Newsweek's "Secrets of the 2008 Campaign"

Newsweek did an amazing seven-part series of articles looking behind the scenes of John McCain's and Barack Obama's campaigns.

1. "How He Did It"
2. "Back From The Dead"
3. "The Long Siege"
4. "Going Into Battle"
5. "Center Stage"
6. "The Great Debates"
7. "The Final Days"

President-Elect Barack Obama

This has been an amazing election and I'm glad Barack Obama will be our next president. I hope John McCain goes back to being the John McCain of 2000 instead of selling out to the far right in order to secure their votes.

The difference in what the two tickets inspire was strongly evident in their speeches tonight. John McCain's crowd contained the negative, divisive elements of our country. They boo-ed Barack Obama and even Sarah Palin. Barack Obama's party cheered and was genuinely supportive of Obama's message of unity.

I really can't help feeling like we have just witnessed a major turning point in American history. This man can inspire us like very few leaders have been able to.

Palin Preparing For Next Election....

It's pretty ridiculous how Sarah Palin is the bigger name on their ticket. They had a rally in Florida where John McCain's name wasn't visible at all. Palin is clearly building up her own reputation instead of worrying about winning this election with McCain.

Another Big Endorsement

In the last week, we've seen Barack Obama pick up the endorsement of influential Republicans such as Colin Powell and Scott McClellan. Now the Anchorage Daily News has written up a very nice article explaining why they endorse Barack Obama. Yes, Anchorage is the biggest city in Sarah Palin's home state, meaning that's the biggest newspaper in Alaska.

Bush's former secretary of state, Bush's former press secretary, and Alaska's biggest newspaper make quite an impressive list of endorsements for Obama.

FiveThirtyEight has McCain's chances of winning at under 5% again. This does not mean Democrats should get complacent. It means by continuing to push hard, Obama will likely win.

Supporting Evidence on Palin

She's apparently going "rogue" and causing some internal problems within the McCain campaign. Honestly, choosing her as his running mate was one of McCain's biggest mistakes. You can clearly see her personality of being incompetent but not understanding her own incompetence and thinking she knows better than her experienced handlers.

Incompetence, Perceiving It, And Politics

I love the field of psychology. It gives so much insight into the way people around us behave on a daily basis. I stumbled across and article discussing the relationship between incompetence, the ability to perceive incompetence and how it applies to politics.

One of the main marketing points the Republican Party has been playing on is how the Democrats are "elitist." They push for candidates similar to George W. Bush, who are very incompetent by any objective measures that I can conceive of.

The article discusses how the most incompetent people overestimate their own skills the most and underestimate the skills of others the most. This applies perfectly to Sarah Palin. Her attitude of "my way is the right way" shows this basic tendency to not realize her own shortcomings and to believe that other people's way is wrong.

The article also discusses how the most competent people accurately estimate their own skills but somewhat overestimate the skills of others. This applies perfectly to Barack Obama. He has the attitude that he can work with others because he believes they they are capable of coming to an agreement with each other.

When given the choice of these two types of mindsets, I think it's pretty clear which mindset I would prefer leading our country.

I would have liked to have drawn a comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain, however, I don't think John McCain is nearly as incompetent as Sarah Palin (aside from him choosing Palin as his running mate). The comparison with Palin is still important, however, because there is a very legitimate chance that Sarah Palin might become president if John McCain is elected, given his age and history of cancer.

What A Crazy Election

(no blog posts on most of the stuff that's been going on since I've been pretty busy with work and other things. e.g. I upgraded my computer's motherboard, cpu, ram, and video card, which ate up a bunch of time reinstalling stuff)

Even after all the crazy things that have happened so far, I do believe that this is the first American Presidential election where the endorsement of terrorist groups has come into play.

Al Qaeda supporters back John McCain as the choice more favorable to their goals.

At the moment, though, Five Thirty Eight has Obama with a significant lead, so if all goes well, Al Qaeda will be disappointed.

Presidential Debate 1 - Lie Tally

We won't get into the stupid drama of McCain trying to chicken out of the first debate to try to prevent the inept Palin from having to debate Biden in the Vice Presidential debate. However, the Presidential debate did happen as planned and it was intense. Both politicians made a few misstatements and downright lies.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_1.html

Here's the scorecard: Downright lies are worth 2 points, misstatements are worth 1 point. It's a little subjective what is a downright lie, but here we go.

Kissinger and preconditions: McCain: 2.
Downright lie because Kissinger was quoted as saying exactly what Obama said he was.

Obama and raising taxes in the past on people who make $42000 a year: Obama: 2, McCain: 1.
Obama lied about voting on the bill. McCain however, still overall made a misstatement in that that wasn't the full story of the bill.

Troop withdrawal timetables: McCain: 1.
He mischaracterized the statement by the general as being specifically critical about Obama's plan.

Earmarks increasing: McCain: 2.
Flat out lie since it's the opposite of the truth.

Bear study: McCain: 2.
If it's so bad, why did McCain not attempt to remove the specific $3 million dollar to study bears from the bill.

Iraqi surplus: Obama: 1.
Obama's number was off by like 30%. He's right there's a surplus though.

Buying foreign oil: McCain: 1.
His number is off by like 40%

Obama's tax cut: Obama: 1.
His plan would lower taxes for 95% of families with children. Only 81% overall.

Employers taxed for healthcare: Obama: 1.
Employees themselves pay the tax, which, sounds even worse to me.

