This email has come to me several times. I thought it worth posting.
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker? What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?What if Barack Obama had been found guilty of the ethics violation of abuse of power while in office to be vindictive in a personal matter? If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Barack Obama had an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if Barack Obama had been found guilty of the ethics violation of abuse of power while in office to be vindictive in a personal matter?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
?
Full story: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-troopergate11-2008oct11,0,3721967.story
Alaska investigators say it was OK to fire a state commissioner, but her efforts against a trooper went too far.Select paragraphs from the LA Times article (link above):
ANCHORAGE -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin violated ethics laws and abused her power as governor in pressing to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, an independent legislative investigation concluded Friday.In a report whose release was the subject of a high-stakes political showdown that went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court, investigator Stephen Branchflower documented that former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was subjected to a veritable barrage of demands from Palin, her husband and her staff to fire the trooper, Mike Wooten, whom they saw as unfit for the job. Wooten had been involved in a bitter divorce and custody battle with Palin's sister....
...Though the findings partially vindicate Palin's claims that she had legitimate reasons for firing Monegan, their suggestion that she used her husband and staff to conduct a campaign against a state employee in what was perceived by some as a personal vendetta could damage her ability to portray herself as a reform-minded, experienced executive ready to step into the White House as John McCain's vice president....
...The report establishes for the first time that Palin deliberately set up Todd Palin to handle communications over the Wooten matter after Monegan warned her it was inappropriate for her to be making such contacts herself....
...The report found that Palin "knowingly, as that term is defined in the [ethics] statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the governor's office and the resources of the governor's office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired." The report also said that Todd Palin at one point asked to see Wooten's personnel file....
...Civil penalties range, theoretically, from impeachment by the Legislature to a reprimand or a fine of up to $5,000 by the state personnel board, but most legislative sources thought it unlikely any action would be taken....
McCain and Palin can't win on the issues; that's why they resort to character assassination of Obama. But McCain really needs to be careful. Guilt by association will bite him in the back.
Some of you probably don't remember this, but I do. Back in the 80's there was a Savings & Loan collapse and scandal, similar to the collapse of the banking industry right now. Read about it in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five or by Googling "Keating Five". Bottom line was McCain was one of the "Keating Five", and it was suspected that his political connections and his wife's money bought his way out of it.
I am surprised it hasn't come up yet, given all the poison the McCain camp has put out. This morning it was mentioned on Meet the Press, along with another "guilt by association" friend of McCain's (I forget who it was). I suspect we will hear more about McCain's friends this month, as we close in on the election. Do a Google on "McCain Guilt by association" and you will read about G. Gordon Liddy (of the Watergate scandal), Rev. Hegee, and others associated with McCain.
Some people have tried to lay the blame on Obama and the Democrats. It's easy to blame one person and one party for the mess our country is in. It's also irresponsible.
This financial situation built up over many years. It is built on greed and self-deception, not only by those on Wall Street, but by business owners, bankers, home buyers, salespeople, RE brokers, politicians, and anyone looking to make a buck.
That housing bubble didn't create itself. It was the speculators, the flippers, and average people who were convinced they should have more than they could afford. People on Main Street.
The sub-prime lenders made money on the backs of people who didn't understand what they were getting into, people who are our friends, neighbors, relatives, children. Those people were chasing the American Dream. Now we have an American Nightmare.
Partly to blame is our credit-crazy country. We buy things we don't need with a promise to pay in the future. We buy to impress our friends. We buy bigger homes to store all the goods we have accumulated. We buy flashy cars, bigger cars, faster cars, gas-guzzling cars. We buy, buy, buy.
The housing bubble burst, and the financial industry collapsed because of it. Go blame a single politician. Blame every politician of a certain party. The truth is, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Are you kidding? It's hard enough to make it month to month on our net income. Now McCain is proposing a tax on our health insurance? How about life insurance and dental too? Pretty soon soon there won't be much left to take home.The middle working class, along with the still-working Baby Boomer generation, are already struggling to pay for our kids' college education, dealing with the costs of special needs of our aging parents, and trying to save for retirement on top of it. There's not much left after all that for gas and groceries.McCain just doesn't get it.
(I sent this letter to local and national newspapers.)
Calling strangers on the phone is a tough thing to do. We get hang-ups, rude remarks, foul language, and once I even got a call back from an irate Republican who just had to tell me where to put it.
