The panelist are talking about how backward the Muslim world is, how barbaric it is to go after other religions and that is the difference between the west and the world of Islam.

But what they glossed over is it was only just a little over 100 years that Christians were killing the infidels all over the world, went out on Missionaries to convert the infidels.

Don't gloat about how modern we are when just a few hundred years ago we were burning witches at the stake or dunking them in water or driving people out of town who didn't believe in god...

They really only care about their people, you know people who will vote for them.

But I thought one of the reasons to run for president of the United States was to be president of ALL the people.

ALL THE PEOPLE.

Not just those who donate, who donate, who donate.

I know that millions of people of us out here beyond that inner circle you know that circle you were talking before on that show, your version of Politicians Will Say the Darnest Things...

And when you come right down to it, this is, it seems, to have become the main goal of the Republican Party for as long as I remember. All the way back to Welfare Queens driving Cadillac in Chicago paid for with Food Stamps.

You want to divide us, to pit one side against the other, to have clear winners and vanquished users.

To me that is not a defensible position.

The Democrats, well as far as I can tell, just want to let as many people in this country of ours to be able to participate at the Polls, make demands upon the rulers and in exchange, to pay some taxes and be there when duty calls.

I think all of these things I just pointed out to you, Mr. Romney, are foreign ideas, not the ideals you would want for America. To me it seems as if you are only in it for just the right people and the rest of us can just take care of ourselves.

Mr. Romney, I still have faith in this country of ours even though it has performed way below my expectations far too many times in my life. But then there are those days when most of us come together and that makes it worthwhile.

Mr. Romney, I know that if you somehow stand out there on the Capital Steps in January, I just know that you will be watching president Obama taking the oath for the second and last time.

He understands more than you will ever know that when you say that I do it means I do for ALL of us and not just a group of mostly white, mostly rich and mostly men that you pal around with.

Peace out...

I wonder if she is getting swept up in how truly rewarding it is to call a hack on their hackery.

And I would rather see her do the same thing if a democrat just parrots talking points if she keeps giving it to the GOP.

I truly believe that the people on our side are ready willing and able to logically defend our positions. I truly believe the GOP has been getting away with this crap for so long they do not how to deal with a real fair and balanced news team.

Loose the hounds and let the games begin.


Sorry about he confusion but Ms. Mitchell was repeatedly asking the woman who was representing Romney on her show to name one time when president Obama apologized for America in the Middle East. She kept at it but by the time I got to the computer, the GOP mouthpiece was gone.

That was the crux of it. And Ms. Mitchell was relentless, repeating a couple of times for an example and the GOP mouthpiece could not.

There is a finite number of spots available.

Granted that number may be rather large, but it is still finite.

After a while, the messaging in the media reaches a point of diminishing returns, an overload of messaging that will turn some voters off and may actually cause some to move away from a candidate that they view as too shallow or too negative.

At the end of the day, it is going to be the people in neighborhoods convincing their neighbors to vote for their candidate

I believe that the Obama team has the best message and the better ground forces in the swing states. Especially if you compare th Obama campaign with the McCain campaign.

Remember this as well, McCain was liked by the voters. He has a special place on the national scene and is viewed as a "moderate" when it comes to Republicans.

Romney is the rich know it all who every body would like to be far away from. He is far from being likable and runs th risk of coming off as a bully.

So, I am pretty cautiously confident that we will prevail. Now if only we can take better control of the Senate and continue to show real leadership in that august chamber and take down some of th loud mouth newbies in the House we might be able start turning the economy around and let Obama get on with his agenda...

is that the "journalists" are not that interested in fact checking because, frankly that takes a lot of time and effort on their part to educate themselves on all the issues that are raised in the campaign.

I think they are taking the easy way out and here is what I mean,

Instead of looking at an issue and researching and building a background of information to better understand those issues, they just take the opposing sides take and repeat that to the candidate.

This makes it all so easy for the candidates and the press since so-called "facts" don't have to be checked and researched and vetted and gone over more than once.

What I can't understand is if we are in an almost perpetual round of political campaigning, why can't the journalist do independent research, like say Matt Tailabi, and then confront the candidates with more than the oppositions talking points.

Because that is what it seems to be.

That is why so many on both sides don't trust the media anymore, I believe, because when the democrats candidate is being "interviewed", they just repeat what the republicans are saying and the same goes for the republicans being asked about democratic talking points.

I think part of this comes from the rights hatred and attacks of the so-called liberal media. The people behind the so-called journalists have fallen into that safety zone which allows them to appear "balanced" to the average person but to partisans, well, that is a different story.

What this does is take reality out of the process of electing and covering candidates and then elected officials and replace it with what we now call a "narrative" that is built by ignoring the truth and getting ques from the opposing candidates or elected officials.

Just some thoughts I had after watching some news today and keeping up with Broadcast News on HBO.

Usually, Todd claimed, there should be 5%-7% or more undecided voters showing up in the polls. but this time, there is less than 2%.

Well, what should we expect with a non stop campaign waged by the GOP that started before president Obama even took the oath of office.

I've been around a very long time and I can not remember any other presidency that started off with such vitriol and hate thrown at the new president. There was no Honeymoon period, there was no deference paid to the Obama victory only scorn and hate.

