The Note: McCain Seeks New New Start

Is McCain willing to lose a reputation to win a campaign?
___________________________________________
That question has been answered loud and clear – YES.

Everyone knows that the only reason Obama is ahead in the polls is because of the economy hit while the other party was in charge. Other than that, he’s a lightweight with few accomplishments. So because people are angry with the economy mess and the Repub party, they are choosing to vote for a man who wants to socialize the country. They are choosing to vote for a man who believes that botched abortion babies deserve to die. They are choosing to vote for a man with clear ties to ex-cons, radicals, and racists because they have helped to propel his political career. They are choosing to vote for a man with no experience. They are choosing to vote for a man that intends to force all employers to pay for the personal health care coverage for their employees – which by the way, used to be called a ”benefit” not an order by anyone to do so. McCain is not my favorite person. And he’s made mistakes, as we all have. But his record is clear, not fuzzy, and he is fighting an uphill battle due to the unfair publicity and is doing quite well in that respect. He knows foreign policy which is key, and he is a moderate, not conservative. He is not afraid to stand up and speak the truth. He does not deny his former associations with various people. He does not lie about his family and make one think things were a little different so that he looks good. That is the difference I see in the two people running for president of this country. I am sick of everything too, but it doesn”t mean that I lay down my principles and throw them in the gutter.

The McCain campaign is about pushing de-bunked conspiracy theories.
The Obama campaign is about addressing the American people.
There is no conspiracy in my checkbook so I’ll stick with the candidate that actually addresses the problems of the American people.

One of Barack Obama’s most potent campaign claims is that he’ll cut taxes for no less than 95% of “working families.” He’s even promising to cut taxes enough that the government’s tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% — which is lower than it is today.
It’s a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he’s also proposing one of the largest tax increases EVER on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay NO income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of “tax cut.”
For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government HANDOUTS that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals.
Six of the seven listed in the Obama plan are these “refundables”, money people get from the federal government even if they pay no taxes at all. These are not “tax cuts” but instead WELFARE grants based on specific social policy. It’s blatant redistributionism, as the money comes from tax increases on the wealthy.
Obama’s plan actually makes people more dependent on federal government, and expands it significantly. It adds to the entitlement mentality while doing nothing about rewarding risk. This plan will penalize risk and encourage the wealthy to find even more shelters for their income and capital, more likely outside the US, which will mean fewer jobs and fewer opportunities.
The last thing this economy needs is a flight of capital. We need that money invested in America to create jobs, not hidden away from an aggressively redistributionist federal government. We should be reducing taxes, but not giving more money to people who don’t pay any at all.

How can we expect McCain to run our country when he can’t run his own campaign?

You got it right “Obama’s Tax Cut=Welfare”. I swear to you right now if he gets in I will be the first one to shut down my business and get in the welfare line. Hell, I can even get insurance coverage for free too.
The man is greatest con artist with his ‘grand plan’ that I’ve ever seen. He should get some kind of award if he pulls it off. Oh yeah, I guess that would be the job of the presidency of the US.

The only thing worse than biased reporting is Veiled biased reporting.
9 years ago—this one is priceless and worth the read- right out of New York Times
September 30, 1999
Fannie Mae
Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVEN
A. HOLMES
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage t hose banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they
hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990′s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to
that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional,
30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 — a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By ex pan ding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
HERE IS WHAT BILL CLINTON HAS TO SAY:
Bill Clinton knows who is responsible for this NATIONAL CRISIS!
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
ANNCR: You’re right, Mr. President. It didn’t have to happen

The Note: McCain Seeks New New Start
…. again?

