side note: Not a huge deal…but I love watching the crotchety old man get all worked up. I was waiting for McCain to bust into some rant that began with: “When I was your age…..”
side note: Thanks Joel….now, I’ve never seen Les Mis, but if you have, you’ll find this hysterical!
side note: Thanks Maureen! This is becoming more and more of a trend…..ditch the landline and use your cell for everything! I know a lot of people who do this now….this will have a dramatic effect on polling!
By ALAN FRAM
AP
Google News
WASHINGTON (AP) — People with only cell phones may differ enough from those with landline telephones that excluding the growing population of cell-only users from public opinion polls may slightly skew the results, a study has concluded.
The finding, in a report this week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, may increase pressure on polling organizations to include people who use only cell phones in their surveys. While many major polls including The Associated Press-GfK Poll already interview cell phone users, some do not, largely because doing so is more expensive.
Earlier studies — including a joint Pew-AP report two years ago — concluded that cell and landline users had similar enough views that not calling cell users had no major impact on poll findings. The new report concludes that “this assumption is increasingly questionable,” especially for young people, who use cells heavily.
Combining polls it conducted in August and September, Pew found that of people under age 30 with only cell phones, 62 percent were Democrats and 28 percent Republicans. Among landline users the same age that gap was narrower: 54 percent Democrats, 36 percent GOP.
Similarly, young cell users preferred Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over Republican nominee John McCain by 35 percentage points. For young landline users, it was a smaller 13-point Obama edge. (more…)
side note: This woman is a joke! This is who the Repubs picked at VP?!!? Ridiculed and Mocked I say!!!
Huffington Post
Today, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reported on potentially embarrassing clips of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric that haven’t yet been aired. The Politico has more information on one in particular:
Of concern to McCain’s campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin’s interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.
The Palin aide, after first noting how “infuriating” it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.
After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.
There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.
side note: We still haven’t heard why we need to bail out these companies…..just that we have to! Lets see the smoking gun, lets see what the bush administration is saying of what will happen if we don’t do this. Why did they sit on this proposal till now….it’s already been widely reported by Cheney’s staff that it was sitting on the shelf for months. Why wasn’t it dire 3 months ago? Something doesn’t smell right…..
By David Sirota
ourfuture.org
Summary:
Though the deal negotiated between congressional leaders and the White House is better than what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally proposed early last week, it remains an insulting atrocity, having omitted even basic aid to homeowners, bankruptcy reforms and any modicum of future financial industry regulation.
There’s news this Sunday afternoon of a congressional deal to bailout Wall Street fat cats with $700 billion of taxpayer cash (you can read the draft legislation here [1]). Though the deal negotiated between congressional leaders and the White House is better than what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally proposed early last week, it remains an insulting atrocity, having omitted even basic aid to homeowners, bankruptcy reforms and any modicum of future financial industry regulation. Now, the New York Times [2] reports that the Democratic leadership may not have the votes to pass this bailout. So without further ado, here are the top 5 reasons (in no order) why every single member of Congress – Democrat and Republican – should vote this sucker down. Please feel free to copy and paste this post into an email to your congressperson. They are deciding right now – let them hear your voice.
1. BAILOUT’S INHERENT FISCAL INSANITY COULD MAKE PROBLEM WORSE
When an individual consumer uses a new credit card to pay off astounding debt from an old credit card, it’s akin to check kiting, which is is illegal. Apparently, though, when the government does it, it’s billed as Serious Public Policy. Because that’s what this supposedly prudent bailout bill would do: Force taxpayers to borrow $700 billion from foreign banks to pay off the bad debt of Wall Street banks. During a crisis that is aimed at preventing interest rates from skyrocketing, nobody has been able to explain how adding almost a trillion dollars to the interest rate-exacerbating national debt would do anything other than undermine the plan’s underlying objective. Worse, the U.S. Treasury Department itself [3] admits that the $700 billion number is “not based on any particular data point” – that is, they created it out of thin air because “We just wanted to choose a really large number.” Slapping that amount of money onto the national credit card when our government can’t even justify the amount is beyond absurd – it is insane.
