Idol Chatter

I was just reading the following over at the Washington Post:

The Treasury on Thursday offered six life insurers capital infusions under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The precise terms of the proposed investments have not yet been negotiated.

All of the life insurers that received the offers have stock that is publicly traded, providing a constant measure of investor confidence. They had to apply for the money by last November, and some took other steps to shore up their finances during the long wait for Treasury approval.

Now it appears that some companies including Ameriprise Financial will be declining the funds.  Decline free money?  Now on the surface that may not seem very logical but like most things in life, the funds come with some hidden costs.  The Washington Post article speculates that one main consideration may be that the funds come with restrictions on executive pay.  Now that may be a factor but frankly I’d have to suspect that possible dilution of the company’s stock value is a bigger concern.  After all, if stockholders see their stock prices decline, they are more likely to vote out the CEO and other key officers.

What is more interesting is that most of these companies are deciding they just don’t need the money because they are not financially strapped.  If that is the case, why are they being offered the money?  If the Government has funds to give out, what about more ways to send funds to small businesses which are likely to be decimated in numbers by the time this economy turns around.

The current administration continues to help out the industry giants who severely mismanaged funds while almost completely ignoring the Mom & Pop shops who continue to face squeezes on their credit lines and credit rates.  This at a time when revenues are down is just going to kill many businesses and further increase this nation’s unemployment rate.

If only some of that attention and financial assistance that big companies are being offered who don’t need it were directed to small business, we just might see this economy pull out a bit faster.

Is this really news?

I’m still wondering about the so called racy photos many of which are tamer than what you can easily find in a Sears catelog in the ladies panties section.  I mean come on.

But the pot on this is deep and being stirred by many.  There have been accusations that the photos were dug up and released only because of Ms. CA’s stance on gay marriage.  When asked if she personally was for it, she politely said no.  Now many of us feel that this shouldn’t even be a question - that gay marriage isn’t any threat to the fabric of our society and allowing it provides a clear legal protection to loved ones.

But regardless of how you feel, she was asked and was courteous in expressing her honest opinion.  Even when it was a gay man asking the question and even though even she must have considered that to answer with how she really felt could cost her the Ms USA crown.  Now Ms. CA came in as runner up and the rumors flew that she would have won had it not been for her answer.

After losing the top slot, she was asked if she felt her answer led to her losing the USA crown.  She not only said yes, she lent her name to an organization that is against gay marriage.  Many of the Ms. CA contestents who obviousl did not win, started to bad mouth her including allegations that Ms. CA had a boob job.  Now that doesn’t seem to be the spirit of the competition.

Then the photos showed up.  Smear job?  Who knows but all the media attention then forced Mr Trump, owner of the franchise, to render a verdict.  Either way there was bound to be ‘controversy’ if only be the media who need a constant feed of news to report even if it’s not very newsworthy.  So tomorrow we’ll get a few more words and then, with any luck, this will go away.

Then maybe we can focus on more important issues like the pending insolvency of both social security and medicaid.  Who’s covering that?

We no longer need to hold our breath, the bank stress test rating the top 19 banks came out today.  While heralded as all 19 passing, 10 of the 19 need to raise significant capital over the next few months.  Moreover, there are no shiny rainbows to this report.  Considerable new losses can occur.

In a worse case scenario, if unemployment continues to increase coupled with the loss of equity in housing markets, total loan losses could hit 9.1% of total outstanding loans.  To put this in perspective this is a larger loss rate than banks had during the worst of the Great Depression in the 1931-32 time frame.

Unemployment does seem to be key here.  So the question then becomes whether President Obama’s plan will help the unemployment rate.  His own verbiage has changed from one of creating new jobs to keeping jobs to keeping govenment jobs.  Perhaps even he sees that the job creation isn’t happening as he gave American’s hope for.  Even Democrats are talking in hushed tones of a ‘jobless economic recovery’ that if left unmanaged could slaughter them in the 2010 elections.

I’d like to preface this post with a notation that I personally support marriage between gay people.  I am always surprised and confused about the objections those who are against it raise as not having any inherent logic behind it.  That said, I feel that as long as America has free speech, we can’t muzzle folks for having an opinion - especially when asked what their personal opinion is on national television.