I think is campaign managers and Sartah palin would say
yes
they are willing to lose McCain’s reputation for their right wing nut jobs.
the same ones that got us the last 8 years.
throw these “blech” back to where they crawled out of…
and lets get the old John mcCain back in the Senate
if he changes his…er…their… tone this week

Starting over is difficult when we give in to the forces of fear. We can never go backwards – we can only go forward. …….
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/12/obamas-journey-dont-stop-believing/

How Many times does he have to restart? change his message, Didnt he just clean up his campaign over the summer? and hire new well I think he needs to start with his camapign they are horrible and making John look bad. And second Send that witch back on a broom to Alaska!apprently her witch pastor hasnt done a good job in releasing all the witches and evilness in her body!

McCain’s numbers indicate not merely public rejection of his immoral campaign, but more importantly rejection of the discredited policies of his war-loving, fear-mongering neocon “advisers”.
Now perhaps Obama is free to reject them as well.
http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/meet-the-new-boss/

Sign this petition if you think McCain should stop talking about Obama and William Ayers…and start talking about the economy instead:
http://www.McCainPetition.com
Gregg

From PolitiFact re: Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge:
In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals. Ayers’ involvement in its inception and on an advisory committee do not make it radical – nor does the funding of programs involving the United Nations and African-American studies.
This attack is false, but it’s more than that – it’s malicious. It unfairly tars not just Obama, but all the other prominent, well-respected Chicagoans who also volunteered their time to the foundation. They came from all walks of life and all political backgrounds, and there’s ample evidence their mission was nothing more than improving ailing public schools in Chicago. Yet in the heat of a political campaign they have been accused of financing radicalism. That’s Pants on Fire wrong.

Posted by: Obama’s “Tax Cut” = Welfare and Socialist Re-distribution of Wealth | Oct 13, 2008 9:15:37 AM
Under the Obama tax plan the wealthy will pay the same they paid under the Reagan administration.

I’m sure McCain is praying for a national crisis to up his standings in the polls. Knowing the neocons flare for unending war and unnatural exuburence of national pride as well as the Bush administration’s desire to perpetuate their all powerful president and VP roles, nothing would surprise me.
I hope nothiing bad happens, but we have lots of enemies thanks mostly to the Bush Administration policies.

A victory by Barack Obama will endorse his tactics in silencing critics, which should concern all non-leg-tingling media in this country. In fact, Michael Barone points out that it will merely be the next step to the Left’s “progressive” march into killing free political speech — or at least that speech with which they disagree:
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up. …
Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.
Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with CRIMINAL prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama’s ties to Ayers.
These attempts to shut down political speech have become ROUTINE for liberals. Congressional Democrats will re-impose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences—bad ratings–and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.

Oh BTW, have any of Obama supporters count Votes from the dead or 7 year old a part of your voting process?
Is this vote often, vote again thing?
This is CHANGE we REALLY need.
Expose Obama as FRAUD for who he is.
I am STILL waiting for his birth certificate to prove that he is ELIGIBLE to run for this OFFICE.
Don’t tell me that he ALREADY showed it.
I can duplicate that SAME certificate and put on the website, too.
How convenience!

McCain = DISHONORABLE; Palin = SCARY!!!

Gregg,
Are you AFRAID that the TIE would tank your candidate?
You LEFTIES are so STUPID!
Why wouldn’t we talk about Obama’s ties with the terrorist Bill Ayers?
That’s the MAJOR issue since the DEMS created the economy crisis to benefit Obama.
Obama supporters are either DUMB or NOT getting it. Even former Pres. admitted that: “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
What part of responsibility don’t you get it? You want me to name a few names.
Here they are: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, Gregory Meeks, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid.
SPIN that!

Hello Dum Dum (hmm)
Here is the link:
The ACORN Voter Fraud (http://www.foxnews.com/video2/live.html?chanId=1) testimony!
You call this a conspiracy?
BTW, this voter is BLACK so please don’t play the RACE card.

How many do-overs does this guy think he gets?