It didn’t have to be this way, of course. As I noted in my newspaper column this week [4], Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a temporary tax on millionaires to finance part of this bailout. Similarly, Blue Dog Democrats proposed [5] a future tax on financial firms if and when taxpayers lose cash on the deal. These proposals were discarded in favor of language asking the government to “submit a plan to Congress on how to recoup any losses,” according to the Associated Press. Not only is that language toothless, but it opens up the possibility of a plan being submitted that says we should raise middle-class taxes or slash middle-class social programs to pay for Wall Street’s misbehavior.
2. EXPERTS ON BOTH THE LEFT AND RIGHT SAY THIS BAILOUT COULD MAKE THINGS WORSE (more…)
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer
The House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue package, ignoring urgent pleas from President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders to quickly bail out the staggering financial industry.
Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.
When the critical vote was tallied, too few members of the House were willing to support the unpopular measure with elections just five weeks away. Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle.
Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home. (more…)
Her faith views are strong and sometimes controversial. Her aides say she seeks to share but not impose her faith; her critics say she has ‘a fine-tuned sense of how far to push.’
By Stephen Braun
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago — about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct — the teacher said.
After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.
Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,” recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The idea of a “young Earth” — that God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs and humans coexisted early on — is a popular strain of creationism. (more…)
Jed Lewison
huffingtonpost.com
Barack Obama rolls out a new line during a rally in Michigan on Sunday, saying John McCain’s response to the financial meltdown was “Katrina-like”:
Senator McCain just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the storm hitting Wall Street hit Main Street long ago. That’s why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response.
Sort of stood there. Said the fundamentals of the economy are strong. That’s why he’s been shifting positions these last two weeks, looking for photo ops, trying to figure out what to say and what to do.
see original
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS | AP
via huffingtonpost.com
Congressional leaders and the White House agreed Sunday to a $700 billion rescue of the ailing financial industry after lawmakers insisted on sharing spending controls with the Bush administration. The biggest U.S. bailout in history won the tentative support of both presidential candidates and goes to the House for a vote Monday.
The plan, bollixed up for days by election-year politics, would give the administration broad power to use billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars to purchase devalued mortgage-related assets held by cash-starved financial firms.
President Bush called the vote a difficult one for lawmakers but said he is confident Congress will pass it. “Without this rescue plan, the costs to the American economy could be disastrous,” Bush said in a written statement released by the White House. He was to speak publicly about the plan early Monday morning, before U.S. markets open.
Flexing its political muscle, Congress insisted on a stronger hand in controlling the money than the White House had wanted. Lawmakers had to navigate between angry voters with little regard for Wall Street and administration officials who warned that inaction would cause the economy to seize up and spiral into recession. (more…)
By Alexandra Marks
The Christian Science Monitor
via Yahoo News
Barack Obama has picked up steam.
Over the past two weeks he’s seen a small but steady rise in the polls. Immediately after the Republican Convention, the Illinois senator trailed his rival John McCain by three points in the various daily tracking polls. Senator Obama is now up by as many as six or seven points.
Pollsters say that’s in part because the vital independent voters are now shifting his way.
“There are still a substantial number of independents that are undecided, principally independent women,” says pollster John Zogby. “But as a group, they’ve begun to swing over to Obama, but not in large enough numbers yet to close the deal.” (more…)
side note: This is a new Obama ad……we only have a few weeks left to convince people that McCain in the White House is another Bush term, he has voted with him 95% of the time over the last 7.5 years. Dubya even endorsed him…..
side note: If you watched the “real” interview, then you’ll know that SNL used a lot of what Palin actually said. Make sure you stress to all your friends,colleagues,neighbors, relatives to watch the VP debate on October 2. The GOP and their supporters should be ridiculed for
allowing this Palin pick. This is a fuckin joke!
