Dangers in Straight-Ticket Voting

Some voting machines aren't count straight ticket votes properly.
Vote for each candidate separately instead of selecting the straight ticket choice.
More on straight-party vote miscounting here.
Here are the states that have straight-ticket voting options:
- Alabama
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin

"Obama is a Socialist," they cried!

Maybe you read the article about McCain and Palin accusing Obama of socialism.
Well, let's stand back and take a look at the situation more objectively:
1. We, the American taxpayer, just bailed out the Wall Street tycoons to the tune of $850 billion, which will probably end up being a whole lot more before it's all said and done.
2. The US government is buying banks to keep them from defaulting.
Now, if that isn't socialism for the RICH, then I don't know what is.
So if we are going to start pointing fingers at socialists, let us first point at the ones who took the first step: The US republican administration.
Now, frankly, if we are going to have socialism for the rich, I think it's about time we had socialism for the common folk, hard-working taxpayers like you and me. I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, my Momma always said.....
So what do I think about Socialism? Hey, gimme some too!!!

The "Constitution-Free Zone"

And this is what it has come to: the bulk of the US population, nearly 200,000 million, live in a constitution-free zone where they can be harassed at will by Homeland Security.
Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.
All of the orange areas on this map are the constitution-free zone of the US. You can be stopped by Homeland Security for any reason within this zone, searched, questioned, and even body-cavity-searched without any recourse.
Feeling all warm and snugly about now?

OH, and you think it can't happen to YOU?

Voter's Choice: Choose Wisely

I hear people say they can "relate" to McCain and Palin. They talk "ordinary" and seem like the kind of people you could get to know.

Now, while that's an admirable quality, is that really who you want running your country? Some good old boy or girl who might be nice and ordinary but might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer?

I believe we got that kind the last two times we voted for president, and what pray tell did it get us? In bankruptcy, debt up to our ears, tied up in a war we never should have started, and not any safer than we were when we started, possibly much less safer....

Personally, I'd rather have the Harvard graduate running my country...someone with brains and skill...someone who can speak with the upper crust of other countries and have them actually hear us instead of make fun of us...someone who's smart enough to know what he does NOT know and who finds the appropriate people to give him that missing information.

Yes, give me a man with a real brain and education, and oh yeah--make the vice president somebody who at least knows the political ropes and could run my country better than a cover girl from the backwoods, please!

Bernanke backs Obama: Who'da thunk it?

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, citing a 'weak' outlook for the U.S. economy into next year, differed with the White House and endorsed consideration of a fiscal stimulus package.

Lawmakers "should consider including measures to help improve access to credit by consumers, homebuyers, businesses and other borrowers," Bernanke said in prepared testimony to the House Budget Committee. "Such actions might be particularly effective at promoting economic growth and job creation," he said, calling consideration of a stimulus "appropriate."

You know you're short of money when.....

John McCain suggested that his Democratic rival Barack Obama’s record-shattering fundraising haul will lead to scandal in their presidential race and future races, and he hinted that there may already be funny business going on with Obama’s legions of small donors. ...
"We know that when you have unlimited amounts of money — in this case $200 million unreported — and there’s already been stories of people who have made small contributions multiple times and all that.
"I’m saying it’s laying a predicate for the future that can be very dangerous," McCain told host Chris Wallace in a live interview from Ohio on Sunday morning, blasting the Illinois senator for not voluntarily disclosing his small donors, as McCain has done.
"There’s $200 million of those campaign contributions — there’s no record. You can report online now. Two hundred million that we don’t know where it came from. Lot of strange things going on in this campaign. The American people should know where every penny came from," McCain said. "They know where every penny of my campaign contributions came from."

YES, Mr. McCain, there ARE some strange things going on in this campaign....

McCain camp hits up Russian envoy
October 20, 2008
On a day on which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis hinted that Obama was taking foreign money, the Russian Mission to the United Nations has released a standard-issue fundraising letter gone a bit astray: It was addressed to the Russian envoy to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, at the mission's address, but without his title.

As the Russian newswire RIA-Novosti tells it:

Russia's permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.
"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia's permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries," the statement said.

So you think everything is "under control"?

Banks borrow record $437.5 billion per day from Fed

17 Oct 2008 Financial institutions ran to their lender of last resort for record amounts of cash in the latest week, Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday. Banks and dealers' overall direct borrowings from the Fed averaged a record $437.53 billion per day in the week ended October 15, topping the previous week's $420.16 billion per day.
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Er..MM..Just how long do you think this can keep on going until the bottom falls out?

Karl Marx and the world financial crisis: Bernd Debusmann
Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:57pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Capitalism as we used to know it is on its deathbed. And those who predicted that the old brand, the unfettered, American-promoted system, was a danger to the world, are being vindicated. They include Karl Marx, whose thinking on banks seems oddly contemporary these days.

The credit crisis that began in August last year and turned into near-catastrophe this month is not over, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars that governments are spending to save banks in the United States and Europe from collapse and thereby prevent a global depression. But there is an emerging consensus that capitalism needs a 21st century overhaul, not just emergency rescues, to save it from itself.

When that will happen is not clear. "What we are seeing right now looks like a very slow train wreck," says James Boughton, the historian of the International Monetary Fund, or IMF.

Obama: the blackness issue

I see that the RACE thing is rearing it's ugly head finally in the elections. Here's my soapbox delivery on this subject:

You know, I grew up with black kids in my classes at school, and one thing I noticed about them: they weren't any smarter or dumber than the rest of us. Most of them had "issues" with money, and having enough money was their biggest problem.
There was this girl in my class who was smart as a tack and a beauty with very dark skin, and her goal was to go to secretarial school. Reason being, she had money issues and this was all she could afford. That was back in '67, by the way, and money for school was not an easy thing to come by in those days.