Ah yes, Absolutely lets get to the truth on ACORN:
The facts about ACORN are worth getting out. ACORN is an organization that, among other things, registers low-income people to vote. One of the ways they do this is to hire door-to-door canvassers from the neighborhoods they are working in. This sort of work is tightly regulated. So, when one of the thousands of people they give jobs to doesn’t do their work right and brings back bogus or phony voter registration cards, the law REQUIRES that ACORN turn the forms in to the voter registration office. The law, rightly, doesn’t want anybody throwing out voter registration forms for any reason.
But ACORN goes a step farther. They have people assigned to do quality control on all the cards–calling people on the forms after they fill them out. When they find bad information on the cards they attach a cover sheet to the card but, as mentioned above, they turn in the cards as required by law. The effect is that a few bad canvassers or a poorly run office will mean that bad cards are submitted as part of the normal process. But ACORN has done everything possible to make sure voting officials know to check the forms.
The sad fact is that in at least one state–Nevada–the voting officials disregarded ACORN’s cover sheets flagging the voter registration forms. That should have never happened. The resulting blowup was a scandal in search of a scandal.
The stunning con of this whole thing is the assumption that bad voter registration cards being submitted will lead to vote fraud. If somebody submits a card for Mickey Mouse it isn’t like Mr. Mouse is going to show up to vote.
There is no voter fraud if nobody votes.
But the big story here is what the Right is doing. Their attacks on ACORN open up the door for two things.
First, the ACORN myth allows the Republicans to do more purging of the voter rolls–the process of removing people from the voter rolls because of arbitrary anomalies in the voter registration databases. Richard L Hasen, author of the Election Law Blog and a distinguished law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles recently wrote, “Careless purging–driven by unsubstantiated fears about voter fraud–can lead to many eligible voters being incorrectly removed from the polls.” Already in Ohio the Republican Party is pushing for more purging and they found a federal judge who agreed citing ACORN’s activities.
Second, in the event that campaigning, purging and intimidating voters doesn’t work, the Right is creating a myth like they did in 1960. They are creating the myth of a stolen election. Conservatives plan to claim that ACORN and Barack Obama stole the election. Their hope is to steal the legitimacy of what is looking like a massive repudiation of Bush, conservatives and the Republican Party. The Right plans to steal the election by trying to steal the legitimate defeat of them by progressive forces.
(Tom Matzzie)

True story about McCain is that when he was a child and didn’t get his way he would hold his breath until he passed out. 43% of America is passing out right now.

To summarize the comments that are pro McCain:
Lefties are stupid
ACORN is why we’re losing
Who is Barrack Obama?
The Dems have created all evil
I think I know why Obama/Biden are winning. It’s the economy folks. Insults and conspiracy don’t help your cause.

The thing about the ACORN stuff is it doesn’t appear to be trying for actual voter fraud.
I mean, no one expects “Indiana Jones” to show up and actually try to vote.
And election officials are saying the same. They aren’t concerned about the voting – they’re only concerned that their offices are spending as much time as they are on blatantly bogus registration applications.
It sounds more like an institutional flaw with ACORN – lower level managers encouraging their employees to make a certain number of registrations, so as to make the regional office look like its supporting national goals, etc.

Provide me with a link other than FOX and I will. Fox serves as an infomercial to the GOP. They edited out the boos at the Hockey game Palin where Palin dropped the puck. On the other hand, I don’t go to MSNBC for stuff either.

Voter in America: “McCain/Bush sounded the ALARMS in 2005 and called on Congress to act quickly on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Actually, no. Look at the actual bill McCain co-sponsored and what he said about it.
McCain wanted an expansion of government to create an accounting oversight agency that would review Fannie/Freddie books. The concern was that executives there were getting bonuses based on questionable numbers.
While this may have been good legislation, its really not connected to the current crisis – at all – in any way, shape, or form.
Not only doesn’t it address the actual problems we’re now seeing in Fannie/Freddie, it also is based on the faulty assumption that Fannie/Freddie were central players in this current crisis. They simply weren’t.

huh?,
Oh NO… I did not suggest that the problem started in 2005. It started in Carter Adm. with the CRA. Remeber the Pres. who gave away the American canal and supported Hamas who tried to kill American. That’s one!

