Time To Select A "Campsite"...

It's been a while since the POTUS election. I am still willing to give President Obama policies and changes time to start before I pass any judgement. We are an "immediate gratification" society and expect someone to get things fixed in a day, when it took years to get into the mess.

Now, I sit back and watch the two camps in the GOP fight over what the face of the GOP will be. The Limbaugh-Hannity-Coulter camp that says the GOP need to "get back to our roots" and move further to the right. And the Wills-Noonan-Steele, and now adding McCain to that camp. No... Not John McCain. His daughter Meghan. She is 24 and seems to realize what the GOP needs to do better than most. This is the camp that says the GOP needs to open the doors and make the GOP cool again. That includes remaining fiscally conservative but becoming more socially liberal.

Put me in the Wills-Noonan-Steele-McCain camp.

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History Was Made...

Trickledown... Not any more...

Why is it when we give huge tax breaks to the top 1% and Fortune 500 companies its ... "good for the country"... but when you want to end those tax breaks.... "its socialism" ??

As I have stated here many times... The "old GOP" is so out of touch with the 21st century. We need a GOP that looks at the country and world with 21st century eyes and not the old eyes of 30-40 years ago like we do now.

Trickledown worked 28 years ago when Reagan was elected because businesses could not pack up, move over seas, still get huge tax breaks and bring their products back into the US without tariffs.

Over the past 8 years the Republicans have allowed huge tax breaks and written laws that benefit only the top 1% in this country. Again with the notion that the wealthy will spend money and it will filter down to the middle class.

Now when the Democrats want to let those tax breaks expire, they are called socialist or communists and that they want to “spread the wealth around”.

Just one of many examples of why the GOP needs to change.

She is Sounding Pretty Good Now...

Well…. The fat lady is starting to sound pretty good now…

IT'S OVER. John McCain still hasn't told the country why he should be president. He performed pretty well last night, but all he said were talking points. He is against taxes, earmarks, and pork.

IMO, he didn’t knit what he opposes into a coherent economic philosophy that would inspire voters to get behind him in the final days of this presidential campaign.

McCain has long years of political experience, exactly what Barack Obama lacks. But McCain was unable to explain why his experience makes him better able to lead the country.

His Ayres and ACORN attacks seemed weak. He got a “deer in the headlights” look when the Roe v. Wade question was asked. He joked about how Obama had never been south of the United States even though his VPOTUS choice got her first passport last year. His “attacks” were all over the place. Like buckshot hoping something hit Obama. IMO, he should have picked 1 or 2 things and pounded that attack nonstop instead of trying 100 different ones. He needed to go after independent and undecided voters and instead seemed to be trying to shore up his base. Kinda late for that now.

He did get in a good line saying that if Obama wanted to run against Bush, he should have run 4 years ago.

Obama almost appeared confident, maybe over confident. He didn’t get rattled and played prevent defense. Obama simply did not appear to be the scary “other” that McCain needs him to be. He also had a chance to ask McCain why he did have a flag pin on his lapel but probably felt that would be stooping to McCain’s level.

With the split screen I thought I was watching “Grumpy Old Men” on one screen and “Cool Hand Luke” on the other.

So what does McCain do now? Hope for an October surprise? I think 401K’s are this years October surprise and he was the one hurt by it.

The Fat Lady Is Tuning Up...

Well… It seems like the fat lady is tuning up…

Tonight is the last POTUS debate and in 20 days we will elect a new administration. The good news about that is it should put an end to all of the ridiculous BS that has been said and written in the last 10 months.

I have no doubt that volumes will be written in the media about why someone lost and why someone won.

I am not a supporter of McCain for reasons going back 20 years and when I lived in Arizona. My feeling is that he will tear the GOP to pieces for 20 years. I am also not a big supporter of Obama, contrary to what some of you think. I feel the citizens of the United States are going to be losers regardless of who wins.

I was sure enough to make a bet with cigar smoking buddy that Obama would win easily. Now it looks like that is going to happen. Latest polling has him up by a lot nationally, as well as all the key battleground states. If you look at the Electoral College numbers, it will be a landslide.

All that being said, what does McCain gain with all his negative ads and campaigning at this point? His ads have been 100% negative of Obama since July. IMO, this is why he has not gotten any traction. Continuing this way will look desperate and not the honorable, brave, country first man he claims to be. It didn’t work for Hillary, so why did his campaign feel that it would work for McCain?

He needed to sell John McCain and why he would be a good POTUS, not trying to scare voters about Obama. Telling people not to vote for someone is not the same as getting them to vote for you. IMO, he should have fired his whole campaign staff and recreated the “McCain Image

Here are some of the reasons many GOP strategists have given for his poor performance.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination as a turning point in McCain’s slide by undercutting his experience argument and tethered McCain to the GOP base.

Sen. Barack Obama’s choice of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, showed voters which candidate was “serious” about governing and which one was just trying to win. He should have chosen Mitt Romney. Given the economic situation now and Romney’s economic experience would have him up by 10 points now.

McCain failed to get on message, stick to it and drive it home.

McCain is only at his best in crisis mode and that made him look very erratic and confused. At times like this people want someone on an even keel.

McCain’s long history of support for deregulation of the financial industry and his unwillingness to alter his opinion in the middle of an economic collapse. This handed Obama a ready-made economic narrative—or, rather, it added a powerful extension to the catchall argument he was already making against McCain as a clone of Bush.

I would like to see candidates take the “high road” for the next 20 days, but I really doubt they will.

A Bridge To Nowhere Part 5

McCain seems to be risking it all by suspending his campaign and calling for a delay of the debates. His poll numbers have taken a huge hit in the last two weeks and now his campaign is floundering. I think that McCain, or his campaign, think that if he can "race back to Washington and save the day" it will make him seem presidential and win him the election.

There are a lot of problems with that thinking...

1. There is no way the Democratic leadership in Congress is going to allow him to drop in like the 82nd airborne and take over.

2. He is going to take a hit in his base if he votes YES on any bailout bill.

3. He is going to have to vote YES on any bailout bill now since it has become apparent that he has intended to provide leadership on the issue and if the bill fails he will suffer the ramifications.

4. 74 percent of Americans think there should be some sort of debate and he will take a big hit for not showing up.

He has painted himself into a corner and the paint won’t be dry until after November 4th. All of his erratic behavior in the past few months has really hurt him.

As my 80 year old father said the other day... "McCain is starting to act like a lot of 72 year old men that I have known, and that ain't good for anyone that wants to be president".

A Bridge To Nowhere Part 4

George Will wrote this article:

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."
-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

This is just another example of why McCain is not right for POTUS, and if he is elected he will tear the GOP apart in a way that will take 20 years, if ever, for it to recover. McCain is NOT a maverick as he likes to claim. He is a loose cannon. When he gets caught off guard he blurts out anything that he thinks makes him sound like a leader. Stating that he was POTUS, he would fire the head of the SEC, even though the POTUS can not do that.

Then he says on “60 Minutes” that he would replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York. Getting scared now Republicans ?

Picking a completely unqualified person to be his VP is more loose cannon behavior. This after fighting with party leader to the bitter end for Joe Lieberman. All this “unhinged” behavior should be all the warnings voters should need to get off the “straight talk express”.

This is what people can expect to see from him at any time if he is elected. How do the people that support McCain because he will select better judicial selections than Obama justify that argument after all this ??