Now, I personally feel that judging a person by the amount of melanin his/her skin is about the stupidest thing a person can do.
We ALL came out of Africa, if you want the total truth. We ALL started out black. Some of us lived in places where our skin adjusted to the different light and our skin got lighter, but in the beginning we were all the same. You can believe that God created us or whatever, but archeology does NOT lie--it's provable.
Now, I've known good and bad black people and I've know good and bad white people. To judge a person by his skin for his goodness or badness is flawed thinking. We've got some really nice black and asian people living right here in my neighborhood it so happens. And they are as respected as the white ones.
Here's the bottom line from where I sit:
IF you believe the Bible, then you don't believe that some people are worth more than others, and you don't believe that race matters. Jesus saw all colors equally...like that song says, "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight."
So if you believe in Jesus, then you should not see skin color as a significant part of a person. It's an incidental finding, but it's not significant.
And if you can't get past the race issues, then I pray for you, and I hope you pray for your own shortsightedness and bias.
Because the God I believe in does not see skin color, he only sees what's in the heart and mind.
You can't tell a book by its cover and you can't judge a person by his skin.
May we all look that deeply and not just focus on what's on the outside.

And you probably wondered....

WHY will the banks not lend money, WHY are they hoarding money?
And then maybe you wondered what triggered the market to fall like a turd in a churn yesterday....
Well, if you thought the market was bad yesterday, look out for today.......
It's gonna be grim, trust me. Today is the day they have to pay for the Lehman's derivatives.
Get a better understanding of why the banks are not lending any money right here

Tomorrow, the auction for Lehman's credit default swaps will be held, and the final result will probably be that that holders of credit default swaps will have to pay around $360 billion dollars (see below). That's for Lehman alone. Derivatives exposure due to other failed businesses is even higher.
This is why Wall Street firms and banks have been hoarding cash. As the Financial Times wrote on October 7th:
Banks are hoarding cash in expectation of pay-outs on up to $400bn (£230bn) of defaulted credit derivatives linked to Lehman Brothers and other institutions, according to analysts and -dealers.
These contracts will be settled on Friday [October 10th], and with the recovery value on Lehman bonds currently estimated at about 10 cents on the dollar, the pay-out by banks and other sellers of credit protection on Lehman could reach a gross $360bn.

And now, I would encourage you to read this story. It is LONG but it's very insightful, as it explains the tawdry progress of the mortgage crisis, who promulgated it, and how it evolved. After you read this, you will know who to blame for the mess we are in right now.
They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis
State whistleblowers tried to curtail greedy lending—and were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry

IMF sees major global economic downturn

(CLICK THE LINK TO READ FULL STORY)
Crisis puts policy makers 'between a rock and a hard place'
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last update: 9:27 a.m. EDT Oct. 8, 2008
Comments: 2
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The world economy has entered a "major downturn" with significant risks of worsening, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday in its annual World Economic Outlook.
"After years of strong growth, the world economy is decelerating quickly," the report said. "Global activity is being buffeted by an extraordinary financial shock and by still-high energy and other commodity prices."
The financial shock has put monetary-policy makers "between a rock and a hard place," the IMF said, needing to work on two fronts: stabilizing the financial sector and using monetary and fiscal policies to support growth.

Obama: I'll see your Ayers and raise you a Keating-5 and a Liddy

McCain must be desperate, he's starting into the mud-slinging phase of his campaign and avoiding the real issues. Well, mud that's thrown can be thrown right back.....

First we have the infamous "Keating-5" S&L Scandal to McCain's resume...and now, MY FRIENDS.....

With friends like these ...McCain finds his own radical friend

Steve Chapman
(excerpt)
Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology -- and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he's not so sure.
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How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns -- including $1,000 this year.

Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Which principles would those be?

--The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents?
--The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention?
--The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history -- and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as "a prisoner of war."

All this may sound like ancient history. But it's from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy's penchant for extreme solutions has not abated.

In 1994, after the disastrous federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, he gave some advice to his listeners: "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."

He later backed off, saying he meant merely that people should defend themselves if federal agents came with guns blazing. But his amended guidance was not exactly conciliatory: Liddy also said he should have recommended shots to the groin instead of the head. If that wasn't enough to inflame any nut cases, he mentioned labeling targets "Bill" and "Hillary" when he practiced shooting.

Given Liddy's record, it's hard to see why McCain would touch him with a 10-foot pole. On the contrary, he should be returning his donations and shunning his show. Yet the senator shows no qualms about associating with Liddy -- or celebrating his service to their common cause.

How does McCain explain his howling hypocrisy on the subject? He doesn't. I made repeated inquiries to his campaign aides, which they refused to acknowledge, much less answer. On this topic, the pilot of the Straight Talk Express would rather stay parked in the garage.

That's an odd policy for someone who is so forthright about his rival's responsibility. McCain thinks Obama should apologize for associating with a criminal extremist. To which Obama might reply: After you.

The federal role in subprime mortgage mess

Read the entire story at the link to hear yet again how the Feds caused the sub-prime mortgage mess...and of course NOW they want US to pay for their crime by incurring $700 billion of debt, not to cure the problem, but to pay off the crooks! This is the same story that Eliot Spitzer wrote about just before he got outed.
Nicholas Bagley: The federal role in subprime mortgage messs
By Nicholas Bagley -
Published 12:00 am PST Monday, January 28, 2008

As the federal government scurries to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis from sending the economy into a deep recession, people are asking why it waited so long to intervene. But, in fact, a few years ago an obscure federal agency torpedoed legislation from a handful of states that would have made institutional investors far more chary of buying mortgages that were likely to fail. If the legislation had been permitted to take effect, the crisis we now face would probably look a lot less grim.