Voter in America,
You can’t see shades of grey. Unfortunately economics is complex and hard to summarize in three bullets points from Fox News.
I think your ignorance of economic issues and partisanship show why the Republican brand is struggling.
Blame Carter? The economy was strong under Clinton, did you forget the 90s. What’s your point? All Dems are bad and all Republicans are good?
Wow.

Jill: The Washington Times has long been associated with and financed by Rev. Sun Yung Moon. And that’s why I have no intention of clicking on your link or reading such trash.
As for those pushing the ACORN issue – Yes. I thnk voter fraud might be at stake, but I think it’s a Karl Rove plant. After all, that crowd is the only one dedicated and organized to pull something off like that. And if it fails, they’ve still got the computerized voter machines rigged anyway.

No New Economic Proposal Expected From McCain
Despite signals that Senator John McCain would have new prescriptions for the economic crisis after a weekend of meetings, his campaign said Sunday that Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, would not have any more proposals this week unless developments call for some.
The signs of internal confusion came as the campaign was under pressure from state party leaders to sharpen his message on the economy and at least blunt the advantage that Democrats traditionally have on the issue in hard times. Republicans have grown fretful as Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has edged ahead in polls three weeks before the election, while Mr. McCain has veered between ill-received economic plans and attacks on Mr. Obama’s character.
Mr. McCain took a break Sunday from filming campaign advertisements and practicing for a final debate with Mr. Obama on Wednesday to cheer volunteers at a phone bank near his Northern Virginia headquarters. Mr. McCain told them he planned to “whip his you-know-what in this debate.” The group erupted with laughter and applause.
On Saturday, his advisers were considering a range of economic ideas, one indicated. On Sunday, on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a confidant of Mr. McCain, confirmed a report on Politico.com that Mr. McCain was weighing proposals to cut taxes on investors’ capital gains and dividends. “It will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy,” Mr. Graham said, “by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes.”
But McCain advisers later said they did not know why Mr. Graham said that. One noted that Mr. McCain’s economic plan already would cut capital gains and dividend tax rates, by extending President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts. At the phone bank, Mr. McCain declined to answer a question from a reporter about what he was considering.
“We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way,” said a campaign spokesman, Tucker Bounds. Mr. McCain’s policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said, “I have no comment on anything, to anybody.”
Rarely have presidential campaigns had to react so close to an election to so serious a crisis as the global economic panic. Both candidates are struggling to look like leaders, without impeding the efforts of those in charge. By nearly all accounts and in recent polls, Mr. Obama has received higher marks for projecting calm and consistency while Mr. McCain has been criticized as flailing.
“At this point I don’t think McCain can say anything on the economy that will sound credible,” said Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan and President George Bush.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011221114339/www.ncrp.org/articles/dap/11.htm
Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD).
“Composed of 50 primarily black congregations, victories in lending policies the highly successful group founded by the late Saul Alinsky, a pioneer in community organization, IAF has 53 member organizations across the country.”
Milwaukee Interfaith Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH)
“MICAH is the best known community organization founded by the young and energetic Gamaliel Foundation, a Chicago-based network that has launched 35 congregation-based community organizations since 1986.” MICAH’s successes include gaining commitments of nearly $500 million in loans for mortgages”
The Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now (ACORN)
“Nearing its 25th anniversary, ACORN organizes through individual membership of low and moderate income people. It has more than 100,000 members in 500 neighborhood chapters across the country, and has become the leading community organization dealing with banking and reinvestment issues.”
Chicago ACORN, featured in the report, can point to having reached agreements with six of seven banks it targeted for underperformance in mortgage lending.
the Woods Fund of Chicago also reaffirmed the value of organizing while raising some of Greider’s same issues and concerns. The evaluation team hired by the Woods Fund, which included seasoned community organizers as well as trained program evaluators, concluded in an April, 1995 evaluation report that the Fund’s $4.2 million investment in community organizing over a ten-year period had achieved considerable results. Chicago based organizing supported by the Fund successfully “brought millions of dollars into low income communities for housing, and by challenging bank lending practices”
THERE YOU HAVE IT.
ACORN
OBAMA
AYERS
Strongarming lenders into risky loans to uunqualifed minorities.

