I was sitting in the hot tub tonight, imbibing in a rum and coke (yes, Coca-Cola) and a cigar as I’m prone to do every so often when I need some “down” time and it dawned on me that the blog here can be put to a better use for the next 31 days. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince people that McCain/Palin is a good choice. By this point, I think though, most people have made up their minds as to who they’re going to pull the level for on November 4th unfortunate as that may be. After all, as Brian Williams said on Letterman tonight, a week in a Presidential Campaign is literally a year (look at the past two if you need any proof) and a lot of things can change.

Instead of focusing on why McCain/Palin would be a better choice for this country, I’m going to focus, at least five posts a week (figure one a day during the work week) on why Obama/Biden are a bad fit for the country. We’ll look at things like their policies, their beliefs, their associations and more. I’m going to work hard to try and sway you to at least reevaluate why you’re planning to vote for who you’re planning on voting for.

Parts won’t be too easy, other parts won’t be too hard. Its hard to argue with Biden’s time in the senate, but its not hard to argue with his view on patriotism, taxes and other areas. With Obama, it shouldn’t be too hard to argue with anything.

We’ll start today with looking at the tax returns for the two VP candidates. Biden’s were released earlier this month and show that the Bidens earned approximately $320,000 in 2006 and they paid approximately $66,000 in taxes. For charitable contributions, the Bidens biggest year of giving was 2007 in which they gave a whoping $995 to charity. Now, even if he was following the Christian principle of tithing (which is %10) he should have given approximately $32,000.

On the other hand, the Palin family earned approximately $170,000 in 2007 (about $160,000 in 2006) and paid $25,000 in taxes in 2007. They donated approximately $8200 to charity (figure church and other charities) over a two year period. If I did my math right, they donated approximately 9 times the amount that Biden has in roughly the same period.

I’d point out that Obama donated about 5.6% of their pretax earnings to charity and McCain donated approximately 26% of his earnings in the same time period. I think before Biden talks about paying taxes as the patriotic thing to do, he should look at increasing his donations to charities that help more people.

In case you missed it, I wanted to let you know there was a debate on TV last night. If you want to watch it in its full glory, RealClearPolitics.com has the video as do a number of news outlets but let me give you some high lights. They spent the first half hour or so of this First debate talking about the Economy and the current situation. Both candidates seem to be where they were at the beginning of the week… which is almost nowhere, on this issue and the bail out. Obama wants to cover more people then necessary with the plan and McCain hopes he can sign something. Personally, I think its a bunch of poo either way you look at it. I shouldn’t be paying for someone else’s mistakes. Its not right.

After that the discourse moved to Foreign Policy and while McCain did pretty good (it is after all his forte) Obama wasn’t too bad at reciting the lines that had been prepared for him. McCain actually seemed to be more off the cuff than Professor Obama did at times and he appeared calmer than one would expect while the Great One appeared to be on the defensive most of the time and was seemingly flustered for most of the debate.

Of course, I don’t think that agreeing with Sen. McCain so often during a debate where you need to show your differences was a good plan of attack. There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in his agreement. Someone needs to revisit the chapter on proper debating.

In all, I wasn’t too impressed with either candidate, its a shame that Bob Barr or Ralph Nader weren’t invited, I think they could have livened things up (especially with the way Barr refers to himself in the third person). It was fun watching the feeds on Twitter (a remarkably liberal community) though and I think this weeks Upcoming VEEp debate is going to be more fun.

Who ever said that double standards do not exist in politics was not talking about American Politics. Sure, each side seems to have their fair share of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” however, none seem to be as obvious as the double standards this years democratic field wields. In part, this blatantly obvious in the media’s coverage of the Obama/Biden ticket in comparison to the McCain/Palin ticket. The disdain the media displays towards anything non-obama is absolutely mind numbing. However, even the candidate’s own spin on issues seems to be a huge double standard.

For instance, the current claims by Obama paint McCain to be against government reform and regulation of the financial industry when in fact The EXACT OPPOSITE is true. In 2005, McCain authored a bill calling for the Reform and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (what fun names!). A bill that the Democrats called ridiculous. In fact, had the congress acted on McCain’s bill three years ago, then a large part of this down turn may have been prevented (or at least it wouldn’t be as bad as it appears to be today). Instead they did the opposite. The Democratically controlled House called for less regulation and urged lenders to make loans to people they knew could not afford to pay them off.

