War of words in presidential campaign intensifies

The war of words in this campaign are getting ridiculous. I understand that trying to make yourself out to be the best candidate possible is what each candidate is trying to do, but to undermine and do things considered "dirty" are ridiculous and needs to be corrected. The problem with these political strategies is that they do not get to the core issues of what our nation needs, but instead they try to put down another person in order to pick themselves up. There needs to be some type of order put into this so that the candidates can stay on topic and voters will be able to decide who they vote for by the issues and not by polluted visions of candidates on television and in the newspaper.

McCain softening his tone?

Leading up to the second presidential debate, John McCain and his representatives made it very clear that they were going to be personally attacking Barack Obama as their new strategy to try and gain some ground in the polls. However, during the debate he did not seem to be attacking and probing as much as many of the electorate thought he would. Perhaps it was because of the format of the debate or Obama’s calm personality, but John McCain did not meet this feisty expectation. In fact, he seemed to be quirky and definitely more engaged than in the previous debate. This toned down rhetoric has even made its way into one of the recent McCain rallies. During a town hall forum in a Minneapolis suburb on Friday, McCain urged for supports to be respectful of Obama even amidst a room full of boos. Although this softened tone was apparent in several statements that he made regarding Senator Obama during the rally, this has not been the case for several negative ads that have been attacking some of Obama’s past connections. However, I think it is very important to recognize that McCain is trying to be respectful and recognize differences that are really pertinent to how either of them will run the country and not giving steam to various rumors and fueling hostility and partisanship within the electorate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002895.html

Does McCain's strategy seem to be working?

After watching the second Presidential Debate on Tuesday night, I found that John McCain changed his image tremondously from the first debate. He appeared to be much more comfortable being in the town hall as well as more willing to say whatever he wanted to. A couple of examples are when he refered to Obama as "that one" as well as the time he added to Obama's dialogue, "did we hear anything about the fine". When a candidate seems to be comfortable in the situation, one would think he would lead in the polls. In this case, McCain isn't ahead, Obama has taken the lead still. The question is, what should McCain do in order to win over Americans?

Barack Obama and Acorn

ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is an organization that receives about 40% of its revenue from taxpayers and has a history of being left-wing. In fact, a new report from the Consumer Rights League claims that the Chicago-based ACORN has used some public tax dollars it has received and used it on political projects. ACORN is a nationally based organization, and the Washington based ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud, in which seven ACORN workers submitted 2,000 bogus registration forms. ACORN also has been implicated voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and 12 other states. Barack Obama has admitted to giving campaign dollars to ACORN for "Get out the vote" campaigns. Furthermore, Barack Obama met with the Chicago-based ACORN when he first moved there. ACORN's administrators were impressed by the ambitious Obama and had him train those workers in the Chicago-based ACORN. After Obama trained this group, they participated in bullying banks and bullied these banks into providing loans to low and moderate income people whom could not pay them off; which is very similar to the housing crisis the country is currently facing.
John McCain has begun to bring this up in his campaign, questioning what Barack Obama's involvement was with ACORN and if he really trained the workers to protest and bully the banks. This has been the current trend for John McCain, whom is facing an uphill battle in the general election and has begun to attack the character of Barack Obama, which many speculate is a last ditch effort for the Arizona Senator. John McCain has spoke of this relationship at several events and has released television advertisements questioning this relationship. This strategy does not support John McCain, it just denounces Barack Obama.

Helping the Seniors of this country

In the next couple of sentences i will show how Obama is helping the Seniors in the United States.

- Wants to get name brand drugs switched to generic brands. To help reduce the cost of the many precription drugs that Elders need to take.
- Is very against privatizing social security.
-Does not believe in raising retirement age. also does not want to cut benefits for Social Security and supports the 10.6 percent cut in medicare payments.
-Believes in giving Seniors more choices about their long-term care. Wants to also improve the quality of elder care. This would include more nurses and health care workers.
-Very strong in cutting taxes for seniors making less then 50,000 in a year. the tax break of $1,400 for 7 million seniors. This would help by relieving millions of elders from the stress of filing tax returns.
-One way that Obama believes he can strengthen Social Security is by lifting the payroll tax cap but only on earnings above 250,000.
-Urges younger worker to start saving earlier for their later years.
-Forces firms to put more money into their pension funds to make them solvent so that workers won't be left with a bunch of IOU's after many years of service.

New Ad Focuses on Relationship with Ayers

McCain's newest attack ad, release Friday, October 10, focuses on making ties between Obama and former terrorist Wiliam Ayers. The point of the ad is to bring into question Obama's honesty, and in turn his trustworthiness in handling the economy. The ad says: "When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers. When discovered, he lied. Obama. Blind ambition. Bad judgment." McCain's campaign continues to point out the involvement with terrorist William Ayers, whom was involved in terrorist acts during the 1960's anti-war movement, and points out that Obama has been back and forth on the issue. Obama's campaign has said he was unaware of Ayers' past at a 1995 "get to know your candidate" event hosted at Ayers' home, while Obama has condemned Ayers' past activities. McCain's campaign attacked even further after Obama claimed that he "believed (Ayers) had been rehabilitated" with a response from Tucker Bounds as follows: "Does Barack Obama continue to believe William Ayers has been rehabilitated? Or has Barack Obama changed his mind now that William Ayers is a liability, rather than an asset, to his political ambition?"

Is this an example of the old Kerry flip-flop days? When is enough enough and someone can just come out and confess that they've had relationships with a bad group of people, instead of going back and forth? I feel that this is a stellar example of Obama's character; when backed into a tough corner, deny, deny, deny. Is that what we want our future president to do? Further, should past relationships play a role in whom we select as our President?

"Obama, the Baby Killer"

Some people still believe this is true. For those of you who are belatedly learning about this like me, Obama voted against some bills in Illinois that were about the protection of babies that are aborted but are still alive. Some people do not seem to know that there was already a law in Illinois about the protection of these babies, and that Obama believed the new bills would have potentially violated Roe v. Wade.

Just today I saw brand new blogs and online notes about how people are trying to spread the word about Obama’s baby-killing tendencies. People believe this because of sites like BornAliveTruth.org that advertise Obama’s votes against those bills in Illinois, but hardly mention the fact that a similar law was already in place. I think this is a good example of how untruths can be spread by the diffusion of information, which is discussed in Trent & Friedenberg's "Political Campaign Communication," and we talked about it class.

For an actual in-depth coverage of this issue, please visit http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html