I found that asking the respondent what they feel is the most important issue of the presidential campaign FIRST, it paves the way for further questions. They feel we are concerned about them, and not just who they are voting for. After they answer the question, I can sometimes indicate my agreement on the importance of the issue. I then ask if they are leaning toward the Repupblican or Democratic candidate, or undecided. From there it is an easy step to confirm if they are a strong supporter
I still get hang-ups and rude remarks, but it seems that I get fewer of them. It also makes it easier for me to ask the tough question.
I titled my blog "How can we sleep at night" to reflect the feeling that has pushed me overwhelmingly toward being more vocal, more involved, more outwardly political -- despite the fact that i work in a decidedly red-state industry.
The way the campaign of the other side has morphed over the past couple of weeks is like some evil combination of the movie Idiocracy and the Scientology movement. It's like the pendulum is swinging in a decidedly anti-intellectual, anti-intelligent direction, and I feel directly persecuted for being intelligent, for questioning things, and for having a voice.
At work, there is a subculture of "gun enthusiasts" of which I happily participate. I have owned guns, I have enjoyed shooting, I feel it is the duty of a homeowner to be able to protect himself and his family from events that may befall him. Especially with a weakening ecomony, where more people are being driven toward desperate measures to support themselves. Now I have always taken it for granted that "gun culture" leans toward the right, but I have never truly examined it, until I looked around the office, we have a number of regular folks who are both gun owners and Obama supporters. An email was recently circulated among the gun enthusiasts mailing list in the office by a representative of management, a pro-McCain email, or more accurately, an anti-Obama email, because being pro-McCain is kind of like being pro-abortion, you don't really hear much about that opinion, you only hear the anti-argument about the other side, never the positive virtues of their candidate. And I thought to myself, how presumptious of Mr. Millionaire to assume that just because we have itchy trigger fingers that we automatically support everything that platform stands for, which apparently is:
the dumbing down of rhetoric so as to easily convince the less complicated folk in our country of who to vote for
the suppression of dissent by really nasty rhetoric, calling Obama's policies socialist, communist and worse
innocent-sounding shorthand that's programmed to include a sneer -- do you know who they mean when they say they don't let the "Media" or "Hollywood liberals" tell them who to vote for? That's shorthand. maybe at least some of that is code for Jews, because it seems the people on that side of things tend to believe that's who controls the media and hollywood.
In their minds they are so fixated on the ideas that(a) liberalism is bad, (b) democrats tax and spend, (c) libs and dems are for big government, (d) big government is bad, that they're blind to the reality. The reality is that (a) liberalism is not bad, and nobody in the world has ever even attempted to explain or convince me in an intelligent manner as to why they say it is bad. (b) republicans tax just as much, they just prefer to spend their booty on bombs and security measures rather than educating our children. (c) and (d) big government? define big. do they really want no government? they seem to want the government to step in on personal issues. maybe they're right. maybe we should reduce THAT part of government.
Maybe for a Mensa member I'm politically naive. But none of this makes any sense to me, and for the last several elections I have asked my republican voting friends to please help me articulate WHY they supported Bush, and I've never received a response that made any sense, it's always been some generalization about the other candidate, and fear mongering. And since 9/11, the fear mongering has gotten worse.
People I love and respect are voting for McPalin, and I simply don't understand why. Obama gets what this country is supposed to be about.
Imagine this possible future scenario:
The McCain-Palin ticket wins the fall election. In January, our new President and VP take their places in the White House, along with their supporting staffs. A media honeymoon ensues for a couple of months, but soon there are problems.The economy has continued to falter since before the primaries. More financial institutions are seeking governmental assistance to stay afloat. The Dow has sunk below 9000. Manufacturers continue to lay off workers and unemployment continues to rise. The unemployed still have no insurance. OPEC has increased the price of crude to $175/BBL. We are paying $5.25 at the pumps. We are facing a lengthy depression.Meanwhile, terrorism in Europe has increased. Iraq is still not any closer to the democracy we had hoped. There is new trouble in Sudan. Pakistan threatens India. Lebanon and Jordan have decimated Tel Aviv with missiles and air strikes. John McCain has ordered more troops to Afghanistan, causing the country to join with other middle-eastern countries threatening attacks on the US. Tensions escalate, and McCain refuses to talk to any nation that “doesn’t like us.”A news story leaks that President McCain has been taking chemotherapy for several weeks. He cancels his appearances for the next month. Vice President Palin is called on to deliver the State of the Union Address. She says the Joint Chiefs will have to wait their turn.The Republican voters got what they deserved. Unfortunately, so did the rest of us.