In large part, this current economic downturn is due to the Democrats in congress who think its a RIGHT for a person with less then adequate means to own a house. Now they’re trying to blame this on McCain and the GOP when its a largely liberal problem. Rep Barney Frank tried passing the blame to the GOP when its clearly not the GOP’s fault at all. Talk about double standards.

Another nice double standard took place at the end of last week when Rep Charles Rangle from NY called Gov. Palin disabled. Of course, the Honorable(?) Rep from NY is claiming thats not really what he meant, but come on. Really?? He’s also facing heat from the right side of the aisle for owing back taxes (whats the point in being a congressman if you have to pay taxes right??) and some other minor infringements that would have had a republican crucified by this point.

Given all the double talk and standards that the Democratic leadership like to play with, its no wonder that they’ve managed to screw the pooch on their control of the house in the two years they’ve been there and have garnered an approval rating lower than the current President’s. Something that should have been pretty hard to do…

edit: I came across two good articles today I wanted to share, one about Palin and Obama—What Really is Wisdom? @ Realclearpolitics and the other is about Is Obama Another Dukakis? at the Slate. Both are good reads!

In case you missed it last night, Obama made his acceptance speech last night and while it reads to be a fairly good speech and the critics have all had nothing but praise, as I read through it, it reeked of the same old Democratic rhetoric that they’ve been spewing for years. Promising change, promising more government interference in your life and promising more wealth redistribution. The funny thing is that he wasn’t too specific in how he’s going to pay for it all.

I won’t go in to the fact that its not the Government’s job to provide for me and my own, nor is it expected. The problem lies in the fact that as a country we’ve strayed from the beliefs that helped form this country more than two centuries ago. The willingness to work hard has been thrown away and its become an “Its my right” country.

It wasn’t unexpected that the GOP was spinning the speech as soon as it started. The Dems will be doing the same thing next week in Minnesota. Its expected. They managed to do a good job poking holes in the promises (its not the government’s job to help automakers, the Japanese and European automakers aren’t having a problem at all) Obama was making. It will be interesting to see (if he makes it to the office) how many of those promises actually materialize. For S&G if you want to see how Obama voted while in the senate (he missed more than 50% of the votes this year) head over to Project Vote Smart.

I did like the fact that McCain congratulated Obama on the historic feat he accomplished (he did manage to become the first black man nominated for the presidency) and the fact that the acceptance speech was on the anniversary of King’s I have a Dream speech.

In other FLIPPING AWESOME news, McCain is set to announce that Sarah Palin is going to be his VP Candidate. She’s a relatively new governor for the State of Alaska and she seems to bring a lot to the table as a candidate. It will be interesting to see exactly how this plays out and while I didn’t watch more than five minutes of the DNCC, I’ll be tuned in to the GOP Convention every night.

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Despite his claims earlier in the week that he “isn’t the guy”, it appears that Joe Biden is in fact the guy. Its interesting to note that Obama choose someone who just a year ago said that “Barack Obama is not ready to be president”. What prompted the change? Well, maybe the fact that he’s now Number one to Obama’s Captain Pickard. Maybe the fact that he thinks Obama may not last long in the office and this is his chance to become President. Who knows.

What is apparent is that this move by the Obama Camp provides some much needed Foreign policy experience to a group that was lacking. Its known that Obama does not have the strongest (or any for that matter) FP background, being a 2nd year Senator from Illinois and this adds some much needed depth to his campaign. Is it enough?

A poll earlier this week had McCain up by 5 points, however at this point in the race it could go either way and I’m not too thrilled about either main party candidate (did you know that Bob Barr is running?) and I’m getting tired of picking the lesser of two evils. Obama’s Social Welfare programs do not bode well for the country (bordering on bringing mass socialism to the States) and I’m not too keen on another 4 years of the same old GOP drivel.

Maybe if a democrat is elected President, the rest of the country will wake up and realize the mistake they made by giving control of the House to the Dems. Things seemed to work remarkably well when Clinton was in the White House and the GOP held the House. Unfortunately, I think that this political season will have too big an effect on the future of America.

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Next up in the race to be the next leader of the Not So Free World is Michigan. The polls opened in MI today to a somewhat limited Democratic side (the DNC is punishing MI for moving their primary by taking all of their delegates away) with only Clinton listed on the ballot there while the GOP has a full slate of contenders (though, Thompson, Guliani and Paul are visibly lacking in the state) listed. Mit Romney is looking to gain some ground here as many have guessed that another second or third place finish in the motor state would leave him questioning whether or not he wants to continue.

