PolitiCrazy

It turns out that there is more hope for America than I thought. After a week full of errors and general stupidity from John McCain, voters have begun to realize that he really is Bush 2.0. The latest Gallup poll shows a 4-point lead for Barack Obama, the first statistically significant lead he has held since the convention.

The beginning of McCain’s troubles came last week, when the media realized exactly how dishonest his attack ads had become. Then late Sunday night, the news of Lehman Brothers’ collapse sent Wall Street into a frenzy, shown by the rapid collapse of stocks on both Monday and Wednesday, which were followed by reasonable bounces back toward the normal value on Tuesday and today, respectively. On Monday, McCain said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” By Tuesday, he had changed his mind. He seems to be forgetful now, too, as he often answers questions with completely obscure facts. When asked about Sarah Palin’s national security experience, McCain felt it necessary to point out that she had been a star point guard in high school. What’s even more sad is the fact that the audience actually cheered him on for making that statement.

I can only assume they were saying, “WOO, this guy’s an idiot, but at least our possible-50%-chance-to-be-president Sarah Palin can nail her free throws!”

John McCain has officially run out of safe havens. Following yesterday’s brutal smackdown between McCain lackey Tucker Bounds and FOX News reporter Megyn Kelly, John McCain appeared on “Morning Joe”, an MSNBC morning show hosted by conservative commentator Joe Scarbrough. McCain got pissy at several points in the interview, even going so far as accusing Joe’s co-host of being in the tank for Obama. The co-host, by the way, has a brother who works for John McCain’s campaign, and even worked for George W. Bush for six years. Conservative columnists in newspapers across the country have taken a shocking turn against McCain, although to be fair they all seem quite varied in their reasonings; the most notable today came from the New York Times in which the author went on a long anti-Palin rant, but certainly did not endorse Obama.

Even the comedy front is becoming an issue for McCain. Jon Stewart, who frequently invited McCain on his show over the years, has really outdone himself for this election season. He followed up his destruction of McCain’s acceptance speech as being literally “more of the same”, by showing hilarious clips of Sarah Palin and George Bush uniting in their claim that America “must not blink”. While Stewart has never been afraid to make his opinions known, even going so far as begging Americans to “make [his] job harder” the day before the 2004 election, it is surprising to see him go after his friend so brutally… or at least it would be surprising if his friend didn’t deserve it. Tough lovin’ from Mr. Liebowitz.

The simple fact remains: John McCain is running out of places to spew his BS. Americans are beginning to realize that he is running a campaign that could make even Karl Rove blush (and has; according to Rove, McCain’s ads have gone too far). Jon Stewart’s annihilation of McCain’s speech, and SNL’s amazing skit showing how Palin has made a joke of everything Hillary did for women in America, have made a surprising impact as well. In today’s Gallup poll, McCain’s once-solid lead has slipped to a single percentage point, thus a virtual tie when you consider the average margin of error.

Somewhere on the campaign trail, Barack Obama is smiling.

Yes, you just saw FOX News’ Megyn Kelly standing up to McCain surrogate and chronic idiot Tucker Bounds on his inability to stay on subject, and his useless attacks on Obama. I never thought I’d see the day when a FOX News reporter stood against McCain attacking Obama (O’Reilly’s half-assed remarks of a week ago fell on deaf ears [literally, considering his audience]), but it seems that even America’s least fair-and-balanced news network has decided that McCain is a terrible candidate.

It had been reported that Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp which presides over FOX News, recently took a liking to Barack Obama. However, his comments were outweighed by the director of FOX News programming, conservative Roger Ailes, who said FOX News would not be “in the tank for [Obama] like CNN and MSNBC.” Roger Ailes, if you hadn’t guessed from that quote, is not a very smart man, especially since he made that comment to Obama’s face.

But apparently FOX News, or at least Megyn Kelly, is trying to turn over a new leaf by actually challenging both sides for once. We’ll see how long that lasts, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying it.

Sarah Palin has gone on the type of journey that is only possible in America. She came out of nowhere; a little-known politician from a relatively insignificant state. As governor of Alaska, she participated in many questionable acts. She took funding from Congress for a project that was going nowhere, she abused the same earmarks that John McCain claims to fight against, and she has the same kind of shady past that McCain supporters have claimed that Barack Obama has.

So how exactly did she become a GOP superstar? The simple fact behind the choice of Palin was that John McCain needed a woman. It didn’t matter to him who it was (many more qualified women in the GOP), he just had to have a woman. Now he is allowed to use sexism and the gender card as a firewall against any attacks. This came at a perfect time for McCain, as people were beginning to accept the fact that being a former prisoner of war doesn’t mean he can never be questioned. Now, McCain can use anything Obama or Biden say against Palin, or even himself, and twist it into sexism. This poses an instant problem for Obama, who is good with words but cannot possibly tell what can be twisted one way or another, and for Biden, who doesn’t exactly have a reputation for saying what people want to hear.

By picking Palin, McCain also dug into two key demographics: young people, and women. Young Republicans who may have felt alienated when their party passed on Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for a 70+ year old with a documented history of health issues, are now being excited by the McCain/Palin ticket. Also, women now view McCain more favorably than before, even though any intelligent women would know that he was attempting to pander to them with the pick of Palin. A true feminist would never vote McCain, but unfortunately women voters haven’t come as far as we thought they had.

While the pick of Palin should not have worked and on Election Day likely will not work, for now it’s certainly interesting, and sad, to watch.

Yesterday, the large investment firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the largest failure of an investment firm in 18 years. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch has been bought off by Bank of America. AIG, a large insurance company, needs $20 billion in government lending, which today NY Governor David Paterson said he will allow. To bring all of this into perspective, Dow Jones was down 355 points and NASDAQ was down 56 at the time this article was written.