The McCain-Palin ticket wins the fall election. In January, our new President and VP take their places in the White House, along with their supporting staffs. A media honeymoon ensues for a couple of months, but soon there are problems.
The economy has continued to falter since before the primaries. More financial institutions are seeking governmental assistance to stay afloat. The Dow has sunk below 9000. Manufacturers continue to lay off workers and unemployment continues to rise. The unemployed still have no insurance. OPEC has increased the price of crude to $175/BBL. We are paying $5.25 at the pumps. We are facing a lengthy depression.
Meanwhile, terrorism in Europe has increased. Iraq is still not any closer to the democracy we had hoped. There is new trouble in Sudan. Pakistan threatens India. Lebanon and Jordan have decimated Tel Aviv with missiles and air strikes.
John McCain has ordered more troops to Afghanistan, causing the country to join with other middle-eastern countries threatening attacks on the US. Tensions escalate, and McCain refuses to talk to any nation that “doesn’t like us.”
A news story leaks that President McCain has been taking chemotherapy for several weeks. He cancels his appearances for the next month. Vice President Palin is called on to deliver the State of the Union Address. She says the Joint Chiefs will have to wait their turn.
The Republican voters got what they deserved. Unfortunately, so did the rest of us.
Friends, we can't let this scenario happen.
I am sending this email as a response to those ugly, lying, inflammatory emails people keep sending me. I send it to everyone on the distribution.
Dear ____:Do you really think forwarding these inaccurate, negatively charged, hateful emails is funny? Aren't you sick and tired of McCain's commercials which have little or nothing to say about his stand on issues, but everything about his opposition -- and lies at that! Why don't you check out independent sites like Snopes.com or http://factcheck.org/ for the accuracy of the garbage you have been forwarding. Why don't you forward some positive stuff about your candidate on the issues, instead of sending out made-up negative stuff you you receive in emails?Is McCain really the kind of guy you want running our country? If you want more of what we have had for the last 8 years, by all means, vote McCain. For me, I want something better. I've never before felt so positive about a presidential candidate. I've never before been drawn in so strongly as to volunteer to work on a presidential campaign. And the way this campaign is going, I'm absolutely ashamed to admit that I have voted Republican in the past, because what I see now from our Republican candidates is a pack of lies and misinformation about a good man and a great candidate. You ought to check out the truth about the Pit Bull with Lipstick as well, and her state's ongoing ethics investigation which charges abuse of power. Take a look at her credentials. Find out about her education. Think about her in the Oval Office when McCain dies of cancer. That's a really terrifying thought. Find out the truth about her flip flop on the Bridge to Nowhere, and how she exaggerates and twists to make herself look good. Learn about earmarks. Here's a good one for you, a lot of background from someone who actually knows Palin and worked with her in Wasilla: http://www.thepresidentialcandidates.us/about-sarah-palin-a-letter-from-anne-kilkenny/741/I hope you think twice before marking that circle on the ballot. Please check the facts before forwarding on these inflammatory, hateful emails. Why don't you turn your negative energy into something positive. Tell your friends something good about your candidate instead of tearing down the opposition. That's disgusting.Obama offers us healthcare, an end to the war in Iraq, dialogue with nations, tax relief, a stronger economy, a long term energy ban... take a look at his stand on the issues at www.barackobama.com. Compare what he proposes to what McCain proposes. Think about how those issues affect you. Don't listen to the mud-slinging and the trash and slants of the parties. Educate yourself, don't just grab what someone tosses you and take it as fact.
Dear ____:
Do you really think forwarding these inaccurate, negatively charged, hateful emails is funny? Aren't you sick and tired of McCain's commercials which have little or nothing to say about his stand on issues, but everything about his opposition -- and lies at that! Why don't you check out independent sites like Snopes.com or http://factcheck.org/ for the accuracy of the garbage you have been forwarding. Why don't you forward some positive stuff about your candidate on the issues, instead of sending out made-up negative stuff you you receive in emails?
With less than 2 months until the election, I'm worried. I'm worried because there are a lot of people out there who still think Barack is Muslim. I'm worried because some people ask me why he doesn't wear a flag pin on his lapel. I'm worried because the Pit Bull with Lipstick has caught the fancy of uneducated voters. I'm worried because Wisconsin is a battleground state.
What worries me most is that McCain could win this election, and that ultimately Sarah Palin could end up being our president.
