8:02 that was a terse handshake

8:03 Obama talks about the economy. “The worst economic situation since the Great Depression”. He seems a bit stiff. God is he ever nervous.

— oversight
— taxpayers should be able to get money back
— none of that money should pad CEO bank accounts
— helping homeowners

8:05 McCain also seems nervous but a bit more together than Obama. He’s “feeling better” about the economy because Dems & Repubs are working together.

— loans to failing businesses instead of government taking over

8:08 Does Obama favor this plan? “I am optimistic about us coming together about a plan.” Obama asks how we got into this situation in the first place? He’s right.

8:09 “How is it we shredded so many regulations”

8:10 McCain says he warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “a lot of us saw it, this trainwreck coming”. “We’ve got to also start holding people accountable”. It sounds like they actually fundamentally agree.

8:11 Obama counters slightly: “We need accountability but not just when its a crisis.”

8:12 Lehrer: “I’m just determined to get you two to talk to one another.” Everyone knows that McCain doesn’t like Obama.

8:13 McCain: “We gotta fix the system”, Main Street is paying, etc. “I have a fundamental belief in the strength of the American worker.” Yes, we know.

8:14 Fundamental differences? McCain: “Spending is out of control in Washington.” Earmarking is “A gateway drug”. Says Obama has asked for $930 million dollars in earmarks

8:16 Obama says he suspended requesting earmarks until the system cleaned up. McCain is asking for 300 billion dollars in tax cuts to some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Obama wants to grow the economy “from the bottom up”.

8:18 McCain says Obama suspended his requests “after running for President”. Boy McCain is working overtime with the cliches. McCain claims Obama is asking for $800 billion in new spending.

8:19 Obama says he’s going to close corporate loopholes to pay for his programs which is where the $800 billion is going to come from.

8:20 McCain says businesses pay 35% tax, Ireland pays 11%. He wants to cut the business tax so we’re on par with countries where jobs are being shipped. “Senator Obama is a recent convert after asking for $932 million dollars of pork barrell projects.”

– Double dividend for every dependent child in America

8:22 Obama: 95% of Americans get a tax cut. Business taxes on paper are high in this country. But the loopholes are so heavy that businesses pay the lowest business taxes in the world thanks to loopholes.

He says McCain intends to tax health benefits. If you lose your health care, you have to go out on the market and buy it.

8:23 McCain talks about the energy bill with tax breaks for oil companies, Obama voted for, McCain voted against. Trying to paint himself as the fiscal conservative. Two tax brackets, two dividends.

8:25 Obama: I was opposed to those tax breaks (to oil companies). McCain is laughing at him. What an a-hole.

8:27 As President what will you have to give up in terms of spending? Obama: investing in alternative energies, education, science, infrastructure, eliminate programs that don’t work and make programs that do work more efficient.

8:28 McCain says “we have to cut spending”. Get rid of “cost-plus contracts” — oh like um, the ones in Iraq? We need “fixed cost contracts” and of course “defense spending”. “I saved the taxpayers 6.8 billion dollars by negotiating a contract between Boeing and DOD…”

8:31 Obama – “Right now we give 15 billion dollars to private insurers as subsidies to the health care system because lobbyists are able to shape how health care works” —

New Term Introduced: Google for Government, to show who is doing what and spending where in the government

8:32 McCain “How about a spending freeze”

Obama: “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel”

“We’re currently spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq when they have a 79 billion dollar surplus”

McCain: “We’re sending 700 billion dollars overseas” and “some of that money ends up in people’s hands that we don’t want” meaning terrorists.

8:36 McCain says that health care would be handed over to the Federal Government under Obama. Now he’s talking about spending restraint “We owe China 500 billion dollars”.

8:37 Obama: “John, It’s your President who you agreed with 90% of the time, saying you’re going to lead on controlling spending….when over the last 8 years that hasn’t happened, it’s a little hard to swallow.”