Media controlled by terriorists, which is why we never hear the truth about Obama.

Voter in America,
The problems came from lenders with the least government oversight. No matter what you choose to believe.
It was the Bush Administration that allowed Fannie and Freddie to meet housing goals by buying subprime mortgage backed securities.
There is plenty of blame to go around. You can’t just cherry pick. Things are always a bit more complex than that.
Obama is winning because most agree that the principles of deregulation have not worked. People disagree with you, that doesn’t mean they are stupid.
Posted by: huh? | Oct 13, 2008 11:44:11 AM
That is absurd it was the bush admin that tried to reel in fannie and freddie the democratic congress blocked the action sighting there is nothing wrong with either entity

mudge: If you are indeed correct that Obama will win, I will be having a great time because I intend to go on welfare. It will be a much better deal for me under Obama’s plan. That’s what he wants anyhow – everyone to be dependent on the government. That way they have more control over you. You want socialism, go vote for him. If he wins, I will take advantage of that system as many others will. And it will blow up in his face. So I win either way.
Posted by: msa123 | Oct 13, 2008 10:31:36 AM
LOL. There speaks someone who knows NOTHING about welfare. To get on it–you have to own almost nothing. (in most states your net worth must be less than 3500.00) this includes your home, car, clothing, personal items, jewelry,savings, investments, etc. If you are caught lying or sheltering money, you get thrown off and could face fraud charges. If you put items in other names or shelters–again fraud–and the Welfare offices continually conduct unscheduled visits to ferret out cheaters.
so if you really want to go on welfare, live like a bum just to prove that you can–have at it. It falls in line with the very self centered, childish and shortsighted behavior of most McCain supporters anyway. Good luck living “well” after you cut off your nose to spite the spite in your face. LOL

The bottom line is that the blame for this crisis is not owned by one party.
Republicans want to blame the low income folks becuase it’s easy. They don’t blame the greedy lenders or the speculators who were over-leveraged and flipping houses.
There is plenty of blame on both sides. Deregulation has not been good with regards to the financial services sector.

To those who say Obama will win only because people are sick of the Republican in office now…nah.
Obama will win b/c people don’t want McCain as a leader. Natch.

Uber unstable is not considered a desired characteristic in POTUS.
Crazy family vendettas are also not considered presidential behavior.

Obama is trying to focus on the economic crisis so he does not have to answer about his association with Ayers and Weight. Making personal mistakes seems like a trend for Democratic leaders … Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Jesse Jackson and many more. Americans deserve something better. We want to look up to decent and trustworthy leaders. We don’t want someone with many personal problems such as Obama in the White House.

McCain was a war hero, he would not lie to us. He is a decent presidential candidate and we need him to lead the country. He is not George Bush like Obama and Biden have labeled him. Many of us know Biden but how many know Obama? Isn’t it risky voting for Obama?

From Small ACORN Mighty Election Fraud Grows | Oct 13, 2008 11:35:29 AM
1. It is not voter fraud until someone votes. So, Mickey Mouse and Tony Romo would have to show up with their ID’s.
2. The ACORN story is being pushed hard by the GOP to cover their purging of legitimate names off of voter rolls. This is right out of their play-book as they did this to JFK in 1960.

