An informal poll, of sorts

Florida has early voting [I'm waiting until The Day] and the lines have been long whenever I drive by this past week. The lines are never long in my precinct, and I just plain like my polling place.

So, apropos of not much, I decided to drive around a few neighborhoods and [sort of] count campaign signs.

My immediate neighborhood, mostly white, is more or less working, with small pockets of solidly middle class -- McCain/Palin signs outnumber the Obama08 signs, maybe 3:1.

My former neighborhood, approximately the same economic range but about 50/50 black/white has almost no signs, but I did see a few Obama bumper stickers.

The slightly more prosperous neighborhoods around me, solidly middle class and up to the lower tier of upper middle class, again mostly white, have more Obama08 signs, about 2:1.

The definitely ritzy-schnortzy upper middle class would-be-gated-if-it-could-be-gated neighborhood just up the street is ALL white and has ALL McCain/Palin signs.

One of the poorest neighborhoods in town, almost all black, has few signs, but none of them were for McCain.

One of the poorest neighborhoods out in the county, also mostly black, has very few signs, but none of them were for McCain either.

Lots of active-duty and retired military here, but not a lot of Veterans For McCain signs. I wonder what the place would have looked like if the Obama campaign had given out Veterans for Obama signs.

Sarah Palin stopped by here a few days ago; reportedly 10,000 people from 4 counties showed up and fell in love with her.


Lots and lots and lots of signs for local elections, which is heartening, but an awful lot of them are for Republicans, which isn't a huge surprise. This place has long been of the Blue Dog and Dixiecrat stripe, so when Newt Gingrich invited them to turn Republican, they did.

It's McCain by a whisker -- so far

in Florida, as of yesterday, but my dad, who is sometimes right about these things, thinks that Colin Powell's endorsement will reverse that and give Obama the lead by Election Day.

Manchurian candidate?

It would be irresponsible of me not to speculate, but... John McCain [hearts] the Kremlin?

Over the course of the presidential campaign, John McCain has repeatedly emphasized his willingness to stand up to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as proof that only he possesses the fortitude and judgment to become the next leader of the free world. In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, McCain lashed out at Putin and the Russian oligarchs, who, "rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power...[are] reassembling the old Russian Empire." McCain rushed to publicly support the Georgian republic during its recent conflict with Russia and amplified his threat to expel Moscow from the G-8 club of major powers. His running mate, Sarah Palin, suggested in her first major interview that the United States might have to go to war with Russia one day in order to protect Georgia--the kind of apocalyptic scenario the United States avoided during the cold war.

Yet despite McCain's tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia's oligarchy--indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin's geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro.

According to two former senior US diplomats who served in the Balkans, Davis and his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, received several million dollars to help run Montenegro's independence referendum campaign of 2006. The terms of the agreement were never disclosed to the public, but top Montenegrin officials told the US diplomats that Davis's work was underwritten by powerful Russian business interests connected to the Kremlin and operating in Montenegro.

Remember Obama points?

Now you can get McCain points.

Impactful

“All I can say is, the surge is succeeding,” [McCain] said. “If someone wants to disagree with that, they’re free to, but I have statistics — whether they be instances of violence, whether it be U.S. casualties, whatever it may be — that prove that this new tactic is succeeding. So I’m willing to stick with it.”

---

“After nearly four years of a failed strategy, the difference in one year is dramatic,” McCain says. “If they make that same progress in the next year,” he predicts, “I think it’s going to be quite impactful on American public opinion, as well as, more importantly, events on the ground.”

from The McCain Doctrines

Why vote when you can

let the Brits pick the next VP?



McCain/Rice. Great. Guess this is their chance to get us back for that one little bit of unpleasantness.



yeah, that sarah palin vote is mine

Really Kooky unBearable Assholes

Once every blue moon or so, I surf the blogs and websites of the gun nuts for news of what they're --- Ted Nugent and John McCain come to mind --- up to.

Among other things, they're all up in arms about a House bill to reauthorize the ban on assault weapons, cuz like yanno ya can't bring down a deer with anything less than a sniper rifle.

Boldly going where no President has ever gone before

It's no secret that John McCain wants to un-tax the rich and the corporate, but now he's promising to balance the budget too. On the backs of the proles, it would appear.


From Think Progress' Wonk Room:

So how will McCain balance the budget? James Pethokoukis of U.S. News thinks he has the answer: massive cuts in Social Security benefits. The cuts Pethokoukis outlines would not only eliminate the Social Security shortfall but also generate $2.9 trillion to help pay for McCain’s tax cuts. He points to McCain aides’ suggestions that he might raise the retirement age and cut the growth in benefits over time.

Implementing those two solutions would actually result in more money going into Social Security than is needed to fund scheduled benefits. There would be money left over to help reduce taxes or increase spending on education or energy or whatever […] Now if you did a combination of price indexing starting in 2015 and extended the retirement age to 70 by 2050, that $5 trillion deficit turns into a $2.87 trillion surplus.

If Pethokoukis is right, McCain is attempting to do something that no president has ever done before: using payroll tax revenue to fund other functions of government. The result would be huge cuts in the program that lifts 13 million seniors out of poverty and a shift of the tax burden from progressive corporate taxes onto regressive wage taxes.

McCainCare

Hmm... $2 billion saved. And if those savings were to be passed through to the healthcare consumer, then each American would get...

$666

Ooooh! Never gonna happen.

When next you cast your vote for President...

or in one of the remaining Democratic Party primaries, think on this:

If John Edwards were to magically re-enter the race and get elected President, I might actually be able to get health insurance, and by extension, health care.

If Hillary Clinton is elected President, there's a reasonable possibility that I'll be able to get health insurance.

If Barack Obama is elected President, I might eventually get health insurance, but it likely won't be anytime soon.

If John McCain is elected President, I might as well curl up and die. Or move to China [h/t andante, in comments].

And while I fully expect you to not make your voting decision based on how much you may or may not love me, you might keep in mind the fact that one day your situation could more closely resemble mine, especially if companies keep laying off employees. You could be next.

PS. Really we just need to bypass the for-profit insurance companies altogether. Write to the candidate of your choice and suggest they switch to promoting single-payer national health insurance instead.

McCain: Recession is really kind of a technical term

used by people who are economists and people who aren't married to $100 million heiresses.

But now McCain finally admits we might be in a recession, which perhaps explains why his campaign manager is cozying up to some big-time lobbyists.

John McCain's tax policies

would benefit mostly the wealthy and corporations.

Just a highlight or two ---

Yes, the AMT is going to hit more middle class families, but the solution to that little problem is to raise the income level at which the AMT kicks in, not abolish it altogether. The idea of an alternative minimum tax was to keep the rich from using various loopholes to get out of paying all but a token amount of taxes.

McCain wants to make it harder for Congress to raise taxes. Me, I'd like to see it harder for Congress to lower taxes, especially all those tax breaks they've been giving to the rich.

My new blog project:

point out at least one bad thing about McCain every time I blog.

First up, John McCain on Human Dignity & The Sanctity of Life:

Overturning Roe v. Wade

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.

However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the question is returned to the states, the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby. The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level. As John McCain has publicly noted, "At its core, abortion is a human tragedy. To effect meaningful change, we must engage the debate at a human level."