8:38 McCain: “I have disagreed with the President on _______ [issues].”

8:39 What are the lessons of the Iraq war? McCain:”The lessons of Iraq is you cannot have a failed strategy that can cause you to lose the conflict.” “The war was very badly mishandled.”

8:40 Obama: “The first question is whether we should’ve gone into the war in the first place.” Mentions Afghanistan, bin Laden, says he voted against the war at a time when it was unpopular. “I wish I had been wrong and they had been right for the sake of the country.”

“We have to use our miitary wisely and we did not use our military wisely in Iraq.”

8:43 McCain: “The next President of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave and what we leave behind.”

8:44: Obama: “You like to pretend like the war started in 2007. It started in 2003.”

8:45 McCain: “Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.”

McCain is such a douche. He’s laughing at Obama. That doesn’t win him any points.

8:59 Every time McCain mentions something about his connection to the armed forces, you’re required to drink. Heavily. We get it, you’re a war hero and you understand how war works. Congratulations.

9:02 Obama attacked McCain on believing we can “muddle through” Afghanistan, and McCain attacks Obama for never visiting Afghanistan. McCain still believes there is a connection between Afghanistan and Iraq.

9:15 McCain is on the defensive heavily on the issue of sitting down with rogue nations. Apparently, Henry Kissinger said we should have sit downs with no preconditions with Iran — but not the President to do so according to McCain.

9:20 Obama and McCain fundamentally agree on how to deal with Russia, we’ve learned.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents—voters Obama can't win the White House without—agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

"There are a lot fewer bigots than there were 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's only a few bigots," said Stanford political scientist Paul Sniderman who helped analyze the exhaustive survey

Poll: Racial misgivings of whites an Obama issue.

People: what year are we living in?

If you’re going to introduce race into the +/- for this Presidential race, please remember: we have, in elections around the country for many years, elected mayors, senators and governors who are of varying races, nationalities and skin tones all across this country.

If what’s keeping you from voting for the candidate that you want is the color of their skin and not the content of their character, regardless of what that skin tone is, your vote in this election is probably not required. If you can’t vote for the candidate you want because you’re that prejudiced, then stay home. No matter who is elected, you will always have no voice, because you can’t hear anyone else’s besides your own.

If you can see past whatever prejudice you have, please remember this: you not voting for your conscience means that someone else who is voting based primarily on their racial prejudice will control the future of your country.

And like it or not, the terrorists will have really won then.

photo credit: Barack Obama

The 2008 Presidential election was never going to be simple. For a time, it seemed that the tide was moving in one specific direction; today, it is turning into a hotly-contested political contest fueled by innuendo and distortions the likes of which the American people have not seen in many years.

On the left, Barack Obama, the presumptive favorite of the American people (based on their feeling about the issues affecting them) has been solid and steady about his promise to bring change and reform to Washington since proclaiming his run for the presidency in February of 2007. There is Senator Joe Biden, one of the lowest-level income earners in both public service and Congress, whose very direct grassroots style and deep connection to the common people of America have earned him immense respect and the Democratic vice-presidential nod.

On the right, the self-proclaimed “mavericks” whose messages represent the policies which we have lived with for the past eight years. The right’s two personalities, John McCain and his running mate Governor Sarah Palin, have proven effective in their quest to transform the campaign messages of the left and make them their own, repackaging the notions of “change” and “progress” by distancing themselves from the current White House and introducing Sarah Palin, a virtual ringer, into the contest for the White House. The process has been effective: the Republicans were able to stop the bleeding using Palin’s limitless charm as a security blanket for a race which seemed lost to them just weeks ago.

Obama has, for his part, handled matters with kid gloves up to this point. It’s not because of his unwillingness to fight but out of a genuine fear of being caught in the “catch-22″ of being mislabeled by undecided voters in the short run to election day. Obama has run a positive campaign and one which has been based on the issues. He has proven himself a remarkable public speaker, a man whose genuine concern for the welfare of our country comes across as honest rather than pious. He is a man of great intelligence and forethought, one who speaks with a no-nonsense ease about what he believes in and never shies away from answering tough questions.

