Yesterday I watched Obama on CNN talk about the economy. His calm and reasoned tone mads me want to buy some stock.

Conversely, when McCain discusses the economy. I feel like someone in a crowded movie theater after one of the patrons yelled, "FIRE!"

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Is it just me or is there no story here? I'm looking at an X for jesus' sake.

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great story..especially the part about the X.

But..Obama lost a big chance yesterday.He showed NO LEADERSHIP and was waiting for direction from his party (his words - he would wait and then add his own points). McCain on the other hand at least took some command - though he is used to that.

I'm not sure where the line came from that Obama bucked his party in 2002? A State senator? He surely didn't buck them about the surge, which turned out to be the correct course.. If Obama were president we would have lost big time in Iraq (yes I know, we shouldn't be there now).

This small point about lack of leadership can loom large if he were to be President.. another Carter!

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Yes or No?

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The "X" refers obviously to the economic policies advocated by Malcolm X. But I think the benefits of its brevity are betrayed by a lack of sufficient detail. I prefer articles of more substance, you know . . . words.

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Watching John McCain thundering against Wall Street greed is like tuning into to the old Lawrence Welk show to find him doing a polka version of a hard-core rap song ("A-one and a-two, motherfucker!").

Speaking yesterday outside an auto plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, McCain read his populist rhetoric -- "These workers here are the best in the world. They are the backbone and foundation of our economy." -- with a robotic cadence dripping with inauthenticity.

Wall Street is melting down, and McCain and the GOP have no credible response. When your erstwhile economic guru, Phil Gramm -- a man whose 1996 run for the presidency McCain chaired, and who appears to remain influential behind-the-McCain-campaign-scenes -- is Patient Zero of this killer economic epidemic, it's pretty hard to suddenly start channeling Upton Sinclair.

McCain is so clearly clueless on this issue, the current battle over who is best suited to deal with the financial crisis should be a rout. And, so far, Obama has shown not just an incomparably greater grasp of the situation and substantive policies to deal with it, but a real fire in the belly in going after McCain's vulnerable flank.

But for Obama to show the kind of transformational leadership the crisis demands, he needs to do what so many of his critics have chided him for not doing: take a stand that puts him at odds with the establishment of his own party. He did it in 2002 with the war in Iraq. He can do it in 2008 with the economy.

He needs to start by making sure that the economic advisers he turns to extend beyond those he had on a conference call on Monday -- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Laura Tyson, and Paul Volcker. It's great to include graybeards who have been through crises before, but he needs to go beyond the two Treasury Secretaries who were complicit in the 1990s deregulation orgy that has led to so many of the problems we are now seeing. And he needs to make it clear that the Clinton-era Democrats who put the interests of Wall Street ahead of the interests of Main Street are not going to be the primary voices he listens to.

Rubin and Summers played a pivotal role in dismantling banking regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, FDR's pivotal banking legislation designed to constrain the power of Wall Street, and make the activities of the banking industry more transparent. It specifically kept commercial banks separate from their investment banking cousins -- and had long been the Moby Dick of the banking industry, the elusive prey the financial industry Captain Ahabs were determined to harpoon. Consequences be damned.

Phil Gramm, then chairman of the Senate banking committee, did the heavy lifting, and John McCain was an ardent supporter of the deregulation, but Rubin and the Clintonites were certainly up to their eyeballs in pushing legislation gutting so many of the regulations designed to bring accountability to our complex free market system. These bills included the the Financial Modernization Act, which obliterated Glass-Steagall; and the Commodity Futures Modernization act, which gave us unregulated trading of derivatives and the kind of credit default swaps that threaten our economy -- both signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Speaking at a large rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Obama declared: "we can't steer ourselves out of this crisis if we're heading in the same disastrous direction. We can't steer ourselves out of this crisis using the same old map, we can't steer ourselves out of the crisis if the new driver is getting directions from the old driver, and that's what this election is all about."

Bull's-eye. Now he needs to make sure the old drivers in his own party don't have their hands on the wheel -- or are the loudest of his backseat drivers -- as the nation navigates this rocky financial road and charts a new direction.

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Momma's Obama the Green Horn doesn't know Jack Squat about the economy so how is he in a position to judge where we stand or which direction we should be headed? Barack doesn't know if he's cummin' or went and he is just in the running for the on the job training.

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The following news report was published by AOL today.

WASHINGTON (Sept. 20) - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.

------------------------------------------------------------

If you think the last eight years under Bumbling Bush were bad, what until McKKKain gets into the Oval Office. There will be, I predict, blood in the streets.

Literally.

The GOP cannot not steal another election, this time with the help of bipartisan bigots, without there being severe repercussions -- from black, brown, yellow and white people who REALLY love America, including yours truly.

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The following news report was published by AOL today.