I didn’t watch the pagent (had better things to do) but in catching the media buzz after the fact, one has to wonder why Perez Hilton asked such a pointless question.  A far better question would have been to ask the contestant to apine as to whether the issue should be governed by individual states as it is now or by the federal government and why.  Better yet force her to dig deep by then tacking on a second part to the question that forces the contestant to address how the resulting inequitable treatment of Gays between states is fair. But to ask the contestant what her personal opinions were was stupid.  Stupid because there is no good answer to the question.  There was certainly an answer Perez wanted to hear and didn’t but even if she had personally supported the issue of Gay marriage, she may have then offended some other judge.

Now Miss California has lent her name to an organization that is against Gay marriage.  This has offended some - even a few within the California state pagent organization.  This puzzles me a bit.  Again, while I do not support the outcome, the State of California recently took a vote on the issue and voted to retract Gay marriage rights.  So it appears that Miss California is representing her state - or at least the voting majority.

So it seems that the young lady is being harrassed for actually having the moral fiber to say what she believes even if that answer was going to cost her the Miss USA crown.  We don’t know if this runner up would have won with a different answer but the continued public angst against someone who’s willing to stand behind her beliefs says little about us as a country.

Instead I’d like to see someone from the Gay community have a meaningful discussion with her.  In a less harsh and critical environment, this young women and others in the US might just open their minds and begin to see that there can be a more encompassing view of how marriage should be defined.

It’s April 15th and that means it’s tax day here in the US.  You need to file today (your return or an extension).  When we look at how much we pay in taxes we have to wonder how this amount could go up if the current administration continues to spend at a hectic pace.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the wealthiest 5% cannot pay for the spending increases contemplated in the budget Obama wants with a modest increase in the tax rates.  That means that either less must be spent or more will see taxes increasing.

So think about how much more you want to pay the next time you hear the administration touting how the full budget must be approved.

In what seems to almost be his trademark style, President Barack Obama is taking Europe by storm in what is his first visit as our President.  His wife, Michelle, our first lady is making an almost equally impressive impression as she meets with England’s Queen as well as normal school girls.

What is not clear is whether there is any real progress being made in a cohesive effort among the world’s leading countries to end the current recession.  Certainly the President brought enough staff to get that job done but the likelihood of accomplishing anything meaningful in such a short time frame is not probable.

Meanwhile the economy continues to show us a mixed bag.  Home sales are increasing but prices are lowering.  Unemployment continues to increase and has been recently reported as high as 8.5% but in March the stock market posted a 20% increase.  It is likely that we will continue to see a lot of volitility until all facests of our market start to move in a more unified upward trend.

Will the plan promoted by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to purchase toxic assets held by the financial industry work?  Well that depends on who you ask.  Even two Nobel prize winners in economics can’t seem to agree.  Michael Spence, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics says it will (or at least it can) whilst Paul Krugman, the 2008 economics laureate says it cannot.

So who is correct?  The issue seems to revolve around whether you believe that private investors will want to partner with the government.  As we understand it, the plan is aimed at financing $500 billion to $1 trillion in purchases of illiquid real-estate assets, using $75 billion to $100 billion of the Treasury’s remaining bank-rescue funds. It also will rely on Fed financing and guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.  According to Bloomberg.com, “A crucial question is whether private investors can stomach potential threats and scrutiny from Congress, whose move last week toward taxing employee bonuses may drive bidders away, said Carnegie Mellon University professor Allan Meltzer, 81, author of a history of the Federal Reserve.”

So we’ll see.

After months of what seemed to be unrelenting bad news, over the last week we’ve actually gotten some good news.  CitiBank reported last week that they were going to earn a profit.  GM indicated they could get by for now without any additional funding.  And for many folks, most happily, the stock market has been trending up.

The US economy is the strongest in the world.  We know we will recover from this recession but it’s just uplifting to hear some good news.  Now we can sit back and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe the economy has hit it’s low point and is just beginning to bounce back.

Of course recovery won’t happen overnight but it will happen.

President Obama campaigned on a message that he’d be the agent of change for America.  And he’s shown that in full force in his few weeks in office.  But when voting for change, how many Americans figured they’d be voting for the implementation of the Obama cult, the new, apparently required religion the President and his staff have for America?

One of the hallmarks to any cult is the requirement that there is no dissension.  No contrary views are tolerated and if you speak against the cult leader that is considered a threat, not just to the leader but the cult community as a whole and those dissenters are quickly eliminated.

In this writer’s opinion, the Obama administration has adopted a cult mentality.  They rode in on a wave of optimism and took every opportunity to blame every ‘bad’ issue on the prior administration, whether there was any truth to it or not.  Well that’s not so surprising I guess, you could call that business as usual in our Nation’s captial. I found it interesting, however, to see the Wall Street Journl come forward questioning who’s really to blame for recent events (read that article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html) but this article will, not doubt, be labeled as wrong by team Obama.

