Election Update

Even with the numerous updates I've posted over the past few days, I'm still behind on election news! This is a long post, but there is a wealth of information below, so please read through it all. Let's start with Biden.

The Obamessiah's VP pick, Joe "One Man Gaffe Machine" Biden was supposedly selected because he shored up Obama's major experience and foreign policy deficiencies. But, how does that work out? Let's look at his record on anti-terrorism legislation:

Obama famously flip-flopped on FISA. Biden didn't: He was one of 28 senators to vote against this year's amendments to the law. If Senator Biden had prevailed, our intelligence agents would be monitoring a lot fewer foreign-to-foreign calls by terrorists.

Biden voted against the Military Commissions Act, too. He was one of 34 senators to do so. If he had prevailed, we would not be able to try KSM and the like—at least not without disclosing sensitive intelligence.

And he filibustered the Patriot Act extension. Over the last five years, in other words, he has opposed every major legislative initiative against terrorism.

Not exactly a shining example of how to combat terrorism, now, is he? Now, though, Biden is supposed to be a 'governing pick' rather than a 'political pick', meaning that he'll help Obama govern rather than being just a symbolic pick to win the election. Right. With all that experience, apparently.

By the way, 14 Catholic bishops have corrected Biden on his abortion stance. Just thought that might be important.

But isn't Biden a man of the people? Outside his Amtrak commute, I mean? Well, let's see. Obama often quotes the scripture about helping 'the least of these'...so how does Biden hold up to that standard? Since 1998, Biden has earned between $210,000 and $320,000 each year, but has given more than $400 to charity just once ($995 in 2007)! A Biden spokesperson said he donates his time rather than money. Riiiiiight. So do millions of Americans, along with their money, even though they make a fraction of Biden's multiple six-figure salary.

Here's another problem...his latest gaffe. Despite all the rhetoric from the Obama-Biden campaign being about a new tone and being above normal politics, Biden recently said people should vote for Obama because...[are you ready for this???] he's black.

All this and more have some people questioning whether or not Barack Obama is going to drop Biden from his ticket.

I think the Obamessiah has put himself into a very bad position with Biden. The guy is clearly incapable of avoiding gaffes, and we're not talking about little mis-statements. We're talking about Biden saying Hillary would have been a better pick than him, humilitating a veteran in a wheelchair, and saying Obama deserves the White House simply because of his race. While it's generally considered the kiss of political death to switch a VP this late in the election cycle, Obama can't afford much more 'help' from Biden. He's got to be desperate to get Palin off the headlines and generate some buzz for his own campaign, and this might do it...but it's a tremendous gamble.

But let's get to The One himself.

Barack the Obamessiah has now attacked John McCain for suggesting that a commission be formed to investigate the financial mess going on right now, calling it one of the oldest pass-the-buck plays in the Washington playbook. Of course, he neglects to mention that he himself recommended forming commissions to study Social Security, war crimes, torture, and Wall Street oversight. Oops.

Some new problems are coming up for the Obamessiah. His followers continue to attempt to squash those who have a dissenting opinion. His own campaign is suing the GOP in Michigan for attempting to disenfranchise voters...by trying to prevent using foreclosed homes as voter addresses. The GOP denies it, but even if it's true, it sounds reasonable to me. After all, if the home has been foreclosed, that means no one lives there, right? Wouldn't preventing those addresses from being used also be preventing voter fraud?

More problems include relationships from the past that just won't go away. For example, who's going to look into the years Obama was attending Columbia, which are almost completely unknown to the public? And what about Obama's connection to Chicago slum lords? Isn't this something we should know? Perhaps most importantly, what about Obama's connection to Bill Ayers? When are we going to be told the nature of that relationship? Obama has been very quiet about it to this point, but isn't a relationship between an unrepentant terrorist and a potential President something we should understand?

Another problem is that some former co-workers are saying Obama has inflated his resume to make it sound more impressive. I suppose you could debate those co-workers on their opinions, but regardless, this isn't good news for his already lackluster experience.

Speaking of lackluster experience, Powerline posts that Obama is not just the most liberal Senator, but he's also the least effective. Chris Wallace of Fox News interviewed Obama adviser David Axelrod:

Fox News' Chris Wallace: Now, David, McCain and Palin do have records of going up against their own parties. When has Barack Obama ever gone up against the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate?

Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod: ... One of the first things that Senator Obama did when he came to the U.S. Senate was push for the most far-reaching ethics reforms that we've seen since Watergate. That didn't please people on either side of the aisle, and he has done that consistently in his career. He's reached across party lines to find consensus and he's taken on his own party on issues like, like ethics reform.

