Another two weeks gone by and the momentum for Senator Obama continues to accelerate over Senator McCain. Two weeks ago on June 7th, we were just coming off the announcement by Hillary Clinton that she was dropping out of the race and supporting Obama - complete with a rather good speech trying to excite her supporters to the junior Senator from Illinois.  She plans on hammering home this point in the coming couple of weeks with campaign stops with Senator Obama.  Time will tell if this is a great idea or not but so far, so good.

What all of this means in terms of polling though is that we have the first two weeks of polling in after Clinton's exit, and the first two weeks of polling showing just how dangerous a united Democratic Party can be and how much damage it is shaping up to do in the fall to the Republicans.  The news for Senator McCain and the Republicans is rather grim: only two weeks of party unity under the Dems belt and Obama has already opened up a wide enough lead in state polls to switch the electoral map from a somewhat close deficit to overcome of 294 / 244 to a total bordering on electoral bloodshed: 331 / 207, with many months to go and serious weakness...

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We are all pawns in their game.

The much cherished boom times of the end of the last century were hailed for their lifting-all-boats effect on the tide of western society.  Many people did quite well for their selves, even if they did not live in the lap of luxury.  While the rich did get richer, a significant number of poorer people were invited to taste the life of the middle class, if only for a short time.  The middle class their selves set their sights on joining the upper class of society, or at least trying to sniff their bank accounts.  They poured billions upon billions of dollars into stock markets the world over.  Dreams like “financial freedom” and “early retirement” began to become realistic opportunities for some.  Everything was fine.  As the new century dawned, people wondered if there could be any real end to this prosperity.

People who still had to work for a living but still managed to throw some money into the stock market obviously did not have the time to watch the trading screens second by second to maximize their money’s potential.  They put the trust of their money into institutional investments – mutual funds – which then did the investing for them.  Mutual funds invested in anything under the sun: stocks, bonds, and commodities, so on.  While the money was not given personal attention the overall trend was good, the numbers were green, the fund holders gained...

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Greetings once more.  I'm back with the third in the bi-weekly prediction series, though to a case of Real Life Syndrome (i.e. having a real job now and not having Mondays off) this got pushed back to Saturday - and probably will continue to be a bi-Saturday experience.  (Previous: 1, 2)  As you can see compared with the previous map, there have been some notable changes, and a slow continuing increase for Senator Obama's lead.  Now onto the numbers to see why.

While a state like Nevada continues to straddle between leaning McCain and leaning Obama, there have been signs of strength for the Illinois senator all across the country.  All of the polls considered in this map are taken before the final resolution of the Obama/Clinton primary fight, and obviously all are before Hillary's concession speech today.  So with that in mind, the idea that McCain's support continues to erode in the supposed safest of places must give the Republicans a significant amount of pause.

The most notable flips (and the...

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Ok.  Unless you've been living under a rock the last 3 days, you've heard about the so-called "betrayal" of Scott McClellan, former press secretary to the White House.  He claims the White House war machine purposefully misled the American people with "propaganda" during the presentation of the case for war in Iraq.  What you may not have heard, to this point, is the proverbial giant pink elephant in the room.

As MSNBC reports, current press secretary to the White House, Dana Perino, has said, "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House.  We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."  We've seen the White House roll out its plethora of spin masters, such as Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett, to denounce and more or less call McClellan "hijacked" by the left-wing.

But what nobody in the MSM is talking about is that nobody is denying what McClellan has stated in his book.  They're just calling him a loony who's been bought out by the lefties.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, as it were.

Granted, any person, as Mike Malloy says, has the sense of a gently stewed rhubarb and has even halfway paid attention over the last 5 years knows what McClellan says is true.  But the fact nobody in the MSM is mentioning that there...

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Greetings.  I'm back again with the second in the series of prediction threads for the general election coming up this fall.  (Previous: 1)  A few things have changed in the past two weeks, most notably on a meta level.  For number geeks like myself I have found a great new resource site, FiveThirtyEight.com.  I'm getting a majority of my numbers from there, and probably will continue so from here on out.  Now to the numbers.

In the past two weeks we have begun to see Senator McCain's numbers erode in some of his supposed reddest states, while Senator Obama has seen blue states become deeper blue as we progress.  Long story short, the momentum is edging toward the junior Senator's cause.  Here are the map changes and who it is a 'victory' for:

Iowa (solid Democrat to lean Democrat) MCCAIN
Montana (solid Republican to lean Republican) OBAMA
Nebraska (lean Republican to solid Republican) MCCAIN
Nevada (solid Republican to lean Democrat) OBAMA
New Mexico (lean Republican to solid Democrat)...