What is most frightening is that the tactics adopted by the Obama team to stem any negative feedback continues to grow.  President Obama has taken every option to try to publicly ostracize republican congressmen and senators who do not agree with him (which would, of course, be most of them as Obama’s policies lean heavily towards socialism).  Then there was this weekend’s incident where Rahm Emanuel publicly labeled Rush Limbaugh as the official voice of the republican party.   Most of us republicans who heard Ralm’s comments sat back and asked “since when did the Republican party anoint Rush as it’s party spokesman?”

Well, folks, here’s the plan.  Rahm knows (as so does President Obama) that Rush does NOT represent the party.  Mr Limbaugh is an outspoken member of the Republican party, no doubt, but to say he represents us as our party spokesman would be crazy unless your plan is to make being a republican a matter of public embarrassment.  Look with Rush’s personality, it’s easy to demonize him.  By labeling this outspoken, far right, now demonized person as the party’s ‘voice’ you create public hatred of all republicans.

Moreover, the current socialistic Obama agenda creates labels treating those who have worked hard, seen success and, as a result, have accumulated a little wealth as greedy, perhaps unethical individuals who should now be punished with much higher taxes.  The socialistic agenda focuses on providing national healthcare (certainly we all want affordable healthcare - it’s just how we get there that should be debated) over tax breaks and clear incentives that would keep small businesses afloat.

If one wonders why we need all this spending, do it quietly as any public dissension is quickly squashed.  The American public should be clearly told just how big Obama’s budget will grow the deficit.  The deficit will grow by many many times what it was under Bush and there is no funds to cover it.   Obama’s administration must hope that sales of government securities will close the gap over what Obama wants to spend and what is likely to be covered by tax collections.  Did you know that nearly half of the proposed budget is not going to be covered by normal tax collections?  How long do you think it will take before the view of who are considered wealthy drops to much lower levels.  It’s easy to snub our noses over those making $200,000 getting taxed more heavily but what happens when that threshold drops to $100,000 or $75,000 or lower?  How long do you think it will take before we are all paying much higher taxes?

Mark my words, when any of this is mentioned in the public media, the Obama administration will act quickly and promptly to not only criticize alternative points of view, they’ll demonize those folks.

So beware.  The new era of socialism is at hand and being mandated as our new creed.  Wave so long to the era of policial debate.  Wave so long to a true two party system of government.  If you are not with Obama, you are against America.  The cult of Obamaism is winning.

Let’s face it, the small business owner is under a lot of pressure with the weak economy.  Even in the best of times they have a harder time getting credit and now, that has nearly completely evaporated.  Small business owners struggle to get by.

Now with over 1,100 pages, it seems like nearly no one (and that includes your congressmen and senators) has actually read the bill.  But with President Obama addressing Congress last week there were no specific provisions mentioned there designed to really help the small business owner.  For example, while Obama seems to have little regard for tax cuts, actually implementing tax cuts for small businesses would enable many to hang on during these difficult times.  And by hanging on, more jobs are retained in the economy.

In a recent poll conducted by Merchant Circle over 10,000 respondents when asked about whether they approve of the stimulus bill overwhelmingly voted NO.  Not a surprise really to those of us in the trenches with them.  Too bad we are, once again, ingnored by our elected officials.

With the incentive plan now passed, President Obama now turns his views towards the housing market.  Certainly if the economy is to recover, the housing market, which started the quick downslide, must be addressed.  The problem is that there seems now to be significant factions within the country that just hate the idea of bailing out people who failed to pay on their mortages.

This isn’t an easy situation but it does seem that if one of the major issues was the ARM rates underlying much of this junk lending suddenly rose significantly causing people who would have paid their mortgage to now be unable to, the solution should address the rates, not try to bail out folks who chose to stop paying.

Moreover, it’s unclear how you help a family who has been foreclosed on.  Once foreclosure happens the family has to get out and it makes no sense to try to put them back into the home that has now been cleared of any possessions left behind.

In any event, there was a lot of chatter on talk radio today about the plan, much of it revealing a grow sentiment against the bail out ideas.  We’ll stay tuned to see what happens next.

As we hurl towards what is admittedly an historic ignaural ceremony next week one has to step back and ponder what is most important to us as a country.  Now before you think I’m going to wax philosophically on how Obama is our first black president take stock of what is actually getting more air time on the major networks.  Is it what President Obama will say or is it what Michelle will wear?