You know, what was interesting about these attacks about bipartisanship and so on is that people like Dick Lugar, the very respected Republican senator from Indiana, spoke out and said, These are just partisan attacks. I've worked with Barack Obama.' They worked together on arms control. Senator Coburn in Oklahoma worked together with him on budget issues, like putting the budget on Google so we can see how our money is being spent, putting caps on the contracts around Katrina rebuilding. Senator Obama has a strong recor d of working across party lines to produce progress for people.

Wallace: But David, because you guys always talk about ethics legislation and the nuclear non-proliferation deal with Dick Lugar, I went back and looked -- both of those measures passed by unanimous consent. They were so accepted by the Senate that there was not even a vote. In fact, ethics legislation was one of the campaign promises. These were not -- if I may, if I may. These were not areas where Barack Obama went up against the leadership of his own party nearly in the way that John McCain did on campaign finance reform, on limiting interrogation of terror detainees, on immigration reform. He did not go up against his own party on either of those issues.

Ouch! The facts hurt, don't they? If anyone can point to any bipartisan measure that Barack Obama has ever led, please clue me in. From what I've seen, there isn't a single one.

Clark S. Judge sums up why Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama in three words: she doesn't blink. Regardless of the positions of the candidates, the simple fact that Obama has flip-flopped on literally almost every subject proves he is without core values, whereas Palin has remained constant on almost everything despite immense pressure. In the political game of verbal chicken, she doesn't blink. Obama does.

He's just a rookie playing in the big leagues. Here's another example of why:

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.

While it's a regular thing for a politician to use a teleprompter, it certainly looks a bit odd with having a teleprompter in the middle of a rodeo ring! It's just an acknowledgement that the Obamessiah knows he is extremely vulnerable when speaking off the prompter, and that he cannot afford more mistakes at this point in the campaign.

One of Obama's favorite speech lines is to accuse McCain of voting with Bush over 90% of the time. Let's look at that:

The figure comes from the Congressional Quarterly “Vote Studies Workbook” which can be found here. CQ measured all votes where President Bush was known to express a position, so of course, as they acknowledge, most of the votes in question are not all that controversial. Along with the “voted with the president” number, they also measured party loyalty by the percentage of votes in which a member voted with his party when the vote tended to break down by party lines.

The results for the three senators running in this race are not necessarily what the Democrats wish they were. Both Obama and Biden, for instance, turn out to have very high party loyalty, following the extremely unpopular leaders of the Democratic senate on almost every close vote. Obama’s party loyalty score was 96%, making him a more orthodox Democrat than even the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, whose score was 93%. Biden was tied with Reid, at 93%. John McCain, meanwhile, had a party loyalty score of 81%, among the lowest in the Republican conference, as many of his fellow Republican senators could no-doubt attest.

On support for the president, it’s true that John McCain voted with Bush's position on 90% of the bills measured, which is also the average figure for Senate Republicans as a whole. Obama, true to his down-the-line partisanship, only supported Bush 40% of the time. But Joe Biden sided with Bush more often than not: 52% of the time.

Veeeeery interesting, don't you think?

But hey, Obama's the man most closely associated with the working class, right? Well...take a look at this and then decide:

The nation's financials may be in a spiral, but cash is flowing into the Obama campaign faster than Marvin Hamlisch can play "Niagara"!

Yesterday, Obama declared how we are in "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Today he will host a dinner in Beverly Hills --- costing attendees $28,500 dollars each!

Sure, I often sit down with celebrities who paid almost $30K to eat with me, don't you?

In an effort to reach religious voters, Obama has now rolled out a new merchandise line of religious garb. I wonder why Charlie Gibson isn't asking Obama to explain why he felt the need to offer faith-based products to Americans...

Now, how about the current financial storm that's brewing? CNN recently discovered (accidentally, I'm sure) that Obama may have been hoping for just such a thing:

On Monday's "Anderson Cooper 360," after CNN senior political analyst David Gergen said "what happened over the weekend with the economy and the bottom falling out of the financial markets...is the opportunity for Obama to seize the momentum back on his side," Crowley actually said, "[J]ust as foreclosures were showing up on B-17, or in the real estate section, along comes this horrific headline out of Wall Street...I mean, this is what they wanted."

Wow, just let that sink in. The American banking system is in crisis and full of corruption, and CNN is talking about how great it is for the Obamessiah.

Stay classy, Left-wing hacks.

The sum total of all this is to illustrate that the more America learns about Barack Obama, the less they like him. Not only is he inexperienced and naive, but his promises of being a new kind of politician that is above the fray are patently false. The longer the Obamessiah remains in the spotlight, the worse he looks. This is being reflected in polls across the nation. In state after state and poll after poll, McCain is either catching up to Obama or has already taken the lead. While it's still a long time to the election, the trend for the Obamessiah is disastrous, and even his own party knows it.

The question is, what will he do to try to right the ship? What can he do? Fortunately for us, he appears to be resorting to politics as usual in his desperation: smears, accusations, and mud-throwing.

There's my two cents.