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Yesterday I had the distinct honor of attending an exciting rally for Senator Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, MI.  Myself and a friend tracked across the state from the Detroit area in hopes of catching a glimpse of the man, and we made out pretty well.  The breaking news that Senator Edwards was going to endorse Obama at this very meeting, we never knew about that.  I first learned from overhearing an older lady's conversation over the phone behind me.  My friend and I were extremely excited at this revelation and even more excited to see Senators Edwards and Obama together at last.  The following is a series of pictures with some narration taken from in and around the Van Ander Arena in beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Cognitive dissonance has become one of my famous phrases of late, because it very aptly describes the kind of arguments I'm getting from conservatives in defending Bush and their own conservative viewpoint.  Simply put, cognitive dissonance is willful ignorance.  The wiki article puts it a bit more eloquently: "In simple terms, it can be the filtering of information that conflicts with what one already believes, in an effort to ignore that information and reinforce one's beliefs."

Am I calling conservatives liars?  Not exactly.  Conservatives honestly believe they've got it all figured out, and the fact that reality refuses to conform to their belief just means they're being sabotaged by us damned liberals.  They're closing their eyes, plugging their ears and yelling "lalalalalala!  I can't hear you!" so they don't have to acknowledge any facts that refute their beliefs.

A classic case of cognitive dissonance involves my mother.  Shortly after I left home, a schism occurred in my family wherein my father was forced to choose between the family of his birth and his wife.  From what my brother related to me, my mother was on the phone with my aunt (father's sister) when my younger cousin A apparently...

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In a April 22nd interview with (the suddenly Clinton-friendly) ABC's Good Morning America, Senator Hillary Clinton dropped the following line about her future Iran policy, if elected president:

I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

It's getting harder and harder to remember exactly which party Clinton is running for.  It's getting harder and harder to remember exactly which country Clinton is looking to represent.  Later replies from the Clinton campaign hint that Iran is merely getting the treatment they dish to Israel (as the President of Iran has said on multiple occasions he'd be happy if the name 'Israel' were wiped off the map) - but at best that just signifies that not only is she willing to drop to the saber-rattling level of Senator John McCain (who's running in that -other- party, by the way) to garner votes (in a primary!), but she's ready to drop to the level of President Ahmadinejad himself, going saber rattle for saber rattle, if necessary.

In the meantime, people now have the unique opportunity in American history to vote for someone who actively advocates committing genocide!  It was something not on the table in either of Bush's elections in...

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There was a time when talking politics was talking about the issues.  More taxes or less?  More regulation or less?  Are we on the right track or not?  Most importantly, how do we fix what we perceive as wrong?

But since the Reagan Administration, and particularly since the rise of Fox News, politics has become less about the issues and more about personalities.  George Bush is a man people would like to have a beer with.  Gore is cold and robotic.  McCain is an honorable man of the people.  Obama is elitist.  Edwards is obsessed with his hair.  Y'know what?  I don't give a damn how much Edwards pays for his haircut or how well Obama bowls.  I want to know what they propose to turn this nation back into a place I'm proud to call home.  Because for the past seven years, I've been ashamed to call myself American.

People are starting to wake up to the fact that the media has been treating politics like a reality television show.  We want to know when our troops are coming home.  We want to know how we're going to fix our insanely expensive health care system.  We want to hear solutions to our energy problems.  But instead we get news that Obama's inability to bowl makes him elitist, Clinton's propensity for getting teary makes her unelectable and McCain throws a good party.

If you dig, and I mean really dig...

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The price of everything continues to tick higher.  The prolonged increase in the price of fuel has finally begun to have its severe ramifications on the rest of the economy, incrementally driving up prices for goods, services, and food.  Coupled with the continued downward slide in the U.S. dollar and there is no denying it: inflation in all of its ugliness is here, and won't be going anywhere for some time to come.

Politicians, for as much as some may believe they really can change the world, can't do much of anything when it comes to the price of everything.  Short of price controls, which are very unlikely in this pro-business environment, there is nothing any politician can do tomorrow to lower the cost of anything that you pay for - especially the price of fuel.  Well, so long as all parties are being responsible about everything.  Flying in the face of that logic, however, we do have a Presidential election coming up this fall.  With that, we have gotten a woefully short sighted proposal designed to score political points while throwing the American people scraps and expecting them to embrace it as steak: a repeal of the federal gas tax.

John I don't know too much about economics McCain was the first out of the gate with this terrible...

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