I wish I were more surprised to hear the incessant drone about what color, what style and how much the 1st Lady will spend on her gown.  But I’m not.  It is testiment to our shallowness as a nation.  Or maybe it’s our national attention deficit disorder that has us barely deal with more meaty subjects (unless we can spin them as some sort of impending disaster).  In any event, we’ll hear more about Michelle’s dress, how many balls the President and 1st Lady attend and what they ate than we’ll spend analyzing any substance that may be contained in the President’s speech.

Oh well…

I hear the smart money is on a cream or other natural colored dress but I’m betting on red.  Now will it be a plunging neckline or bare back…

Earlier this week I listened to President elect Obama address congress to move swiftly to put together and a approve a new economic recovery package.  Now that was to be expected but as I’m listening to the President elect I’m wonder who is this guy?

The ‘new’ Obama seems to have lost his optimistic outlook entirely.  This new guy likes to talk about how we are at the edge of an economic abyss from which there may be no recovery.  No recovery that is, unless congress approves his package.

The thing is that a package of incentives cannot do anything for the next 3 months and very little for the first half of the new year.  More people will get laid off which will be painful.  The housing market will not come back to life  anytime soon.  The big three auto dealers will be back in Washington DC shortly asking for a lot more money to survive.

However, what Obama won’t acknowledge is that there will be recovery without his package.  And whether the economic recession we are in gets any worse or last any longer without it is debatable.  What I do know (and I think the President elect does too) is that his job creation plans that have to do with infrastructure projects (yes folks we are talking about laying concrete for roads and bridges) won’t do anything for a single mother of 4 who gets laid off of her adminstrative job.  I won’t do anything for the 48 year old father of 2 in college who can no longer make any money being a real estate agent.  It just can’t help the hundreds of thousands of folks who are not physically capable of doing that labor.

So the bad news is that much of what gets included in this stimulus/recovery bill just won’t help us out and will just raise the deficit further.  We are in for a grim year this year.

But we will recover because we are a huge economic force.  Once the contraction stops - and it will - spending will slowly come back.  And that will lead to job growth.  We need to focus on just how vast this country is and how rich it is with not only natural resources but with a people who will raise to the occasion.  Americans do not need a hand out.  This country has survived worse and come back the stronger for it.

Mortgage rates fell again this week prompting the usual segments on the news shows that the prudent investor should refinance now for savings.  And while this is, on the surface, sound advice, what it overlooks is whether there is still enough equity in the home to make a refinance approval likely.

In some regions of the country, home values have dropped by more than 20%.  This drop may cause some folks to go upside down in their mortgage owing as much or more than the home is worth.  Even with a small positive equity, many home owners could get turned down for refinancing unless they can afford to pay a sizable payment to increase their equity position in the home.

So an opportunity for a few folks but nothing that will help the rank and file who are, in some cases, hanging by a thread financially and braceing for more layoffs in the post holiday economy.

In reading all the back and forth commentary on whether Caroline Kennedy should be seriously considered for the senate seat that Hillary will vacate if appointed as Head of State, it seems that Senator Clinton is silent on the matter.  Now it’s not unusual for a senator vacating their seat to weigh in on potential replacements so one has to wonder what Hillary really thinks.

While Senator Clinton had to be disappointed at Caroline’s backing of Obama, can that be part of the silence?  Or, perhaps it is just that Hillary isn’t going to back a woman without any iota of relevant experience despite the famous last name. Hillary is too savvy to get caught up in a silly game of political tit-for-tat.

In the end it’d the governor’s decision to make.  Governor Paterson seems to be unimpressed with Caroline when caught with the retort, “How is she a front-runner?”

After being briefed that the nation’s unemployment rate could increase to 9% today, it’s reported that President Elect Obama is now looking to create or save up to 3 million jobs.  This is a half million more jobs than he had set as a goal last month and now 3 times what he pledged during his election run.

The number coincidently covers the expected number of future job losses now being forcast as the economy continues to wallow in what is now the worst recession in decades.  While admirable to want to keep the nation employed, one has to wonder if these notions are a bit to simplistic.  For one, it ignores the fact that the skills of the people now losing jobs may not come close to what is needed in the government manufactured ones.  Moreover, the concept of bring major government projects aimed at increasing employment to actually getting folks employed quickly is unrealistic.

The unpleasent truth is more likely that we are going to struggle for another year or two before the economy begins to right itself.