Friends, we absolutely can't let this happen. If you haven't yet volunteered to help the campaign, please get involved! Today I went to a training session with many other volunteers. Following that, I made about 50 phone calls, simply asking if people have decided for whom they will vote, and if so, would they share with me who it is. It was so fast and easy that when I left, I asked for another group of people to call from home.
If you don't have the time to make calls, then make a donation. It takes money to fight the smears the McCain camp is putting out. Today a friend asked me if it was true that when Barack went to Houston, he brought a planeful of Muslims with him.
We MUST educate voters. If we leave it to chance, there is a chance we will have 4 more years of Bush -- or worse yet, 4 years of a Pit Bull with Lipstick who doesn't have a clue what the Vice President -- much less President -- is supposed to do all day.
Never mind Sarah Palin and whether Trigg is hers or her daughter's. Never mind Bristol's current pregnancy. McCain's indescretions are even more disgraceful.
McCain returned from Viet Nam to his first wife Carol (a former swimsuit model), who had a very serious car accident while waiting all those years for her husband. Carol had many surgeries which left her with a limp and several inches shorter and pounds heavier than when John had left her. He began having extramarital affairs, and soon met Cindy, 17 years his junior, beautiful and wealthy. He filed for marriage before his divorce was final, and married Cindy one month after his divorce to Carol.
Here's what McCain says about his initial meeting with Cindy:
"She was lovely, intelligent and charming, 17 years my junior but poised and confident," McCain wrote in his 2002 book, Worth the Fighting For. "I monopolized her attention the entire time, taking care to prevent anyone else from intruding on our conversation. When it came time to leave the party, I persuaded her to join me for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the evening's end, I was in love."
Here's a link to YouTube of CNN's interview with McCain on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIX-XHlZFw
Why isn't the media making an issue of his character (or lack of it)? Because it was 30 years ago? So was his stay at the "Hanoi Hilton."
At some point in time, the media must decide that the "pit bull with lipstick" has no business being in the White House. What we have learned about her in the past week should have been enough for McCain to remove her from the ticket. Now he is stuck with her, and that's a good thing for us.
There's so much more. At length, the truth will out.
Here's an interesting blog: http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/08/sarah-louise-palin-is-not-fit-to-be_31.html
This website is a time line of pictures of our favorite President to be.
www.kronomy.com/user/barack_obama
Its way cool!
According to a study by the Energy Information Administration, offshore drilling will "...not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."
Read the full report here
Go to Andrew Sullivan's post on The Atlantic site and read about how Geraldine Ferraro is once again playing the fool for the Clintons. She and many others have portrayed everyone who has not been a Clinton supporter as somehow being sexist. They have even called out the media for the "negative","harsh" or even "sexist" treatment of Hillary Clinton.
Geraldine Ferraro went so far as to call for a study by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard...whoops already done. Guess what they found? They essentially found that both candidates have had a fairly equal ride from the media.
Well that takes away one of the myths Barack Obama's victory.
Could it just be that his organization and campaign designed "from the ground up" was just better prepared, smarter and had a better candidate to rally behind?
They don't want anyone to believe that. They want to make comments about his resume. Well who has more years in elective office? Barack Obama does. They want to say that he is only where he is because he is African-American. Really? What country do they live in--I can tell you that this country has never been one to give a free pass to people because they are black.
For that matter--we KNOW that Senator Clinton was elected ONLY because she was married to Bill Clinton. Don't believe me? How many other lawyers who practiced in Arkansas, lived in Washington, DC for 8 years could then move into New York to run for and win a Senate seat? The answer ZERO.
It is time to stop the whining, and fighting. It is time to focus on November and days like today, where the DNC is meeting, just create another distraction from the inevitable victory in November. Barack Obama is the BEST candidate in EITHER party to take the USA where we need to be.
We are closing in and heading forward. Get ready, because it's going to be a tough fight. Nothing in life ever worth having is easy and this is one of those things. Barack Obama has won the first stage of this race--the next one is an uphill run and one that he will win.
Earlier I mentioned that his "from the ground up" campaign was a big factor in winning the nomination. It will be even more important in the next stage--so get on board, get involved and help make a huge difference.
Here is the link to the Atlantic post by Andrew Sullivan:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/05/sexism-sexism-s.html#more
Here is a link to the entire 44-page study by the Shorenstein Center if you want to read it:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/research_publications/reports/Character%20and%20the%20Primaries%20of%202008.pdf