Quote: “I don’t want someone who changes his ideas every week as McCain seems to.”
Or, we could have someone like Obama who sits and waits to see how things play out and then comes up with the idea that has already proven to work. ie. the surge. McCain is a steady hand and you know it, because of his record. McCain has a record to look at. The only steady hand that Obama has is the one on the steering wheel of his political career. And Obama has no record of any accomplishments or proof of a steady hand. He’s just a former attorney and junior senator and he’s barely been that for long. How can you say any different, except that he keeps chanting the same words every day?
Posted by: msa123 | Oct 13, 2008 9:25:06 AM
—————
The “surge” which McCain is stuck in did NOT work. Had it worked we would no longer be in Iraq. Our troops are still getting killed and/or badly injured. All McCain can talk about is POW and the surge. His so-called proposals are erratic and do not make sense. The maverick, the man of change, the reformer, and again the maverick, the butt kicker, the underdog, and now the fighter is very confused and is extremely erratic. He has never been able to stay on message, he keeps changing it about every other day. In the last two days he has been the underdog, the butt kicker, and today the fighter!! Whew, I am sure there are other “nicknames” he has given himself and I have lost track of some of them!! Just to prove how confused and out-of-touch John McCain is, he recently addressed his audience as, “my fellow prisoners”!! He wasn’t even aware of what he was saying as he NEVER corrected himself. Did John McCain temporarily travel back to the Hanoi Hilton, or was he once again reminding us he was a POW? Either way, this bespeaks of his instability. McCain is very frightening, yeah, ya betcha!!

No amount of trying to de-humanize other groups (e.g. “liberals” or “left wingers”) by calling them names, or trying to plant FUD about Barack Obama’s plans, changes the truth. This nation is tired of being ruled by the agents of fear and the politicization of science and religion. A campaign that has no plans for domestic or diplomatic policy, but instead relies on the character assassination of the day, sounds alarmingly like the last two elections. We’ve been cheated twice by disenfranchisement and corruption, and our economy and alliances destroyed by incompetents. So why would we elect someone whose campaign mirrors the last eight years? I believe in America, in the promise that hard work leads to success. That promise is showing to still be true, in the efforts of the Obama campaign. Maybe the American Dream has been flickering, but we have a chance to bring it back to life. And we will. It won’t be easy, but we cannot and will not allow the agents of disunity, fear, uncertainty, and doubt (see above) to steal this election.

Why is it that if Obama is elected it will be a socialist society? As an African American I have never heard that said about any other person running-Democrat or Republican- It is nothing more than a racist statement-trying to use fear. I never even heard that statement said about the persons that were running for President. The bottom line is the economy has been in the toilet for years(and not just the last two)- Bush and McCain are the biggest socialist in the country. Yet they work this way-Help the rich in every way possible and to he## with the middle class. If that isn’t a socialist mentality I don’t know what is-They have been doing this for 8 years and want to continue with McCain-the problem for McCain was the BOTTOM FELL OUT- for all Americans to see-No Socialist McCain and Palin.

Senator Obama has run the best campaign in U.S. history
Senator Obama has run the best fundraising methods in U.S. history
Senator Obama has run a campaign free of chaos
Senator Obama is clear on the changes he wants to bring our country, and he invites each and everyone to be involved in these great changes
Senator Obama has stayed on message
Senator Obama has tried very hard to stay above the fray of slash-and-burn tactics and personal attacks and has done a great job in doing so
Senator Obama is intellectual, smart, and intelligent. He is a man of integrity, honesty, wisdom, vision, leadership, compassion, and a wonderful orator and communicator. All of these great assets are what we want and need in our president.
McCain is the opposite of Senator Obama and he proves it each and every day; only those with the same low intellectual level as McCain and Pilan see them as “qualified” for the highest positions in our nation. They are wrong, of course.