Obama's universal healthcare: McCain: 2.
McCain totally mischaracterizes Obama's plan as taking away people's right to choose.

McCain on Eisenhower: McCain: 1.
Misremembered the quote.

Obama on troop withdrawals: Obama: 1.
Has been quoted saying differently. Maybe he's softened his stance?

Obama and Iran: McCain: 2
Flat out lie about Obama's stance.

McCain on Russia and Georgia: McCain: 1
McCain may disagree with Obama, but it's not fair to say Obama's naive when that's the White House's stance as well.

McCain on Boeing: McCain: 1
McCain's motivations were not exactly clear in this.

McCain on Obama and nuclear waste: McCain: 2
Flat out lie on Obama's stance.

McCain's stance on alternative energy: Obama: 1, McCain: 2
Obama exaggerated how many times McCain voted against alternative energy. However, McCain flat out lied that he had never opposed it.

Obama's Senate subcommittee: McCain: 1
He implies that Obama should have had hearings when in fact it wasn't Obama's job to.

McCain on Reagan and Lebanon: McCain: 1
He didn't actually vote before sending troops.

Final Score:
McCain: 22 falsehood points (or roughly equivalent to 11 outright lies)
Obama: 7 falsehood points (or roughly equivalent to 3.5 outright lies)

We have the Republicans, as expected, outlying the Democrats by 3:1.

Economists Comparing Obama vs McCain

Scott Adams conducted a survey of 500 economists to try to figure out which presidential candidate would be better for the economy. The interpretation of the results is obviously subject to a lot of subjective calls, but take a look yourself.

The Daily Show Comes Through Too

The Daily Show ran a segment called John McCain, Reformed Maverick. This is awesome since they show him totally reversing his position from a few years ago on many key issues.

Sleazy Politics

In the last few weeks, the presidential race has become absolute garbage in terms of content. Ever since the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, the Republican campaign has devolved into outright lies and complete avoidance of issues.

Please, I urge everybody to pay attention to sites like: FactCheck.org

Both sides have made exaggerated or false claims, but McCain and Palin lately have been so full of lies that it's ridiculous:

Palin on Alaskan energy production - Supposedly she knows a lot about energy? Yet it clearly does not occur to her that there are other forms of energy but oil. I wonder what her stance on alternative energy must be.
McCain lying about Palin on earmarks - She keeps claiming she was against earmarks, against the "Bridge to Nowhere" but those are outright lies.
Palin on holy war - She believes our war in the Middle East is a religious cause? Just like the good old Bush "crusade" comment.

Palin's ignorance of what the"Bush Doctrine" is - She's all for war but she doesn't even know what Bush's reason for getting us into war was?
Palin on getting us into war against Russia - Sure, we may be fighting a war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but why not tackle a former superpower as well? I'm not afraid of nuclear war!

McCain lying about Obama's vote in favor of a bill to educate children in an attempt to prevent sexual molestation - McCain must be pro child sexual predator then? Maybe he's courting their votes.

What's the truth about Palin? She's a religious right wing extremist. That's how she's won over the extreme right wing votes.

Palin wanting creationism taught in schools - She believes her religion has a place in public schools. I don't see her pushing for evolution to be taught in religious schools. Or for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism to be taught in schools since that is another view on creationism.

Palin is anti-choice - It's really great that she doesn't believe in abortion and practices what she preaches, however she's in favor of taking away women's rights.

Palin abuses her governorship to attempt to pressure an official to fire a state trooper that was in a child custody battle with her sister. Then fires him when he doesn't.

Palin abuses her governorship to fire a librarian who refused to censor books according to Palin's whim.

This list goes on and on. And the worst part is that the Republican Party is gaining ground. What is wrong with all you Republicans out there who support them?

Sarah Palin

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate is rather disturbing to me. This lady is pretty much a crazy religious nut and will be one small step from the presidency, given McCain's seemingly frail health.

She's ignorant of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance. She's extremely anti-abortion, however at least she practices what she preaches given that her 17 year old daughter is having a baby soon and she herself chose to give birth to an unborn baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome. I mean, I give her credit for standing firm in her belief on the issue, but really, is it morally right for a parent to give birth to a child who will suffer his whole life because of an incurable disease that you knew about ahead of time? The religious nuts will say "life is sacred" and all sorts of things, but really, an early stage, unborn fetus is not a fully functional organism according to scientific definitions.

I dunno, I'm pretty sure the religious nuts were already going to vote for McCain, so I hope this helps push the more moderate (read: sane) voters toward Obama's side.

Google Bombing John McCain

Google bombing is quite a powerful technique to subtly influence people and it's simple to do. There's currently an effort to google bomb John McCain with negative articles about him. All you have to do is spread around links such as these:

John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain
John McCain

And you've contributed to the effort. When people search Google for John McCain, those articles will have a higher ranking due to the way google's link analysis works. =)

McCain's Terrible Speech

John McCain gave a terrible speech in response to Obama. Like really terrible. Terrible to the point that news reporters were laughing at it and it really would have been better if he hadn't given it. He sounds so weak and pitiful. I don't know how anybody can vote for this guy.

Barack Obama Wins the Democratic Nomination

I was pretty sure it was coming, but Obama has finally won the Democratic nomination. I'm looking forward to real general election campaigning now against McCain. Obama is seriously, the most interesting presidential candidate we've had within my lifetime. Hopefully he can bring about the change that he often talks about. That glimmer of hope he brings is exactly why he's so popular with us younger voters.