Then again, they tried to discredit president Clinton almost from the get go. And again it was personal. Of course most political people believe that Clinton only defeated Bush because of Ross Perot.

But over all, I think this has been the tactic of the Right because they know if you take the measure of the president based on actions and issues, the right loses. That is why, I believe, they personalize the attacks against democrats.

There was a book about the 1968 Campaign by a man named McGinniss called The Selling of the President

http://www.amazon.com/The-Selling-President-Joe-McGinniss/dp/0140112405

This might be the seminal tome about how modern campaigns are waged in the 24/7/365 media world that was settling in over the US.

The GOP convention was an exercise in how much you can speechify and not say one thing concrete.

About how a candidate for the highest office is so vacuous and yet believes he is a learned man and that his highly touted wonderkid running mate is causing more people to wonder how he got this far into the leadership of a major political party.

The more these two parade across the national stage away from the protection of partisan power brokers, they wither especially when played against the ease that president Obama and vice-president Biden have at defending their policies and positions with confidence and passion.

The debates are the last chance for these two to make any kind of change in their presentation.

In some ways Ryan is worse than Palin because she had such low expectations to begin with that Biden kind of went easy on her. Not this time. Joe knows his way around the wonkiness that Wisconsin wunderkind will be presenting because he was in the senate for two decades.

Mitt, well I believe Mitts problem will be that he will find himself against a foe who is charming, likable,brilliant and someone who is comfortable within his own skin.

Only time will tell.

Mitt and Paulie are about to meet their betters because Obama and Biden don't think they are the most brilliant people to ever walk across a stage, they know who they are and what they know and will conduct themselves with the calm, reassuring delivery that has made them both men comfortable with nothing to prove to themselves or anyone else.

because of four years of mortgage interest schedules, through purchase and refinancing, into rates of 5.5% or less.

At that point, most of the people are not paying enough interest to get over the taxable income levels established by the standard deductions, especially for those who have been paying down on their mortgage for ten or more years.

I know many people are still going to benefit from that program so the best way to remove gently the effect of the mortgage interest deduction is to phase it in over the next five years or so.

This will also keep pressure on the mortgage lenders to keep rates low because of the perception that you can write off almost all of your initial payments, which are mostly interest at the beginning of your mortgage commitment, to help you afford a home.

I am not saying I agree or disagree but I am bringing this all up as someone who has prepared thousands of tax returns over the 25 years. As a matter of fact, with more people not needing to itemize, that just makes it easier for people to prepare their own taxes and not rely on a paid preparer.

This information, I think, is critical when measuring the effect of a large change in the tax structure our government has constructed over the last 50 or 60 years.

that it is easy to think they are completely misanthropic and full of loathing for anyone who dares disagree with them...

I think that if a democrat would cure Cancer the first thing they would say was what took you so long.

That if a democrat ran a 3 minute mile they would scoff and say the wind was at there back and the course was rigged.

We already know what happened when Obama made the call to kill Osama so isn't safe to say that they would somehow brandish Hitler as a New Deal democrat...

All I have to say to those who approach everything in zero sum terms is get your head in the real world so that the people of the United States and the world can live in it...

Grow up and act like the adults you are and stop behaving like you did on the school yard.

n her run for Mayor of Cleveland.

She gained some national notoriety as one of the Democrats caught up in the 1992 scandal with the House Post Office.

I had run against her in the primary and for some reason the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed me in the Primary.

Of course I didn't win but I gained some notoriety.

Being the good democrat, I campaigned for her in the fall. She lost the seat to Martin Hoak which ultimately lead to Dennis Kucinich to win that house seat in 1996, the same year I ran for the State Senate and got to know DK pretty well as we shared the stage as our districts over lapped.

Anyway, the reason I bring up all of this is to show how things fall out.

BTW, both MRO and DK started as Cleveland City Council members and both were fierce defenders of their people. That also paved the way for their success in the House because they did whatever they could for the people in their districts.

Back to 1999. I had done some polling work at the local level and was getting pretty good results because I was able to put together a real good calling database by setting up a dump between a national phone book data base and the data base at the Board of elections. Can't do that anymore, too expensive.

Long story short, Mary Rose hired Rass to do her polling because of his connections to the National Arab association. Mary Rose was Lebanese. I worked with him on this poll. From what I gather, he conducts the daily stuff on the cheap as has been explained here many times. But when he does deep polling, he does it just like everyone else.

Now since he was hired by Mary Rose, I just assumed he was a democratic pollster. I talked to him on the phone several times and met with him on more than one occasion.

Mary Rose lost by 8%, coming in third in a primary when th top two go at it in the General. One of the candidates hired me to do his data base and I ended up working with Lou Stokes. Not an easy guy to deal with.

Shortly after that, the national phone data was only available on a per number basis which made it far too expensive for me to continue.

Curiously, my next mentor was Jimmy Demora who just got sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for corruption. I left him in 2002 when my health started to fail. I never knew anything about JD's chargeable offensives. In fact he sought me out to be the Party's Treasurer because of my squeaky clean reputation as an accountant and a candidate.

Just wanted to share a little of my experience in the political world.