WASHINGTON (Sept. 20) - Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.

------------------------------------------------------------

If you think the last eight years under Bumbling Bush were bad, what until McKKKain gets into the Oval Office. There will be, I predict, blood in the streets.

Literally.

The GOP cannot not steal another election, this time with the help of bipartisan bigots, without there being severe repercussions -- from black, brown, yellow and white people who REALLY love America, including yours truly.

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to see how many obsessive-compulsive posters are ready to argue, even without an article; quite a few I see -- including myself, peripherally (!)

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Obama has already collapsed like cheap suitcase on the issue of FED/Treasury giving unlimited funds to the elite Empire that totally rules our country behind the facade of this two party 'Vichy' government.

Obama fully supports the Wall Street 'bailout'.

If the ratio of the initial cost estimates by the same corporate/political liars about the Iraq war compared to its actual final cost is applied to Paulson's vague suggestion of "not more than $700 billion" for the Wall Street 'bailout', then the best estimate would be, as kids used to say, “all the money in China”, ie. tens of trillions.

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A trillion dollar bailout? Without negative consequences? Sell. Sell while you still can and stuff your mattresses.

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The trillion dollar bailout is like New York City giving drug dealers unlimited product, then pullng cops of the street.

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We have soaring oil prices as we are sitting on the 2nd biggest oil deposit in the world, while oil companies are making record profits. We pay billions in taxes for private corporate armies that are above the law. Like with Bush this will continue with McCain. On Bill Moyers Mickey Edwards and Matt Welch (now on the internet) two conservatives discussed who McCain really is. McCain is also a trigger happy Neo Con big on preemptive strikes and military spending. He is a corporate guy big on fabricated wars with no accountability.

“It's often said that when Mickey Edwards speaks conservatives listen.”

“MATT WELCH: People forget this, but in 1999 and 2000, when McCain was running against George Bush, he was the neoconservative candidate. You know, four years before the doctrine of preemptive war ever even occurred to Bush.” REMEMBER WAR = PROFITS FOR THEM AND DEBT FOR US. THE US IS THE BIGGEST ARMS DEALER IN THE WORLD SUPPORTING 761 MILITARY BASES AROUND THE WORLD THAT WE PAY FOR. MORE THEN ANY NATION IS HISTORY.

Our Government is broken. we are in the biggest fiscal crisis in 100 years. Checks, balances and protections have been wiped out. The housing collapse lost nest eggs for tens of millions and the value of homes destroyed. Now you and your children can starve or die in the gutter with no protections or safety nets. What do you think our tax dollars should pay for anyway? McCain is a Bush clone and he will put the nails on our economic coffin if he gets in. The real war on terror is right here. It’s an economic war and we are the victims of an abusive regime that has sucked us dry. If you want to see how totally corrupt it is you can watch IRAQ FOR SALE: THE WAR PROFITEERS on Comcast on demand or the internet. Then you will know what your son’s and daughter’s really died for.

From Bill Moyers The Journal: THE DENVER REALITY “The rules of the game keep changing. For example: Colorado's largest utility - expects to shut off power to 72,000 homes; it’s part of a nationwide trend: Shutoffs are up thirty percent in Chicago, more than fifty percent in Detroit. A record number have fallen behind on their utility bills.

If McCain gets in you can kiss social security, affordable health care and Medicare goodbye. We paid for these safey nets remember? and it was the Democrats who gave them to us. They are bailing out the companies but not us. This election is not about right or left, black or white IT IS ABOUT UP OR DOWN.
McCains track record has been pro deregualtion and privatization that takes our tax dollars with no accountabilty to the tax payers and illiminates government oversight that protects us. Ask yourself, what really is national security all about?

WAKE UP AMERICA

So vote with your mind. Think Obama/ Biden.

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McCain's Achilles heel is his advanced age.

In article published in June 2008 by Military.com, former POW Phillip Butler, a Navy pilot and U.S. Naval Academy graduate who spent more than eight years in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war, explained why he would not support McCain for the presidency.

"Most of us who survived that experience [being a POW] are now in our late 60’s and 70’s. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John’s age (71) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for four or more years."

There are many Republicans who share Butler's concerns, as do the 30% of white Democrats who won't vote for Obama because he's black (according to a recent Yahoo poll). But no matter how well he argues his case, those people will NEVER support him. So Barack must get them to vote AGAINST McCain or not vote at all.

That goal can be accomplished with a simple slogan: "John McCain -- OLD Ideas, OLD Solutions."

Notice I never mentioned his age (72), but the message comes through loud and clear. And should the GOP complain about the inference, it will only bolster suspicions that McCain's best days are behind him.

If you agree with my assessment, tell your friends and family members while there's still time to defeat McCain -- a pandering politician who truly has old ideas, old solutions.

John McCain --OLD Ideas, OLD Solutions

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