FINAL COUNTDOWN FOR USA ELECTION 2008

No, considering that McCain was consistently behind up to the Convention, it appears that his convention bounce is holding up quite well.

I'm not going to argue with you Cyclop. I have been watching the numbers for months now. And ANYBODY who considers Daily Kos to be an objective or even reputable source of information for anything other than a good example of a slime mill isn't doing too well in the credibility department. You can do much better.

Maybe you didn't read what I said? That you found the information on Daily Kos says volumes about where you are grubbing around to find dirt on McCain to spam the thread with. That you even go to that site to find stuff to post diminishes your credibility as being able to be objective about anything. You can do better.

And you must have missed the part where I use Rasmussen and RCP to determine trends? Sure I can go hunting random poll results to cherry pick to prove just about anything I want to prove. But I am more interested in the real deal thank you very much. And I am more interested in trends than in any single day's polling data that might be nothing more than what Rasmussen describes as 'statistical noise'.

Rich Lowry's essay this week pretty well sums up the situation McCain is facing this week though. The situation is that our mainstream media has sold its soul and may never be reliable as a source of objective information ever again:
McCain’s Scandal
The press has turned on McCain with a vengeance.
By Rich Lowry
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTJhYWE1MDc0NjgwNWJjMTYwMjdkZDQwZDJjZDE3NzY=

On NBC’s Today Show, McCain told Matt Lauer:

Of course I don’t like excessive and unnecessary regu " uh, government regulation.

But on CBS’s Early Show, McCain told Harry Smith:

Do I believe in excess government regulation? Yes. But this patchwork quilt of regulating bodies was designed for the 1930s when they were invented.

(CNN) " It appears Barack Obama's teleprompter is hitting the campaign trail.

The Democratic presidential nominee has never tried to hide the fact he delivers speeches off the device, though normally he doesn't use one at standard campaign rallies and town hall events.

But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday " making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring

The Presidential Race
Written by Mark Coalter
Thankfully, after six long months the field in the forthcoming US presidential election has narrowed to two candidates. Months of primaries, caucuses, debates, mudslinging and negative campaigning have now produced two individuals who, according to the commentators, are set to make ‘history’. In the blue corner we have the first African- American presidential candidate to be selected by one of the two parties, a choice made more pertinent by the Democrats’ historic association with Southern segregation. Representing the Republicans is John McCain who, if elected, would, at seventy-two, be the oldest person to assume the presidency in a first term. On paper this may be an ‘historic’ election, a contest between youth and experience, a fight for the soul of the nation and destiny of the free world, however, as with many such facile pronouncements the substance of reality far outweighs the superficiality of mere symbolism.

McCain doesn’t know what his own committee does.

With Wall Street’s financial institutions in turmoil, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) argued in a series of interviews today that his experience on the Senate Commerce Committee meant he knew “how to fix this economy.” “I understand the economy. I was chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversights every part of our economy,” McCain told CNBC’s Squawk Box. Watch it:

But, as the Washington Post points out, the Commerce Committee doesn’t oversee “every part of our economy,” let alone “the very areas now in crisis“:

In fact, it is the Senate Banking Committee that has oversight of “banks, banking and financial institutions; control of prices of commodities, rents and services; federal monetary policy, including the Federal Reserve System; financial aid to commerce and industry and money and credit, including currency and coinage.”

According to its Web site, the Commerce Committee oversees 13 areas, beginning with the Coast Guard, and continuing through “regulation of consumer products and services … except for credit, financial services, and housing” " the very areas now in crisis.

It’s not that surprising that McCain is confused about the Commerce Committee’s economic responsibilities, considering that he freely admits, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”

The Caucus | A New York Times Blog
September 16, 2008, 11:23 am
Journal Disputes McCain’s Health Care Claims
By Kevin Sack

Senator John McCain’s top domestic policy adviser, former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, recently said in a conference call with reporters that Mr. McCain’s health care proposal would “put 25 to 30 million individuals out of the ranks of the uninsured, into the ranks of the insured.” In an article released Tuesday, a panel of prominent health economists concludes that Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s projection is off by, well, 25 to 30 million.

The article, published in the journal Health Affairs, argues that “initially there would be no real change in the number of people covered as a result of the McCain plan.” After a short-term reduction of 1 million in the number of people without coverage, the number of uninsured would increase by 5 million after five years, the authors predict. There are currently 45 million people without insurance, or 15 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau.

Mr. McCain’s plan is designed to create greater equity between the group and individual insurance markets. He would end the exclusion of employer-provided health benefits from federal income taxes, an advantage not enjoyed by those who buy insurance on their own, and replace it with health care tax credits of $2,500 per individual and $5,000 per family.

That, the McCain campaign asserts, would drive more people into the individual market, fomenting competition, reducing premiums and discouraging consumers from buying more coverage than they need or can afford. The economists wrote that many “people are likely to have far less generous policies than those they have today.”

The analysis was written by Thomas Buchmueller of the University of Michigan, Sherry A. Glied of Columbia, Anne Royalty of Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis, and Katherine Swartz of Harvard.

Eliminating the tax exclusion, they wrote, “would greatly reduce the number of people who obtain health insurance through their employers.” They put that figure at 20 million, and calculated that it would be offset at first by the 21 million who would be able to afford individual coverage using Mr. McCain’s tax credits.

Within a few years, however, the trend would reverse, the study asserts. That is because, according to Mr. Holtz-Eakin, the McCain health care tax credits would be indexed to “regular inflation,” presumably the Consumer Price Index, which is typically lower than annual increases in health care costs. Unless costs can be substantially reined in, the credits would therefore enable fewer people to afford coverage each year, leading to an eventual rise in the number of uninsured.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin did not respond to a request for comment.

The estimates in Health Affairs are comparable to those made in July by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, which projected that 1 million people would gain coverage after one year under Mr. McCain’s plan, that almost 5 million people would gain coverage after four years, and that the number of uninsured would then creep upward.

By comparison, Senator Barack Obama’s plan, which would provide heavy government subsidies for insurance for low-income workers, would reduce the number of uninsured by 18 million in 2009 and by 34 million in 2018, according to the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution report. That would still leave Mr. Obama well shy of his goal of achieving universal coverage.

BTW just to set the record straight, I don't believe the American voters invariably make the right choice when electing their representatives. They almost certainly don't, but whatever their choice it is the one that we have to abide by until events and a new campaigning season can set things right.

Hey, the American People voted for Prohibition thinking that it would end the evils associated with alcohol. We've increasingly bought into the idea that the Federal government is responsible for everything, and that no one should be held responsible for their own lousy choices. The People often make crummy choices, but that is better than having the choices made by idealists operating from theories far removed from the daily lives and aspirations of the people.

holy jew Lieberman