Its interesting that by now, the Democratic side is almost paired down to the final three, while the GOP hopefuls are looking past what has happened to states with later primaries to gain ground (Thompson is looking to the Carolinas and most of the south, while guliani is looking to Florida and some of the other red states). It definately proves how split the republican party is going in to this election and I think if Ron Paul were smart, he’d drop out of the GOP race and focus on gaining a third party nomination. Of course whether or not he could do anything with that nomination would be a stretch.

The only thing I know for sure is that the American people have not found one consistant leader from either party to put their faith behind. If the election were today, and you had to vote for one of the six leaders, who could you vote for with out feeling the need to go in to a drug treatment program??

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12:01 am on January 8th, 2007, New Hampshire was the first state to hold an official Primary in the presidential season. Sure, Iowa had their caucuses last week, but come on, standing in a corner is hardly the way to pick the future president of the country is it? New Hampshire is generally the first official primary in the country (its been that way by tradition since 1920 and by state law since the 70’s, though I don’t see how a state can decide its going to be first. Thats like the last place qualifier at a nascar event deciding to take the choice poll position).

Its not that important of a primary as far as delegates go (come on, this ISNew Hampshire we’re talking about) but the important part of the NH primary is the media exposure that a candidate gets from the event. Most sub-third place finishers will most likely begin their exit after today’s primary while the two or three main players in either party may fight for more of their life. If Obama can finish strong here beating out Clinton (or even if Hillary looses to John Edwards), the Clinton camp will either have to ramp up their fight for super tuesday or take a good look at their strategy and decide to go home. Its seldom that a candidate looses the party’s nomination after taking both Iowa and New Hampshire (and another loss here would take a lot of wind out of HRC’s sails).

On the Right side of the aisle, if McCain can stage a coup and come out ahead of Romney, then the Mittster will have to step his game up a tad as well as he would have suffered two early losses in Key states. Same for Rudy. Fred isn’t expecting to do well until he hits the southern half of the country, but more than anything, I think I’d like to see him drop out and endorse Huckabee who could do well with anything above a third place finish in the Granite state.

All in all its going to be an exciting day. By the way, if you’re in Georgia and you did not register to vote before Yesterday, you’re out of luck for the Primary coming up in February.

So the caucuses were good for some and not so good for others. On the side of the donkey we have two senators (dodd and biden) dropping out of the race as Obama edges past Edwards and Clinton for the Iowa delegates. Whats surprising is that Edwards beat out Hillary Clinton for second. The talking heads are calling this a “debate between change and experience” this go round. Personally, I think people are beginning to see Hillary Clinton for what she is, and I hope it continues to New Hampshire.

The GOP pushed Huckabee to the front of the pack and gave him the nod and its my hope that he’s able to parlay this early win in to a string of them. I think an Obama vs. Huckabee general election in November could prove interesting and beneficial for the country. They both offer different views from previous holders of the office and most importantly, they both seem to know whats on the minds of the average person. Of which, there are a lot. It makes me wish I had real estate in NH and some of the early primary states so I could vote now, but I guess I’ll wait my turn. Georgia votes in February.

Caucus Outcome (top 3 in each party)

Democrat

1. Obama - 38%
2. Edwards - 30%
3. Clinton - 29%

GOP

1. Huckabee - 34%
2. Romney - 25%
3. Thompson - 13%
4. McCain - 13%

Its always interesting when someone crosses party lines to side with the enemy. Independent Senator, Joe Lieberman has come out endorsing John McCain as the only one who can “break through the partisanship that is poisoning our politics today and stopping us from getting anything done in Washington.” An interesting twist for one who has seemingly broken almost all the rules of modern politics.

Lieberman has drawn some fire from the Democratic Leadership, however there’s little they can do if they’d like to keep his votes on their side of the aisle (especially since very few votes separate the two parties in the Senate). I do have to admit, I’m a little surprised myself, that the liberal from New England is supporting the Conservative from Arizona. It could almost be a story line in an episode of the “Odd Couple” but I wouldn’t expect to see the two of them out shopping for platform beds any time soon (wouldn’t that be a pretty headline??).

Elsewhere in the GOP, Huckabee is drawing more fire as he continues to rise in the polls, which brings to mind the question of whether or not bad press is better than no press at all and Ron Paul reportedly raises 6 million in contributions over the weekend in an online ron paul lovefest. I seriously hope that Paul realizes what effect he could have on the race if he runs as a third party and decides not to. It would make sense for the GOP nomoniee to have him on the short list of running mates, though Eric seems to think that would be suicide for the ticket.