It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street.
We need also to not get ourselves in debt. Let's do what our parents told us before we probably even got that first credit card. Don't live outside of our means. We need to make sure that as individuals we're taking personal responsibility through all of this.
It's not the American peoples fault that the economy is hurting like it is, but we have an opportunity to learn a heck of a lot of good lessons through this and say never again will we be taken advantage of.
Those people who say don't go into debt, they can barely pay to fill up their gas tank.
If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged.As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion. Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively). Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother.Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted.Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?”If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. What to do?McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden. Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.Do it for your country. — Kathleen Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Team, Last week, our campaign launched a grassroots effort to put you in touch with voters all across the country through our online phone bank. The polls all show this election is in a dead heat, and we expect the polls to stay close until Election Day. That's why it's so important for you to get involved today. This election will be won by turning out key voters all over the country. You can help the McCain-Palin campaign win by taking 30 minutes out of your evening to make 20 calls for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The Obama-Biden campaign has hired hundreds of paid staff and is spending millions of dollars bombarding undecided voters with advertisements filled with negative, misleading and false information about John McCain and Governor Palin. We need your help to combat this and get the truth out to these voters. You are the most effective surrogate we have in this campaign. By reaching out to undecided voters, one by one, you are taking a crucial step towards our victory. Today, we are only six weeks away from Election Day and we need your help right now. In such a close election, taking 30 minutes to make 20 calls for John McCain and Governor Palin can make the difference. As always, I appreciate your hard work and dedication to our team! Sincerely,Christian FerryDeputy Campaign Manager
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." (Contingencies Magazine)
“[McCain] wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street. I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea." (Washington Post, Sept. 21, 2008)
Practicing What He Preaches – Holding McCain AccountableMcCain has repeatedly said this past week that the McCain-Palin administration will “bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street.” (Kansas City Star, Sept. 15, 2008) Because of McCain’s calls for “transparency and accountability” on Wall Street, I find it important to hold McCain accountable for what he is not telling the American people. “[E]ight years ago, [Phil]Gramm, then a Republican senator chairing the Senate banking committee, slipped a 262-page bill into a gargantuan, must-pass spending measure. Gramm's legislation, written with the help of financial industry lobbyists, essentially removed newfangled financial products called swaps from any regulation. Credit default swaps are basically insurance policies that cover the losses on investments, and they have been at the heart of the subprime meltdown because they have enabled large financial institutions to turn risky loans into risky securities that could be packaged and sold to other institutions.” It is this bill that has been blamed for the subprime lending crisis, the crisis that destroyed our housing market, led to our record high foreclosure rate and jump-started our downward spiraling economy. (Mother Jones, Sept. 15, 2008)Gramm was also responsible for the “Enron Loophole” which prevented federal government oversight of Enron's electronic energy trading. “Such favors proved very expensive to consumers but profitable to the Gramms. Enron CEO Ken Lay chaired Gramm's 1992 re-election campaign, and wife Wendy Gramm spent years on the Enron board, earning as much as $1.8 million, according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocate.” (Houston Chronicle, Sept. 18, 2008)Despite Gramm’s clear hand in our subprime mortgage crisis and the fact that Gramm’s bill was directly responsible for the Enron Loophole that resulted in the notorious Enron disaster, McCain chose Gramm to be chairman of his campaign and a top economic adviser until Gramm went so far as to dismiss Americans worried about the economy as “whiners” at which point McCain supposedly dumped Gramm.(Mother Jones, Sept. 15, 2008) Last month Gramm attended a meeting of McCain's top supporters in Aspen and at a dinner that day, McCain pointed out Gramm and showered him with praise. As early as last week, Ron Paul revealed that Gramm, now an exec for Swiss banking giant UBS, had contacted him in order to get Paul to support McCain, but Paul dismissed Gramm, the man responsible for initiating the Enron Loophole and our subprime lending crisis all with the drafting of a single bill. For a man demanding “transparency” and “accountability” from Wall Street, it seems to me McCain should be “transparent” and “accountable” to the American people. You would think that the Americans who have lost their homes as a result of our subprime mortgage crisis would have a different feeling about McCain if they knew how closely he was tied to the man who engineered the problem that led them to lose their homes. At the very least, McCain’s claims that he will help the American people is called into question by his sense of judgment in choosing to refer to Gramm on issues of the economy – when Gramm has done so much to bring about the economic decline that is forcing Americans to struggle and when he has been so callous as to call average American families struggling to make ends meet in our fledgling economy “whiners,” at the very minimum, McCain should distance himself from Gramm to prove that he is on the side of American middle and working-class families. Yet, he hasn’t even taken that small step to stand up for the average American.As Lynn Turner, a former chief SEC accountant said, "If McCain gets in, we'll have more of the same deregulatory mess. I like John McCain, but given what I know about Phil Gramm, I wouldn't vote for McCain." If the American people knew about Phil Gramm and knew about McCain’s ties to Phil Gramm, I have a feeling most of them would feel exactly the same way. I suppose this explain why this isn’t a topic of conversation by McCain and Palin at their rallies or interviews. (Mother Jones, July/August)Small Government = Bigger GovernmentMcCain and Palin have continuously touted the Republican belief that America benefits most from smaller government, less regulation and states handling their own matters without excessive federal oversight. Yet, it is this continued deregulation that has caused our banking and insurance industries to slowly unravel. It is this deregulation that has forced our government to take over AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae; the push for excessive deregulation of these industries backfired and left us with even more government control and regulation. And if McCain wants to apply the same deregulation to our American healthcare system, how can we expect it to fare any better? If there is a saving grace to this economic crisis coming weeks before the election, it is that we have been alerted to how this deregulation has endangered our finance, banking and insurance industries and, if McCain is elected, how our healthcare system will face a similar peril.
I can't help but be outraged by the deceitful campaign that McCain and Palin are running. I am outraged not only because it is intensely misleading, but because it is taking advantage of the lower and middle class. Those making the least in our society are the ones likely to not have home internet, likely to be the least educated among our society and likely to have the least resources to fact-check each of McCain's statements. And these are the people McCain is successfully preying upon to lure additional votes at the stake of their own economic and social futures. If it is illegal to pay off American voters in order to secure a following then so too should it be illegal to lie to an entire sector of our society that lacks the means to identify the difference between truth and falsity. In a nation where we so value our right to vote, McCain and Palin with their lies, are almost stripping that right from those they are able to deceive with their campaign tactics. Now that is unacceptable.
Campaigns should be regulated. There should be a national fact-checking organization that fines candidates when they lie to the American people. How else can Americans be sure that they are voting for a candidate that is speaking truth and not just lying to them in order to score a vote?
Every time McCain and Palin say Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, a fact that his been proven to be a lie by every major news organization in the country, his campaign should be fined. Every time the McCain camp says Palin visited Iraq (when she might have just put one foot into the border and even that is not verified by anyone) and Ireland (because on the only trip in her life out of North America her plane stopped there to refuel, with her never stepping foot outside of the plane), the McCain campaign should be fined. When McCain painted Obama as one who voted to teach sex ed to kindergarteners when the bill was aimed at teaching young children to identify and avoid sexual predators, the McCain campaign should have been fined. When McCain repeatedly says Obama will increase taxes for the middle class when Obama's tax plan actually decreases 95% of middle class Americans' taxes, the McCain campaign should be fined. McCain and Palin should have campaign funds stripped in order to hold them accountable for the words they speak to the American people and the promises they make to them concerning their futures.
Clearly, this is not something that will come about during this election, but for future elections, there should be a system that holds candidates accountable. How else can anyone be sure that they are not just being blatantly lied to by the very people campaigning to lead our nation. If the American people were clear on the fact that all of the above are clear lies by McCain and that, in fact, there are so many lies that I had to sit down and select just a handful, do you think they would be standing up for this man and supporting his move into the White House? No. Clearly, they would not be. But the American people are being fooled and they are none the wiser. This has got to change. We are not talking about being foooled into buying a product off of a midnight infomercial and losing $19.95. No. We are talking about the American people being misled into electing a man into office that might work against them on every issue that they hold dear only because they never knew what was true and what was false. This is unacceptable.
"Our economy -- I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong -- but these are very, very difficult times. (CNN, Sept. 15, 2008)
"For eight years, we've had policies that have shredded consumer protections, that have loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans. The result is the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression." (CNN, Sept. 15, 2008)
"Ladies and gentlemen, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well -- unless I ran into John McCain. ... I don't doubt that John cares. He just doesn't think. He doesn't think that we have any responsibility to help people who are hurting.” (CNN, Sept. 15, 2008)
"John McCain says he's about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is, 'Watch out George Bush -- except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics -- we're really going to shake things up in Washington. That's not change. That's just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough of the same old thing."
Through this campaign ad, released by McCain, McCain would like you to believe that Obama has as he says, "only one accomplishment" and that is, in McCain's words, Obama's (gasp!) "legislation to teach comprehensive sex-education to kindergarteners." "
Learning about sex before learning to read?" the ad says. "Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family." The Truth -- Not McCain's Lies McCain, must again, think the American people are stupid, creating a campaign ad built on nothing but shameful lies. Let's run through the facts:
Why Obama Supported The Legislation in 2003
Rather than attacking Obama, McCain should be praising Obama for taking a stand to protect America's children. The statistics show that one out of every three to four girls has been sexually assaulted by the age of 18 and one boy out of every six will be abused by the age of 18. With over 491,720 registered sex offenders in the United States (with 80,000 to 100,000 of them currently missing) and the standard pedophile committing 117 sexual crimes in their lifetime, we should be thankful that there is someone out there like Obama that is able to recognize the importance of making children aware enough to recognize if they are being sexually abused. Clearly, McCain left all of this information out of the ad; you can't exactly vilify Obama when he is out to help parents that choose for thier kids to learn how to identify and protect themselves from possible sexual predators, can you?
Why Did McCain Make This Ad?
McCain has said that the Obama campaign is desperate, but the McCain campaign released this baseless ad just hours after Obama gave a speech on education and offered proposals that would have appealed to Republicans. Obama promised to double funding for charter schools, pay teachers based on performance and replace those who aren't up to the job -- guess that was too much for McCain to handle, so he had to make up this ad.
How You Can Help
McCain's ad will air in parts of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin, as well as on the Discovery channel -- please send this blog entry to everyone possible to that we can disarm McCain's despicable ad before it gains any traction. Let's show McCain and Palin that community organizers can work together to bring to light the package of lies they keep dropping at the American people's feet.
"Under Senator Obama's tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise--seniors, parents, small business owners, and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market."
"Back in the real world, Obama is married to a black woman. He goes to a black church. He's worked with poor people on the South Side of Chicago, and still lives there. That someone given the escape valve of biraciality would choose to be black, would see some beauty in his darker self and still care more about health care and public education than reparations and Confederate flags is just too much for many small-minded racists, both black and white, to comprehend.Barack Obama's real problem isn't that he's too white — it's that he's too black. "
"For one thing, Trinity insisted on social activism as a part of Christian life. It was also a family place. Members refer to the sections in the massive sanctuary as neighborhoods; churchgoers go to the same neighborhood each Sunday and they get to know the people who sit near them. They know when someone's sick or got a promotion at work."
" 'Senator Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder,' spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. 'His concern is that this has had a profoundly negative impact on the Cuban people, making them more dependent on the Castro regime, thus isolating them from the transformative message carried by Cuban-Americans.' "
"It shows courage, and it shows commitment to move beyond the status-quo politics of rhetoric, which is all the Cuban-American community has received from any party for the last half century."
Lately, there's a lot of talk on whether or not Sarah Palin has the experience to be the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Throughout the primaries and now in this presidential campaign, we have heard Obama attacked on whether he has the experience needed to run this country. Last night, in her speech, Palin mocked Obama's experience level and represented herself not only as being as experienced as Obama, but shockingly enough, more experienced than Obama. I thought it worthwhile to take a look at Palin's experience level as it compares to Obama so that you can decide for yourself. After all, the facts show the clear winner on the issue -- Obama. Now, before we get into the facts and figures, some of you may be thinking -- it matters if Obama has the experience; he is running for President, leader of our country. Well, to those of you, I say that the Vice President is just as important of a post as that of President. Eight Vice Presidents, throughout our nation's history, have taken office after the death of the sitting President. If inaugurated, McCain would be the oldest President to serve our nation. With age come health problems -- he's already had 4 malignant melanomas, 4 kidney stones, takes medicine for high blood pressure, high lipids (cholesterol), prevention of blood clots, allergies and insomnia. Oh -- he was also a two-pack a day smoker for 25 years. (CNN, May 23, 2008) So yes, all in all, McCain is no sprightly youth with a clean bill of health; a vote for McCain is a vote for Palin as stand-in president. Same for Obama, of course. A vote for Obama is also a vote for Biden as stand-in president. Luckily, Biden has 36 years in the Senate, earning chairmanships of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. This means when Biden entered the Senate Sarah Palin was a child of 8 years of age. Palin's "Experience"
Palin's "Experience" in National Office:
Palin has no experience in national office. Before becoming governor in December 2006, she served as a council member and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, which had a population of slightly more than 5,000 during her time in office. Obama, on the other hand, served nearly four years in the U.S. Senate after eight in the Illinois state Senate. Alaska is a much smaller state than Illinois -- Alaska has a population of 670,053 while Illinois has a population of 12,831,970. This means there are 19 times as many people living in Illinois as there are in Alaska -- the numbers speak for themselves. <big><Strong> Palin as a Supposed "Community Organizer:"</big></strong>In her speech last night, Palin mocked Obama for the time he spent as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago over two decades ago. Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America's promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. Rather than mock the idea of community organizing, Sarah Palin should be thanking the women's suffrage movement and the community organizers that brought that change about -- without women being granted the right to vote, she would never be where she was last night, accepting her VP nomination. More importantly, Palin attempted to elevate herself above Obama stating, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." What Palin didn't say is that as a small town mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she may have been a community organizer to a little under 5,000 people -- there are high schools in Chicago with more people than Wasilla, Alaska but you don't see their principles being nominated for Vice President. Obama, on the other hand, has led Illinois in the state Senate and now in our nation's Senate for twelve years. He had been a community organizer in Chicago prior to that where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. What Palin didn't say last night is that whereas she was a community organizer for under 5,000 people, Obama was a major community organizer in Chicago, the third most populous city in America with about 9.7 million people in the Chicago Metropolitan Area and one of the 25 largest cities in the world; he was also a community organizer over two decades ago, establishing a solid track record for 12 years since then in the State Senate and our U.S. Senate. I can see why she failed to mention this last part -- hard to elevate herself above Obama if she makes a true comparison, isn't it? Palin - Least Experienced Ever:
If elected vice president, Palin would have the least amount of experience in federal office or as a governor since John W. Kern, Democrat William Jennings Bryan’s 1908 running mate, who had served for four years in the Indiana state Senate and then four more as city solicitor of Indianapolis. (Politico, August 30, 2008) Palin, by comparison is only a half-term governor of Alaska; she has only served 2 years as governor of our least populous state, a state that because of it's small population never has to deal with the issues that face our more populous states and, consequently, our nation.
Despite her short stint as governor of Alaska, Palin has managed to already become the focus of a major state ethics investigation as part of the "Troopergate" scandal, a large controversy involving the firing of a state police chief and his reluctance to fire an Alaska state trooper, Palin's former brother-in-law who has been involved in a vicious custody fight with her sister. (Black Star News) Palin did acknowledge that her staff had contacted Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan about two dozen times about Wooten. (CNNPolitics, September 3, 2008)Interestingly enough, Monegan himself was fired "out of the blue" on July 11th, later stating that he was pressured by Palin's family and staff to get rid of Wooten, a trooper stationed in Palmer, Alaska. (MSNBC, August 29, 2008) There have been calls for Palin's impeachment as a consequence of her ethical violations as governor. Given that she has been able to do this much damage to her reputation in just under two years as governor of Alaska, can you imagine the ethical violations she could rack up if she were elected to serve as Vice President for four, or even worse, eight years? If by experience she means experience in violating the ethical rules set to safeguard our nation's citizens from more powerful political entities like herself, then yes, she is right, she has a lot of experience in that realm. McCain has said "she's got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today." (Washington Post, August 29, 2008)Maybe McCain thinks we need someone with the "integrity" to be investigated for ethical violations by the state she's served as governor for a mere half term, but I think most Americans agree that "what we need in Washington today" is clearly not the "integrity" that Sarah Palin has shown to have. And now for a comparison...Obama's Experience (Facts and Figured Found Here)Illinois State Senate:
In the Illinois State Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans for eight years (4 times the amount of time Palin has served as governor) to help working families get ahead by formulating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided more than $100 million in tax cuts to families throughout Illinois. He also expanded early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Obama worked with law enforcement to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. Aid to families, reducing taxes, bettering education, protecting civil rights -- this is the experience that can lead our country in a positive direction in the future. US Senate:
In the U.S. Senate, Obama passed his first law, across party lines, with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where each and every dime of their tax dollars are being spent. He has also been the leading voice in championing ethics reform that would eliminate Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress. Ethics reform, not ethics violations and ethics state investigations which seem to be Palin's affiliation with the word "ethics." Foreign Relations:
Graduating from Columbia University with a degree in political science with a concentration in international relations, Obama has the education that sets the base for his experience. In the U.S. Senate, Obama is unique among all Senators in serving on three of the four Senate Committees focused on foreign policy issues including the Foreign Relations, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Veterans' Affairs committees and he serves as the Chair of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Relations which is responsible fore U.S. relations with European countries, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). When comparing Obama's foreign policy experience with other candidates for President, including John McCain and Hillary Clinton, there is no Senator except for Obama who serves on three of the four foreign policy-related committees In addition to serving as Chair of the Subcommittee on European Relations, Obama also serves on the Subcommittees on African Affairs, East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection. Because of this varied subcommittee experience, Obama, unlike John McCain or Sarah Palin, has clear and concrete knowledge about Asian, African and European issues.Moreover, Obama has traveled extensively in his capacity as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and has visited Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan in Asia; Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, and the Palestinian Territories in the Middle East; and Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa in Africa. As a result of his travels, Obama has co-sponsored the "Lugar-Obama Act" with Republican Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations at the time, an bi-partisan effort to increase U.S. security by working to eliminate conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Obama sponsored legislation such as the "Democratic Republic of Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act," which President Bush signed into law on December 22, 2006. Obama also co-sponsored bills related to imimigration as part of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, including the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. His vast foreign policy experience exceeds that of McCain and Palin as does his level of travel abroad in the performance of his official duties as a member of committees focused on foreign relation matters.Ethics:
Because we know what we think about when we hear "Palin" and "ethics" in the same sentence (think: "Troopergate"), I thought it wise to examine Barack Obama's link to "ethics." Obama co-sponsored a bill which was signed in September creating a federal spending database allowing users on the Internet to track all grants, loans and awards exceeding $25,000. Obama also pushed to limit the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) authority to award open-ended, no-bid contracts in the aftermath of major disasters, a direct reaction to abuses occuring after Katrina. Ethics reform was also one of Obama's main focuses in the Illinois State Senate. Beyond the Gift Ban Act, he helped push Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich's 2003 ethics reforms. The Gift Ban Act was the first broad ethics reform in Illinois since the Watergate era, and it prohibited politicians from using campaign funds for personal use, outlawed fundraising on state property, created ethics commissions, restricted fundraisers in Springfield during legislative sessions and demanded online reporting of campaign finances. When we hear a presidential candidate's name along with the word "ethics" this is what we want to hear -- "ethics reform."Conclusion
If these facts and figures on Obama's experience had ever made it into Sarah Palin's speech last night, she would have looked like a child comparing herself to an elder statesman. It's clear that her experience is paltry in comparison, her foreign policy and national security background virtually nonexistant and her belief in her ability to lead this country, unfounded and overconfident at the expense of the American people. As such, I remind you that in 60 days, you should cast your vote for not only the voice of change, because we are not voting on rhetoric alone, but the man with the twelve years of experience leading a state with a popluation 19 times the size of Alaska and with 19 times the number of pressing issues as Alaska, backed by a Vice presidential candidate with 36 years of Senate experience (remember, when Biden took his seat in the Senate, Palin was eight years old!). Enough said.