President Elect Barack Obama is now finding that life ‘at the top’ is tough and not always manageable with his considerable charisma and intellect.  Last week the outrageous story of Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich was accused of trying to sell the Illinois Senate seat that Obama vacated with his presidential win.  It didn’t take long before the media started to question what, if any, contact and/or participation Obama himself or his staff may have had with Blagojevich in the process.

Now it would seem that there would be some conversation by someone on Obama’s staff that could be entirely innocent but as Obama and his organization are learning the hard way, the stench often sticks to everyone.

What’s more interesting than this potential scandal for Blagojevich and anyone he may have included in his schemes (even the innocents) is that how Obama and his staff were so unprepared for handling the scandal.  Now for any other president elect, this would have been unheard of.   But in this writer’s opinion, Obama was largely untouched by anything unpleasent during the campaign.  Aside from the brief rucus over his choice of church with it’s contraversial pastor, Obama was left alone.  Kind of weird.

Case in point is the purchase of his family home and the entwined sale of part of the property to a questionable ally from a political perspective.  While I won’t bother to recap all the details of the transaction here, suffice it to say that it had far more damage power than Senator McCain having to admit to ownership in 7 homes.  McCain got slaughtered and Obama got nothing.

It was only a matter of time after Obama won the election that something would come up.  This has nothing to do with Obama and his integrity but the reality of running a huge staff in which it’s impossible to know, much less direct every action of every person.  And it has to do with the large number of news outlets and this country’s love of ‘dishing up the dirt’ on people.

Ironically Obama who ran on the premise of the best of America is now going to have to learn how to deal with the worst.  As I stated at the top, LIfe at the top does have its unpleasent side.

In a recent news article I read today on Reuters.com, the focus was on how we may go into a depression from the current recession.  Now the premise of this argument was that the recent and significant fall of oil prices is a bad thing.

Are you kidding me?

A much needed easing of one of the principle expenditures in any individual’s budget is now a bad thing.  Forget how the sky high prices were making us all cut back our driving and cut back on other discretionary expenditures, that supposedly is not as bad as getting this price break on gas.

The arguement is that “the swift fall in oil prices is now lowering the absolute level of consumer prices and bringing with it likely declines in nominal GDP over the next three quarters.”

Well isn’t that only a potential rollback of the steep incline we just saw during the first 3 quarters of this year?  Moreover I say ‘potential’ because many companies absorbed the price increases for a period of time before they started to raise their prices.  To say that they now will decrease prices is a bit of a stretch.

Of course if you bought the first arguement you could then buy the second which is that “Falling prices would cut demand and discourage employers from hiring.”  But really if prices came down significantly that would incent consumers to, well, consume again.  And there is a core demand in the economy that won’t be easily shut down.

With government bail outs for the financial industry and probable for the auto industry, two hard hit sectors are getting some relief.  And with Obama’s likely proposals to spend on infrastructure and maybe a tax cut, the economy won’t pull out of the recession anytime soon but sure won’t sink into a depression.

OK this is not one of those subjects I tend to spend much time on but in watching the evening news I saw this short spot on how there isn’t the money there used to be in recycling.  Kind of a bummer really when you think about it.  Many of us need a bit of encouragement to ‘do the right thing’  - especialy businesses.  If we can incent them to dispose of trash in an environmentally friendly manner, all the better.

If businesses go from making money by recycling to having to pay for pick up, one has to wonder if they’ll start to opt for just sending it to the landfill.  That would be unfortunate.  Regardless of what you believe about the cause of the worsening of our fagile balance here on Earth, we should all do the right thing to keep our planet not just good for our lifetime but good for the multitude of generations to come.

Black Friday 2008 has now come and gone.  With much trepidation many retail stores and, frankly, economists will be counting the numbers.  Is Black Friday a good barameter of the Holiday spending totals?  Or could it be that with all the hype about how dramatic the deals were going to be and how much price slashing would be evidient, customers were left feeling a bit disappointed?

If that’s the case, if Black Friday becomes Bleak Friday, there is still a modicum of hope.  The fact is that Christmas will come and some level of buying always happens.  Christmas 2008 is already fated to go down on the records as one of no growth and probable retraction of sales volumes that have been achieved in prior years.

And the real story about Christmas 2008 will be told after Christmas as some retailers just won’t be able to make it.  There’s no jolly in that thought.  But the US economy is one driven by the consumer.  Consumers are fearful.  There have been many job layoffs already announced and as folks reduce spending in fear that their jobs may be next, they actually promote the very outcome they seek to avoid.  Ironic isn’t it?

In a day or two we’ll all be told how it went.  In the meantime, perhaps I’ll make a trip to the mall or better yet wait until Cyber Monday and buy something online.

