly involved in voter registration fraud & maybe even voter fraud. Obama gave them $800,000. Yet, Obama accuses republicans of plotting to suppress votes. And, while Senator Obama is requiring folks to show ID at his election night event in Chicago, he doesn’t find it necessary to show ID to vote.
ACORN isn’t involved in voter registration fraud and there has not been any voter fraud this election and only 24 cases between 2002 and 2005 out of millions of votes cast. While the GOP has been caught in various suppression efforts just this year (PI sent to homes of registered voters, attempting to use foreclosure lists to bar voters, and telling student voters they would be arrested if they voted where they went to school)…… Comparing evidence it seems the suppression efforts are real and the voter fraud charges are a fraud.
I don’t see the point of equating security of a Presidential candidate with voting. It seems like an apples to oranges comparison.
Even when it comes to campaign issues we’ve heard many times that Senator Obama wants to allow us to buy into the same health insurance he & Senator McCain enjoy. However, he never tells us at what cost. On the other hand, John McCain plans to give each one of us a $2500 tax credit for insurance & $5000 for a family. It seems that McCain is required to give more information about his plan than is required of Obama.
The estimate is $100 billion. It would be modeled after Medicare which seems to be doing pretty well for the past 43 years. We are spending $10.3 billion per month in Iraq. Taking even half of that amount as we ramp down operations there would pay for 60% of the health care plan.
Neither candidate has given specifics and each has twisted the other’s plan in stump speeches.
And of course, the race card is being played out in the news lately as well. If Obama loses it must be the Bradley Effect due to secret racism. However, the possibility that Obama could get more than 90% of the black vote is called racial solidarity. Nope, no double standard at all.
Racism exists. One only needed to view video of some of McCain’s rallies in the past few weeks to see it. Only people who have a problem with Obama’s race would say that all blacks will vote for Obama. What about all the white people who will vote for McCain? Isn’t that racial solidarity? There couldn’t be any other reason they would all vote for McCain?? Just like there couldn’t be any OTHER reason blacks would vote for Obama?
I think when a campaign can’t win the battle on issues they seem to always go down the cheap road of character assassination. McCain took that road early on and for once it seems a majority of the people are not buying it.
Republicans continue to cry about “voter fraud” especially in states that have close poll numbers like Ohio. Their argument is that the state needs to release the mismatched voter registrations collected since January because they believe such mismatches means the people aren’t eligible to vote and they want to challenge them before they cast a vote. This would force these people to cast a provisional ballot – which is less likely to be counted in the final tally from election night.
This is a legal yet unethical way to “cage” voters.
The Ohio GOP sued the state for the release of the list of names. That case went to the US Supreme Court and the court ruled that the GOP didn’t have standing to sue. Next House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to President Bush to ask the Department of Justice to intervene in the case.
Now there is word that the DOJ won’t intervene.
The Department of Justice will not require Ohio to disclose the names of voters whose registration applications did not match other government databases, according to two people familiar with discussions between state and federal lawyers.
The decision comes about a week after an unusual request from President Bush asking the department to investigate the matter and roughly two weeks after the Supreme Court dismissed a case involving the flagged registration applications.
The important point to make again is that just because the data might not match the various databases doesn’t mean there is an attempt commit voter fraud.
But there’s little chance that these errors will result in improper voting on election day, much less affect outcomes. According to researcher Lorraine C. Minnite, of Columbia University, a total of 24 people, across the U.S., were found guilty of voter fraud between 2002 and 2005 — an average of eight per year.
For months now, Republicans have been claiming that voter fraud is rampant and that government officials aren’t sufficiently cracking down. Democrats insist that voter fraud is practically nonexistent –- the real problem is intimidation and harassment of voters at the polls, they say.
Voting-rights experts tend to agree with the Democrats. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, for example, found that, “It’s more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”
Another study, by Barnard College political scientist Lori Minnite, similarly concluded that voter fraud is “extremely rare.” The Brennan Center also showed that the sort of strict rules advocated by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere would disenfranchise thousands of people -– usually the poor, elderly and minorities.
The idea of massive fraud by voters continues to be proven as a hyped-up myth. The Cincinnati Enquirer has provided a detailed analysis of Ohio’s more than 8 million registered voters and found that problems involving illegitimate voting are minimal. The Enquirer found only 6567 voters who had duplicate registrations. All are individuals who registered twice at their own address, a common routinely resolved by election officials and poll workers. An investigation by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips of the 2004 election found that of the nearly 800 duplicate registrations he analyzed, none voted more than once. The Enquirer also flagged 589 registered voters who won’t be 18 on Election Day.
Since 1953, only six Ohioans have been sent to prison for voter fraud, according to the Columbus Dispatch. But Republican sheriffs and prosecutors are in the midst of a partisan witch hunt the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s in the Deep South. to harass, arrest and prosecute voting rights groups registering new voters.
Critical US Supreme Court Ruling Against Rovian GOP Vote Meddling May Prove Temporary
So now we know the GOP will stop at nothing to disrupt the election. What do you do?
Check out the website Election Protection and read up on the issue. When voting make sure you have the needed identification and vote early if possible. If you do get challenged and are forced to fill out a provisional ballot – make sure you resolve the issue as soon as possible or your vote will not count.
Here is something nifty: