Making calls to your ethnic "brothers and sisters" just got EVEN easier -- by clicking on the links below, you can IMMEDIATELY access a list of voters to call, read a sample call script, and enter data you receive directly into the database of a battleground field program.
Irish-to-Irish Callshttp://my.barackobama.com/callIrishOH http://my.barackobama.com/callIrishPA
Irish-to-Irish Calls
http://my.barackobama.com/callIrishOH
http://my.barackobama.com/callIrishPA
Italian-to-Italian Callshttp://my.barackobama.com/callItalianPA
Italian-to-Italian Calls
http://my.barackobama.com/callItalianPA
Greek-to-Greek Callshttp://my.barackobama.com/callGreekPA
Greek-to-Greek Calls
http://my.barackobama.com/callGreekPA
Phone banking is an easy way to make a huge difference in these battleground states. Pick up a phone, log in, and start today!
The Obama campaign was proud to announce today the rollout of 12 European and Mediterranean American Leadership Committees. Leaders from across the country joined Jim Messina, Obama for America Chief of Staff, and Senator Tom Daschle, Campaign Chair, Obama for America and former Majority Leader of the US Senate, to confer their official endorsement of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
The members of the Irish American National Leadership Committee are as follows:
Irish American National Leadership Committee
· Ambassador Elizabeth Bagley
· Representative Bob Brady (PA)
· Representative Michael Capuano (MA)
· Former Governor Hugh Carey, New York
· Representative Russ Carnahan (MO)
· Representative Christopher Carney (PA)
· Senator Bob Casey (PA)
· Representative Joe Crowley (NY)
· Representative Bill Delahunt (MA)
· Representative John Dingell (MI)
· Senator Chris Dodd (CT)
· Representative Joe Donnelly (IN)
· Senator Byron Dorgan (ND)
· Governor James Doyle, Wisconsin
· Representative Mike Doyle (PA)
· Martin J. Dunleavy, DNC Committee Member
· Senator Dick Durbin (IL)
· Mayor Michael Fahey, Omaha, Nebraska
· John Flynn President, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers
· Michael Goodwin, President of the Office and Professional Employees International Union
· Representative Brian Higgins (NY)
· Ed Hill, President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
· Representative Maurice Hinchey (NY)
· Representative Tim Holden (PA)
· Governor Tim Kaine, Virginia
· Kerry Kennedy
· Representative Patrick Kennedy (RI)
· Senator Ted Kennedy (MA)
· Senator John Kerry (MA)
· Representative Dale Kildee (MI)
· Senator Patrick Leahy (VT)
· Representative Steve Lynch (MA)
· Representative Ed Markey (MA)
· Representative Carolyn McCarthy (NY)
· Senator Claire McCaskill (MO)
· Representative Betty McCollum (MN)
· Ed McElroy, President Emeritus, AFT
· Gerald W. McEntee, President, AFSCME
· Representative Jim McGovern (MA)
· Ambassador Gerald McGowan
· Former US Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (ME)
· Representative Alan Mollohan (WV)
· Representative Jim Moran (VA)
· Representative Patrick Murphy (PA)
· Representative John Murtha (PA)
· Representative Richard Neal (MA)
· Representative David Obey (WI)
· Governor Martin O'Malley, Maryland
· Terrence O'Sullivan, President, Laborers' International Union of North America
· Senator Jack Reed (RI)
· Richard Riley, Former Secretary of Education
· Representative Tim Ryan (OH)
· Governor Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius, Kansas
· Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith
· Ambassador Michael Sullivan
· Michael Sullivan, President, Sheet Metal Workers Union
· Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Former Lt. Governor of Maryland
· Mr. John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
Irish-Americans, like all Americans, are struggling in the current economic downturn. As president, Barack Obama will provide urgently needed financial relief for working and middle class Americans. He will:
• Enact an emergency economic plan to jumpstart the economy;
• Provide a middle class tax cut of up to $1,000 for 95 percent of workers and their families;
• Provide affordable, accessible health insurance to every American, saving a typical family up to $2,500 each year;
• Make college affordable by providing a new $4,000 American Opportunity college tax credit.
Barack Obama will focus on issues that are of special importance to Irish-Americans. Both Senator Obama and his running mate Senator Joe Biden come from Irish stock. Obama’s great, great great grandfather on his mother’s side, Fulmoth Kearney, left County Offaly in 1850, arriving in New York and eventually settling in Ohio. Obama, who has lived and worked on the south side of Chicago, the heart of the city’s strong Irish community, has a first-hand understanding of the remarkable contributions made by Irish immigrants to the United States. And since Obama’s father came to the United States from Kenya on a scholarship, Senator Obama has a unique sense of the “melting pot” that makes America great.
PEACE. While Senator McCain opposed granting a visa to Gerry Adams during the critical period of the peace process and accused President Clinton of pandering to the Irish in pursuing peace, Obama will make it a priority of his Presidency to build upon the ground-breaking work of the Irish and British Governments, the Clinton Administration, and the parties to the conflict in Northern Ireland and help solidify the peace. Senator Obama will commit all necessary resources to helping with the final steps of the peace process, including devolution of justice. He will invest the weight of the Presidency and appoint a prominent special envoy in order to advance this vital cause.
COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM. While John McCain has backed away from supporting meaningful immigration reform, Obama will fight for a reform package that keeps open the doors of opportunity in our country. Obama has played a leading role in crafting comprehensive immigration reform and believes that our broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a solution that strengthens our security while reaffirming our heritage as a nation of immigrants. As president, he will fight to strengthen border security, fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, and require a responsible path to earned citizenship for undocumented workers and their families.
STRENGTHENED BOND. American investment in Ireland played a leading role in fueling the Celtic Tiger, and Ireland’s economic prosperity in turn led to a boom in Irish investment in the United States. Obama believes that cultural, educational and business exchanges will draw us closer together, as do our common causes and common beliefs. As president, Obama will do all he can to strengthen U.S.-Irish cultural, educational and trade ties which are central to the identities of the United States and Ireland.
THESE are the worst of times. A recession verging on depression, an unpopular war, huge deficits and a deeply unpopular president have all combined to make Americans restless for dramatic change as successive surveys have found.At such a time we need to put aside many of the issues that we as a community believe dearly in when it comes to choosing a president. It is simply too fraught a time to play the ethnic see-saw game between two candidates. Indeed,were we to play that game it would have ended up pretty equal. John McCain has been eloquent and supportive on immigration and helpful on Northern Ireland.After a brief stumble on the issue of the special envoy Barack Obama's campaign has clearly become far more responsive to the Irish American community, as last week's answers to the AOH questionnaire on issues such as immigration and Northern Ireland proved. Both men, it must be said, would be friends of Irish America and Ireland if elected. Both are proud of their Irish heritage.But on the much broader issue of who can take this country out of the slough of despondency it has sunk into and create new leadership that the world is desperately seeking, there is no doubt that there is a crystal clear choice. Indeed, it is abundantly clear that one candidate far outstrips the other when it comes to the need to effect the change we desperately need.Barack Obama is that man. He would send an extraordinary message to the world if he is elected that America is prepared to turn a chapter, first of all by electing an African American to the highest position in the land. He is no ordinary African American either, the grandson of a Kenyan goat herder, born to a single mother, a man who hardly knew his father. Now, in a retelling of the classic immigrant family success story, unique to America he stands on the threshold of the White House.We Irish can relate to that extraordinary moment in time, that up from the bootstraps moment where nothing is ever the same again. Whether it was John F.Kennedy smashing the anti-Catholic bigotry in 1960 or Ronald Reagan overcoming his own desperately humble beginnings as the son of an alcoholic salesman to win the presidency in 1980, the die was irretrievably cast and a new direction pointed for ever more. It is perhaps no coincidence that both men are probably the most popular figures in their respective parties today.Obama's election would also immediately restore confidence in American leadership worldwide that has sadly been badly lacking in the Bush years. Unilateralism as a system of governance has clearly not worked. In the aftermath of 9/11 we were the most admired and respected country on earth. "We are all Americans now" Le Monde editorialized on September 12, 2001.Ireland declared a day of national mourning in solidarity with America. A new era beckoned in international cooperation, and yet we frittered all that away by rushing to war in Iraq and insisting that whatever the crisis wherever in the world we had the only legitimate world view on how to solve it.It is painful to travel overseas and see how far our star has sunk. This country cannot separate itself from the western and indeed eastern world as isolationists would wish us to. The latest financial crisis definitively proves that.We are all connected and just one e-mail away.Barack Obama has the ability to transform the current view of America with his election. He would send an eloquent signal to the world that America has made a fresh start, that the tried and stale policies of the recent past have been banished for good and that a vibrant new era has arrived. He should be our next president.
THESE are the worst of times. A recession verging on depression, an unpopular war, huge deficits and a deeply unpopular president have all combined to make Americans restless for dramatic change as successive surveys have found.
At such a time we need to put aside many of the issues that we as a community believe dearly in when it comes to choosing a president. It is simply too fraught a time to play the ethnic see-saw game between two candidates. Indeed,were we to play that game it would have ended up pretty equal. John McCain has been eloquent and supportive on immigration and helpful on Northern Ireland.
After a brief stumble on the issue of the special envoy Barack Obama's campaign has clearly become far more responsive to the Irish American community, as last week's answers to the AOH questionnaire on issues such as immigration and Northern Ireland proved. Both men, it must be said, would be friends of Irish America and Ireland if elected. Both are proud of their Irish heritage.
But on the much broader issue of who can take this country out of the slough of despondency it has sunk into and create new leadership that the world is desperately seeking, there is no doubt that there is a crystal clear choice. Indeed, it is abundantly clear that one candidate far outstrips the other when it comes to the need to effect the change we desperately need.
Barack Obama is that man. He would send an extraordinary message to the world if he is elected that America is prepared to turn a chapter, first of all by electing an African American to the highest position in the land. He is no ordinary African American either, the grandson of a Kenyan goat herder, born to a single mother, a man who hardly knew his father. Now, in a retelling of the classic immigrant family success story, unique to America he stands on the threshold of the White House.
We Irish can relate to that extraordinary moment in time, that up from the bootstraps moment where nothing is ever the same again. Whether it was John F.Kennedy smashing the anti-Catholic bigotry in 1960 or Ronald Reagan overcoming his own desperately humble beginnings as the son of an alcoholic salesman to win the presidency in 1980, the die was irretrievably cast and a new direction pointed for ever more. It is perhaps no coincidence that both men are probably the most popular figures in their respective parties today.
Obama's election would also immediately restore confidence in American leadership worldwide that has sadly been badly lacking in the Bush years. Unilateralism as a system of governance has clearly not worked. In the aftermath of 9/11 we were the most admired and respected country on earth. "We are all Americans now" Le Monde editorialized on September 12, 2001.
Ireland declared a day of national mourning in solidarity with America. A new era beckoned in international cooperation, and yet we frittered all that away by rushing to war in Iraq and insisting that whatever the crisis wherever in the world we had the only legitimate world view on how to solve it.
It is painful to travel overseas and see how far our star has sunk. This country cannot separate itself from the western and indeed eastern world as isolationists would wish us to. The latest financial crisis definitively proves that.We are all connected and just one e-mail away.
Barack Obama has the ability to transform the current view of America with his election. He would send an eloquent signal to the world that America has made a fresh start, that the tried and stale policies of the recent past have been banished for good and that a vibrant new era has arrived. He should be our next president.
OPINION: John McCain was wrong on the peace process: an Obama presidency is in Ireland's interest, writes Jean Kennedy Smith
WHEN IRISH Americans vote in November, the choice is clear: Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the candidates who are best prepared to lead us through the difficult times that lie ahead.
For many Irish Americans, Ireland is extremely important. They want a president who is deeply committed - as Bill Clinton was - to peace in Northern Ireland and strong relations with Ireland.
But commitment is not enough. Judgment is essential too. Unfortunately, John McCain's judgment has often been wrong on Northern Ireland.
Beginning in 1993, I served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to Ireland. After decades of violence, a peace process was being born.
The Clinton administration was considering whether to issue a visa for Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, to come to the United States.
By the end of December 1993, there were strong indications that the IRA might be prepared to end its violence and that a visa for Adams to come briefly to the US could help bring about a ceasefire.
John Hume, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 for his efforts in Northern Ireland, and the then taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, supported the visa.
But the British government strongly opposed it, and so did many in the state department.
I, my brother, senator Ted Kennedy, and many others urged Bill Clinton to grant it. We agreed that IRA violence was indefensible, but we concluded that granting the visa could help bring it to an end.
The opportunity for a major breakthrough for peace was worth the political risk.
The visa was granted and the strategy worked. The IRA ceasefire came at the end of August 1994.
John McCain was among those who opposed Bill Clinton's peace efforts in Northern Ireland.
McCain followed Britain's lead and opposed giving Gerry Adams the visa. He described Clinton's involvement in Northern Ireland as "mistaken".
He dismissed those who urged Clinton to grant Gerry Adams the visa as "motivated by romantic, anachronistic notions of Irish republicanism".
I found that especially insulting since my brother, and many other Irish American leaders, including house speaker Tip O'Neill, senator Pat Moynihan, and governor Hugh Carey of New York had long opposed IRA violence.
McCain expressed concern about offending our British allies, and later said it was a "terrible mistake to give Gerry Adams the publicity that a visit to the White House gave him".
He publicly defied "anyone to show me how that contributed to peace in Ireland". If it had been left to John McCain, there would have been no Northern Ireland peace process and no peace today.
There have been many ups and downs in the peace process along the way. The ceasefire was temporarily broken in 1996. But 12 years later, it is abundantly clear that the strategy pursued by the Clinton administration - and strongly opposed by John McCain - helped pave the way for the historic 1998 Belfast Agreement.
I returned to Belfast in April of this year to mark the 10th anniversary of the agreement. Obviously, some problems continue, but the progress has been immense, because Catholics and Protestants are genuinely sharing power in Northern Ireland, and the peace process is now frequently cited as a model for achieving peace in other parts of the world.
On his historic visit to Ireland in 1963, another brother, John F Kennedy spoke of Ireland and the United States as two nations "divided by distance, united by history".
"No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States," he said.
If John F Kennedy were here today, I'm sure he would agree that no two people are more committed than Barack Obama and Joe Biden to strengthening the ties that bind America and Ireland.
They are committed to a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, they are committed to restoring our respect and reputation in the world.
Irish Americans should be committed to them as well.
Jean Kennedy Smith was US Ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998
Obama supporters have been using Neighbor to Neighbor for months now, and the online tool has allowed thousands and thousands of individuals to reach out to their fellow community members through phone banking and canvassing drives. This week, the campaign is proud to launch a new type of "community" outreach tool -- ethnic calling campaigns that allow Irish, Greek, and Italian Americans to call their ethnic brothers and sisters in battleground states.
Individuals who sign up for the Irish, Greek, and Italian calling campaigns will receive access to the voter database 24-48 hours after signing up. To learn more about Neighbor to Neighbor in general, visit this site. To sign up for the ethnic calling campaigns, visit these sites:
The Irish campaign kicked off in the Big Apple last week, where Brent O. and Brian F. gathered their Irish American friends in New York City to call fellow Irish Americans in Ohio to talk about the Obama-Biden ticket.
Brent reports that:
The evening went very well. We had 15 people, made 1,000 calls, found some new volunteers for the campaign, and convinced some undecideds. Everyone enjoyed it and is energized for more.
Brent and Brian are recruiting additional volunteers from the tri-state area and plan to re-group every Tuesday night between now and the election.
Crossing state lines and setting the tone for the upcoming weeks, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley hosted a debate-watch party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the first presidential debate last week.
Famed San Francisco singer, Shay Black, one of several members of the highly regarded Black Family of Irish singers and musicians, has written a song for Barack Obama and has posted it on YouTube:
Fulmoth Kearney, Barack Obama’s great great great grandfather, emigrated to the United States in 1850 from Moneygall, a tiny town in Co. Offaly, Ireland. Residents and visitors gathered at the Ollie Hayes pub last January to celebrate Obama’s caucus victory in Iowa – and to predict an Obama victory in November!
The victory party video shows both Irishmen and American expats fired up and ready to go -- working together to make a difference even from across the ocean.
Irish Americans for Obama found a warm reception at this weekend’s Indianapolis Irish Festival. The group, led by volunteer Adrienne Watson, raised $1500 to secure a booth at the popular event and over 3 days, registered nearly 100 new voters and signed up over 270 volunteers. The tent gained instant popularity and Obama pride could be seen throughout the crowds, with even the bagpipers sporting Obama stickers!
Adrienne summed up the experience by saying that people “were tickled that the Obama team cared about their community and glad to see a presence for him at the festival. Over and over again, we heard Irish Americans discussing Senator Obama with their friends and exclaiming that they never knew so many fellow Democrats lived in typically red-state Indiana. By the conclusion of the festival, Irish Americans for Obama had been wished the ‘luck of the Irish’ by over a thousand festival-goers.”
Subject: John McCain's First Wife
I have checked this and it appears to be true.
John McCain mentions that his greatest failure in life was his first marriage. I guess he had to say something because his first wife, Carol, is now going public with their story.
You don't hear much about the first wife, Carol McCain McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-
old former US Navy pilot tribute to his current wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But the first Mrs. McCain casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator's presidential campaign. She is seldom heard of despite being the mother three of McCain's children.
She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his incarceration in Vietnam, the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting.
But when McCain returned home in '73 to fanfare and handshakes from Richard Nixon, he saw that his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded into a telegraph pole on Christmas
Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.
Carol remained hospitalized six months and received life-saving surgery. In order to save her legs, surgeons had to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and forced to use a catheter. Today, she stands at just 5' 4' in
and still walks with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of suffering.
For almost 30 yrs, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, John McCain and their divorce. But last week at her home in Virginia Beach, she discussed how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, a very rich woman 18 years his junior and heir to an Arizona
lucrative beer distribution fortune, one month later. Carol notes that their marriage ended because John McCain didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25.
In 1979 - while still married to Carol - he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued young Cindy, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage to his first wife.
SOME OF MCCAIN'S ACQUAINTANCES ARE LESS FORGIVING. THEY PORTRAY THE POLITICIAN AS A SELF-CENTERED WOMANIZER WHO EFFECTIVELY ABANDONED HIS CRIPPLED WIFE TO 'PLAY THE FIELD'. THEY ACCUSE HIM OF FINALLY SETTLING ON CINDY, A FORMER RODEO BEAUTY QUEEN, FOR HER MONEY.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is a leading campaigner for veterans' rights, said: 'I have been following John McCain's career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong
with this guy: 'When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her right away. EVERYBODY AROUND HIM KNEW IT. HE MET CINDY AND SHE WAS YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL AND VERY WEALTHY. AT THAT POINT MCCAIN JUST DUMPED CAROL FOR SOMETHING HE THOUGHT WAS BETTER.'
McCain is the classic opportunist.
Sampley notes that McCain is always reaching for 'attention and glory'.
After he came home, CAROL WALKED WITH A LIMP. SO HE THREW HER OVER FOR A POSTER GIRL WITH BIG MONEY. And the rest is history.'
FINALLY, ROSS PEROT, A BILLIONAIRE TEXAS BUSINESSMAN, AND FORMER
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, PAID CAROL MCCAIN'S MEDICAL BILLS. ROSS PEROT
BELIEVES THAT BOTH CAROL MCCAIN AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WERE TAKEN IN BY A
MAN, WHO IS UNUSUALLY SLICK AND CRUEL - EVEN BY THE STANDARDS OF MODERN
POLITICS.
We should send this article by Drew Westrin to as many people as possible, ASAP!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/the-day-the-momentum-chan_b_128227.html
In case you missed National Field Director Jon Carson's email the other night, he's urging supporters to host or attend a debate watch party for the first debate of the election this Friday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. This debate, the first of three presidential debates, will focus on foreign policy.
Gather your friends and family for good food, good fun, and a great debate where you'll learn more about why Barack Obama is the best choice for your community and, more broadly, for America and the world. Our easy online guide allows you to download everything you'll need for your Debate Watch party from start to finish, including sign-in sheets, customizable issue flyers, and videos of Barack's speeches on a range of issues if you and your guests are curious about learning more.
From day one of this campaign, the neighborhoods that make our country so strong have been some of the major forces behind our movement for change. Gather your neighbors together this Friday night to continue to let your voices be heard. Make sure to send us photos and stories about how your community celebrated the event and we'll be sure to post the most unique ones on our website!
Americans of all backgrounds -- yes we can!
Fellow Democrats,
while it is tempting to blame a giant conspiracy of wealthy bankers and politicians for the mess that Wall Street is today, we must remain focused on facts and keep our dialogue and actions aimed at what can be fixed, not on broader injustices around the haves and have-nots.
There will always be financial markets. There will always be those who have more and those who have less. The world's financial markets have matured and become more sophisticated through trading systems and financial derivatives products. The result is that risk management became so complex and interwoven, across national boundaries and industries, currencies and commodities, and driven by so many variables that it was almost impossible to measure cause and effect except in hindsight.
Let us guard against populist political rhetoric at this critical point in history. The effect of not addressing the financial markets' ailments will be detrimental to all of us. From teachers and government workers to construction workers and factory workers, to investors and stockbrokers to lawyers.
The cost of the bailout may well reach the $700 Bn ceiling set by the banking committee. Funded by taxpayers. The blame may well go in part to incompetent CEOs at Wall Street's illustrious institutions. But crucifying a few CEOs will benefit nobody. Nor will a populist movement to cap CEO salaries. What will address the problem and prevent future meltdown is an intelligent governing body that implements realistic measures and checkpoints on an industry that is by nature risk-driven and uncertain.
Quantifying risk and providing transparency to investors of all kinds, will provide better assurance that money markets are self-aware and fly by instruments, not by feel.
However, financial markets will never be 100% safe. Let's accept that and move to patch the crisis we're experiencing, conscious that investing is risky.
McCain's suggestion that Obama has close connections with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is ridiculous and betrays more a panicked GOP candidate than an intelligent argument about fiscal policy.
Obama's campaign must remain with the facts: financial markets sometimes underperform and it hurts us all. Punishing the captains doesn't fix anything. Regulating the markets, without strangling them, is a way forward.
Imagine that you receive one of those annoying credit card offers in the mail. Today, instead of throwing it directly in the trash, you open it to see just what is being offered. Only you find that it is not an offer, but a notice that an account has been opened in your name and already has a balance of $2303.96. Not only are you told that you can't turn this offer down, but advised that everyone in your household has been saddled with the same account. Every man, woman and child. The more people in the house, the more money you owe, and it's an offer that you can't refuse.
Sounds absurd, doesn't it. Yet, that is just what the Republicans have handed us today. The current Republican administration has pushed though a bailout plan for Wall Street to the tune of $700 Billion. Given the July US Population estimate of 303,824,640, that adds up to $2303.96 for every single person in the country. That's not money coming from the Treasury. It needs to be borrowed, and the only ones who have that kind of money to lend are China and the folks controlling the oil. So, we're not only dependent upon them for energy resources now, were also deeper in debt to the tune of $2303.96 each.
The reason that we need this kind of bailout? I think that everyone is aware that mismanagement by the current Republicans in power are at the root. We have been hearing about deregulation and the contribution that has made all week. What isn't being talked about, though, is that our reliance on foreign oil and our misguided war supporting terror are equal parts of the Hydra we face. The polls keep telling us that the focus of the country shifts between the economy, energy independence and the war, which is a gross misrepresentation. These issues are so intertwined that there is no way to separate them, and we all know who we have to thank for all three.
Anyone questioning whether we still need a change?
Brian
American voters’ main concern, despite protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the economy. And as the stock market plummets and American financial giants go out of business or find themselves struggling to survive, Mr McCain’s post-convention bounce - mainly driven by his surprise pick of Sarah Palin as the Republican Party’s first female vice presidential nominee - has vanished.
Mr McCain found himself in a particularly difficult spot yesterday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 450 points - slightly more than 4 per cent and the second huge loss this week - after an $85 billion government bailout of the world’s largest insurance companies, American International Group.
Mr McCain had vigorously opposed the bailout just hours before it was announced.
The move by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, forced Mr McCain to quickly reshape his message from one of opposition to a grudging acceptance and acknowledgement that the government had acted to protect millions of Americans from further financial hardship.
Mr McCain said during the primary campaign that he was not as well versed on economic issues as he would like. The 72-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war has also been closely tied to President George Bush, whose popularity is at near record lows and will probably fall further under the weight of the economic slide.
Mr Obama, who appears to have regained his focus in the White House contest, was hitting Mr McCain hard as a product of a Republican drive over recent decades to deregulate the financial markets, moves that the first-term Illinois senator blamed for the mounting damage to the US economy.
In Elko, Nevada, a rural mining community, Mr Obama mocked Mr McCain’s response to Wall Street’s meltdown.
“Yesterday, John Mr McCain actually said that if he’s president he’ll take on - and I quote — ‘the old boys’ network in Washington.‘ I’m not making this up,” Mr Obama said. “This is somebody who’s been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign.
“And now he tells us that he’s the one who’s going to take on the old boys’ network,” Mr Obama said. “The old boys’ network. In the Mr McCain campaign that’s called a staff meeting. Come on.”