Reports of the demise of the
McCain/Palin campaign are greatly
exaggerated!
Don’t order those drapes yet Barack:
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SUBMIT FOXNEWS.COM HOME > YOU DECIDE 2004
Egg On Face of Exit Pollsters
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
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WASHINGTON — Once again, exit polls (search) received a black eye in the presidential election.
By the time most of the polls closed in precincts across the country Tuesday night, real numbers began to suggest that the early estimations that had been so upbeat for Sen. John Kerry were over-inflated — so much so, that FOX News Channel decided to quit using the exit poll results Tuesday evening, calling them inaccurate and unreliable.
FOX News had been using exit poll numbers crunched by Edison Media Research (search) in New Jersey and Mitofsky International (search) of New York, which had been contracted by the six news organizations that had formed the National Election Pool — besides the FOX News Channel, they were ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the Associated Press.
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The new pollsters had replaced the Voter News Service (search), a consortium of media outlets that did its own exit polling and vote counting in 2000, and was largely blamed for misjudging the 2000 election.
Long before the polls closed, Tuesday’s exit polling, which included presidential preferences as well as gauges about the importance of issues to voters, had been widely circulated via the Internet along with independent voting predictions. All suggested unusually strong numbers for Kerry.
Early numbers looked so positive for Kerry that FOX News analyst Jim Pinkerton, at 3:30 p.m. EST, said, “I think it looks good for angry Democrats.”
Television anchors and pundits, who are expected not to reveal trends, began reporting the “buzz” or the “mood” of the campaigns, suggesting they too had seen the numbers and were reacting accordingly.
NBC News’ David Gregory said Bush “appeared subdued,” while ABC News’ Terry Moran noted the president had expressed a “rare sense of doubt.”
The political Web logs or “blogosphere,” posted the numbers throughout the day, and depending on which side of the aisle bloggers aligned themselves, either embraced or were repulsed by what they saw during the day.
“Clearly exit polls are not meaningless: I think they have something to do with the Bushies’ glumness,” wrote “Alexander” on the Democratic-leaning Dailykos.com.
Later on FOX News, analysts talked openly about how some actual results contradicted exit polls numbers.
“Either the exit polls are completely wrong or George Bush loses,” FOX News analyst Susan Estrich said.
By midnight, Bush was declared the winner in Florida, though throughout the day the state had been predicted a winner for Kerry. Similar predictions in Ohio were also found to be wrong as the state was put in Bush’s column.
“We began noticing there was some very odd things,” in the polls, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told FOX News. “We knew there were some problems from the get-go.”
One Republican strategist told FOX News that “in the beginning of the night, we were asking how we could have been so far off.
“I bought a box of Kleenex. But I didn’t open them,” he said.
Exit polls did elicit some news about voters’ moods, which suggested that neither candidate had a clear mandate on the issues. The close nature of the popular vote in the early morning hours Wednesday seemed to indicate that those attitudes may have been more accurately reflected in exit data than presidential preferences.
Exit polls suggested that slightly more voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism than Kerry. A majority said the country was safer from terrorism than four years ago. Those voters overwhelmingly backed Bush.
But among those who said they were very worried about a terrorist strike, Kerry held a slight lead. The majority of voters who said things were going poorly in Iraq heavily favored Kerry.
Kerry was also favored by eight of 10 voters who listed the economy as a top issue.
Half said the country was headed in the right direction, a good sign for the incumbent.
We are about three weeks away from the
election!
Despite the Liberal Media attempt to
discourage McCain supporters with
there Democrat skewed polls John
McCain will win this election!

Point to reaganfan: Fox is not news. End of story.

Independent realist: It may be done for McCain but Obama better get triple security if elected. He wants to be like MLK so bad he can taste it. There is only one thing. MLK was intelligent. That’s the difference.

is it too late for the GOP to get a new candidate??
That’d be a NEW START for me!

Wright 101
Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright’s anti-Americanism
By Stanley Kurtz
It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.
John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.
African Village
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.
The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.
Rites of Passage
To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”
The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”
We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.
Jacob Carruthers
Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.
Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”
Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “…some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.
America as Rape
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist….” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.
Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.
More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”
According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey….” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”
When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.
Asa Hilliard
Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)
Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.
Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.
Ayers’s Pals
An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.
Obama’s Knowledge
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)
And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.
We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.
As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.
However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.