Will Preseident elect Obama select Senator Clinton for Head of State?  This is the subject getting a fair amount of attention as Obama talked with both Clinton and Governor Richards about the post.

I am reminded of the old saying “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer”.  Obama does not seem to like Clinton much depsite the acclaimed speech she gave at the DNC and her campaign stumping she did for Obama after he had won the party’s nod for Democratic nominee.

The news pundits are also wondering how Vice President Elect Joe Biden might factor in any foreign policy role.  However, no matter who is offered and accepts the HOS role, he or she isn’t going to want Biden ‘helping’ out.  The HOS must have a firm command of international relations and Biden, unless serving for some humanitarian type of endeavor is likely to just be in the way and potentially undermining the HOS position.

Today regular programming was interupted to bring us breaking news.  What happened?  Was the US attacked?  Did another major financial institution declare bankruptcy?  Did some notworthy public persona commit some unspeakable crime or at least some significant gaffe?

Truth is none of these events happened.  Nope.  What as so important was that the President Elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle made their first trip to the White House.

Are you kidding me?  This is considered news?

Why I needed to see the President elect and his wife enter the White House in real time is totally beyond me.  Why I needed to know that they have a $100,000 budget to redecorate the private quarters and the oval office is also totally beyond me.

With all that is going on in the current environment one would hope that we could actually concentrate on real news.  Leave the President elect and his lovely family alone for just a day.  I’m sure they would enjoy that as much as I would.

Looking a little worse for wear, President Elect Obama held his first press conference yesterday.  In a discussion that seemed halting at times and certainly not the smooth delivery we’ve grown accustomed to, the Obama basically admitted that fixing the economy was going to be a difficult job and require a lot of time.  Like we didn’t know that already.

And Obama clearly made a gaffe when he said in relation to talking to past presidents that “I’ve spoken to all of them,” he said, after a pause adding, “… that are living. I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any seances.”  That required an apology when someone pointed out to him that while Nancy Reagan was into astrology she did not hold seances.

The only time Obama seemed to lighten up was when the conversation turned to what kind of dog would the Obama family be taking to the White House.  I’m not sure America really cares much about this subject but then again, you gotta love puppies!

The election is over and for some of us, not a moment too soon.  The most important element of election night after, of course, the announcement of Barack Obama as our 44th president was the gracious nature of the speaches made by both McCain and Obama that evening.

After the last six months of negative ad after negative ad - from both parties - one began to wonder if we had any civility left in us.  Tuesday evening fortunately gave us reason for hope in that regard.  Both men praised each other and as they delivered their praise it seemed to this writer that both honestly meant every word of it.

This turn moves us as a nation to a higher standard, a higher moral ground that cannot help but restore our confidence in ourselves and have the rest of the world more grateful for the more meaningful, intelligent discourse.

Thank goodness… and thank you to both honorable men.

It may be just me who thinks that Obama is sounding a bit weak in his McCain-Bush comparisons - but then again, maybe not.  Newsweek online just did a comparison of many of McCain’s proposals that have no relation to anything Bush has proposed.  Some of these ideas include:

— McCain wants to use half of the $700 billion financial rescue package that Bush signed into law to buy up troubled mortgages at full face value and then negotiate easier loan terms.

— McCain has called for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox because he has “betrayed the public’s trust.” Bush appointed Cox in 2005 and has stood by him.

— McCain has proposed sweeping changes to the health care system, replacing existing income tax breaks for worker’s health coverage with refundable tax credits of up to $5,000. Bush had proposed replacing income tax breaks with a standard deduction for health insurance, but it was not as large a proposal as McCain’s and it died in Congress.

— McCain differs with Bush in several ways over energy policy, points that his campaign argues would have a big impact on the economy. Among them: McCain supports a mandatory cap-and-trade approach to cutting greenhouse gases, which allows industries to either reduce their pollution or to purchase credits from companies exceeding pollution targets.

— McCain wants to eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits.

On the flip side, Obama want disparately to avoid any ties to the concept that he’s part of the ‘Tax and Spend’ Democratic Liberal group.  But his voting record is with the Democratic majority 96% of the time as reported by the Washington Post - Is he really his own man?  Of course that’s when he does vote.  Again according to the Washington Post, Senator Obama only has only exercised his vote a little over half the time:

Barack Obama has missed 303 votes (46.3%) during the current Congress.

While Obama shows a clear lead in the polls this last week before the vote, one wonders who it is that the US public is really voting into office.