What can be made of all of this? Well, simply the fact that we’re beyond a recession now. This has officially gotten serious, with a major investment bank failing and an insurance company struggling to stay even.

This news has already made an impact on the campaign trail. Barack Obama has blamed the failed policy of George Bush, and linked John McCain to those policies, whereas McCain says the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Unfortunately, fundamentals won’t get us out of this mess.

Recently the focus of the election has shifted to John McCain’s “dirty politics” and his inability to tell the truth. Many have begun criticizing him for this (although still not nearly enough), but they’re overlooking his big problem: if McCain starts telling the truth, he will lose.

There is no way to sugar-coat that. John McCain cannot win this election without deceiving the American people into believing his false accusations against Barack Obama. At the beginning of this race, both candidates promised clean campaigns that focused on the issues. Obama has held his promise; McCain hasn’t. Obama has said that McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose this election, and he is absolutely right. John McCain has gone from a man of high integrity, or at least higher than the average politician, to being a sleazy liar who thinks America is dumb enough to believe him.

The only problem for us lies in the fact that he is right. America is dumb enough to believe him. The average voter doesn’t care enough to do research on the facts. They see McCain’s dishonest campaign ads and assume that it’s all true. Usually, the mainstream media has to be the one to call a politician out on their lies, but for some reason, they have chosen to ignore McCain’s smear campaign. This is why I find it hilarious when people complain that the media is liberally biased. They covered McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin negatively because it was a stupid decision. I suppose when the cable news networks were all frantically reporting news of Barack Obama being a secret Muslim, that was a rare moment of fairness and balance, right?

I really don’t like calling America stupid, mostly because I wish it wasn’t the case. But I look at the polls and see that 32% of Americans still think Bush has done a good job, and 12% of voters think Barack Obama is a Muslim… not to mention the number of voters who think being a Muslim is actually a bad thing. (HINT: it’s like Christianity, but you aren’t allowed to draw their Jesus)

Honestly, people, please show McCain that he isn’t going to win this way. If he does, then that is the future we have to look forward to: more politicians winning based on lies that we refuse to call them out on… and it’ll be exactly what we deserve.

I want some opinions here. I will approve all comments that I get. I also want to hear your reasoning behind voting for your candidate, as I will likely respond to some of those as well. I just want to hear both sides of the story.

Have fun, go nuts with it.

Today, as Hurricane Ike rampages through Texas, Still-President Bush has taken quick action.

President Bush declared a major disaster in his home state of Texas and ordered immediate federal aid. Officials were encouraged that the storm surge topped out at only 13.5 feet _ far lower than the catastrophic 20-to-25-foot wall of water forecasters had feared, but major roads were washed out near Galveston, and the damage was still immense.

Now obviously his quick action can be questioned, seeing as this is his home state and considering the Katrina problems, but the simple fact is that this is a positive step forward. Hopefully it will show our next president that if even the worst president in history can react properly, then anyone can.

Meanwhile, Ike has ripped through Texas. The damage is not fully known yet, but so far four casualties have been reported. Hopefully these will be the only casualties, even though that is already four too many.

Say what you want about Keith Olbermann and his liberal bias, but the man was spot-on in this video.

He systematically destroys the Palin interview… not that it really needed to be further destroyed. I particularly enjoyed the ending. Apparently the Countdown video editing crew was replaced by “The Daily Show” producers.

So I was reading an interview of Bill O’Reilly (great bathroom reading, I must say) when I came across something disturbing.

Everyone calls you a conservative, but you classify yourself as independent. Why? Stephen Wells, TORONTO

I hold some traditional conservative positions, absolutely, but I hold liberal positions as well. When I go out on the street, the real conservatives look at me askance: How come you’re not attacking Obama? How come you believe in global warming? But that’s never picked up by the left-wing media.

Papa Bear, you never cease to amaze me. I find it disturbing if there are really people who walk up to him on the street and expect him to attack Obama even more. I find it more disturbing that Bill-O is calling an entire group of people (conservatives, but still) loony conspiracy theorists, since global warming is pretty damn close to a scientific fact, and there have been numerous non-partisan efforts to slow down the process. I find it even more disturbing that O’Reilly refers to the “left-wing media”. If he were really an independent, he would not be this stupid.

O’Reilly and his colleagues consistantly engage in partisan hackery, and lately they haven’t even been hiding it. For their “fair and balanced” election coverage, they brought in Karl Rove, the genius behind two terms of Bush, and Mike Huckabee, who believes the Bible is meant to be 100% literal. They let Bill Kristol, a conservative talking head, commentate during the DNC, at which he referred to both Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton’s speeches as “generic”. Really? Generic? That’s such a bold statement from a guy named “Bill”.  Then there’s “Hannity and Colmes”. Admittedly, the show would be a brilliant concept for a network like FOX News. A conservative and a liberal duking it out. The only problem: there isn’t a liberal on the show. It’s a right-wing nutjob (Hannity) against a moderate (Colmes), which allows Hannity’s insanity to stand out. That’s not a shot at Colmes though; I consider myself a left-leaning moderate too, and I could do no better in stopping Hannity’s nightly ego trip. Then there was O’Reilly himself, who helped bring FOX News’ RNC coverage to a close with a “very special episode” of his slap-stick comedy series “The O’Reilly Factor”, in which he finally scored an interview with Barack Obama, but then abruptly started yelling at him like he would with any other Democrat.

Independent? Fair and balanced? To quote John Oliver, “Go FOX yourself.”