However, in recent days, McCain’s organizers have been circling the wagons, unleashing a smear campaign fueled by half-truths and distortions, both of their own record and that of Senator Obama. In the PR wars, McCain has pulled out all the stops as he sprints for the White House, armed with the fuel of young Governor Sarah Palin, a dynamic mother of five whose far-right conservative views, glamorous appeal and friendly demeanor seem to set people at ease in small town America. Both Senator McCain and Governor Palin have dominated the headlines this week, both for what they are saying and what they are not.

The fear of the Democratic party is being realized as it was in 2000: people see Sarah Palin and they want to get to know her, relate to her motherly instincts and, honestly, they want to be her buddy. This has created a strong appeal by the Republican ticket to the lowest common denominators among voters, an edging factor which gave George Bush a boost in the previous two Presidential election cycles. It’s a similar scenario to what we saw with Barack Obama just a few weeks ago: people beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, hearing a voice that comforted them and gave them pause.

But people need to wake up and come to realize that Sarah Palin is not running for President, that she is only the vice-presidential candidate and appears, to the untrained eye, to be an only mildly successful parrot for the talking points and ideas of her party, evidenced by her first full-length interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson this week.

While the attacks continue, Obama appears to finally be ready to throw some jabs of his own, that the gloves appear to be ready to come off. No longer willing to take the half-truths and distortions illuminated by the McCain camp, Obama has, in the last 48 hours, taken McCain directly to task, telling the McCain camp that “If you don’t stop telling lies about me, I’m going to have to start telling the truth about you.” Obama has approved his first negative campaign ad, repeating his message from the convention that McCain is “out of touch” because he “doesn’t even know how to use a computer” (a statement which was later disproved and an argument which Obama is likely to take heat from). The Obama camp struck an even more heavy-handed chord, saying that McCain would “rather lose his integrity than lose the race”.

When we look at the course of the mudslinging battle that has gone on, it’s easy to see why the Obama camp is willing to step up their game & take their own set of low-blows. If people from the lowest common denominator are going to respect Obama, they must see him as willing to step in the ring when attacked, no matter who the opponent nor which ring it is. Though by his nature Obama has portrayed himself as a noble statesman with a powerful approach to the issues, he seems to have been forced to move down to the level of the McCain camp in order to dismiss any notion that he is backing down from a fight.

The McCain camp, one which is supposed to be ahead in the polls, has behaved more like a wounded creature with a trick up their sleeve. The McCain/Palin ticket, at its basest level, should be seen as nothing more than an effective PR stunt by the right meant to confuse voters and frustrate opponents.

Once the dust settles, pundits agree, and both sides are able to get voters focused back on the issues of the campaign, Obama stands a much greater chance of delivering the coup d’grace to the Republicans that he has continually sought. The Republicans, while certainly well-meaning when it comes to their agenda, seek to run their campaign on personalities instead of issues. It is what secured them the White House in 2000, and they know that their machine is working with Sarah Palin as the focus. Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying their best to turn the tide of public attention back towards the difficulties we as Americans face while standing their ground and fighting back in the face of bitter and increasingly inaccurate personal attacks.

But if I could reach Senator Obama now, I would ask him not to back down from the fight, to unleash tough language where it is necessary, and to never back down from this fight at any level. If I could reach Senator McCain, I would ask him to quit pandering to the whims of his base, knowing that if he really is the maverick he claims to be, he most certainly should not give in to making personal attacks when he knows that all it will do is bring shame to the Republican party, as his predecessor has done, should he take the election.

I feel so terrible for Obama. If he says nothing or doesn’t attack back, they think he’s weak. If he speaks up and lashes back, they call him sexist. I just hope he continues to stay focused on the truth.

Only the truth will set us free.