GB Turned One Yesterday

Head over to the family blog for a post on GB and his birthday. My little guy turned ONE!

I love YOUTube

Here is the "I have a bracelet, too..." video, but it is even better than I remembered. What I didn't notice the first time is that he can't remember the name of the soldier. He has to look down at the bracelet to remember his name.

McCain - genuine. Obama - uh... no.

Man, they didn't even get off the stage and it was going up already

As I pointed out earlier, Obama kept saying that McCain was right... well the campaign video creators noticed it to. So as the debate was ENDING, this video went up.



Nice reaction time, guys.

"I have a bracelet too.."

"I have a bracelet too..." What? Are you serious? I couldn't help but laugh! If there was a sound bite for the night, that was one of them. Another was when Obama was talking about Iran. He made several missteps, until McCain finally jumped in over the top of him and humorously joked that Obama would sit across from Iran and listen to their foolish talk about Israel and say, oh no you won't. I thought those played very much in McCain's favor.

More importantly, time and time again McCain came across as having a tremendous amount of experience on national defense and foreign policy. He repeatedly mentioned trips he had taken to different countries and regions and referenced world leaders by name. Obama came off very weak, very naive on the whole thing.

Obama did not fall on his face. He was obviously prepared and spoke very well, even without the prompter, which is a really big breakthrough for him. However, he also said several times that he agreed with McCain, which helped to give a visual example of the reality that McCain is a leader and Obama is a nice, naive, extremely liberal guy who would have done much better if he would have waited 8 - 12 years while he gained some real experience and had a chance to step up and develop some leadership, which he is sorely lacking.

In short, McCain won handily. It wasn't a knock out, but it was definitely a clear victory.

BTW, I'm switching back and forth between MSNBC and FNC and the libs and conservatives are all saying the same thing. McCain 1 Obama 0.

***Update: Olbermann trying to spin that Obama did good, although he definitely isn't saying that Obama won. This guy is absolutely ridiculous and is trying to say that McCain claimed Pakistan is a failed state, but what McCain SAID was that before Musharraf took over Pakistan in a military coupe, it was a failed state. True statement. Olbermann is extremely dishonest.

***Update: Olbermann actually said there is no doubt that McCain won the debate. WOW!! I just about fell off of my couch! He even mentioned (with shame all over his face) the "I have a bracelet too..." line. For a smidgen of a moment I had respect for Olbermann. Don't worry it passed.

Tim puts the smack down on Biden

I like reading Tim Stevens blog. He's not a political guy normally. He is an executive pastor at Granger Community Church in Indiana and an author. I read his latest Pop Goes the Church earlier this year and really enjoyed it.

He has a great post today showing the giving percentages of McCain, Obama and especially Biden (Palin's have not been made public yet, but should be soon). It's information I've heard from other sources but I enjoyed Tim's take on it.

There is a book out there called Who Really Cares? that is suppose to be a good read about charitable giving and political affiliations. I have not read it, but I did listen to a several radio interviews with the author and it's on my list for future reads, although I think I've already heard most of the interesting tidbits.

Interesting stuff and I think Tim is right, it reveals a lot about a persons character.

Too much going on

At work, at home, in the country... I think my brain is on overload.

First: The McCain surprise yesterday: suspending his campaign, asking the president to call a meeting of the congressional leaders and presidential candidates, and pledging to work until this crisis is resolved. Hmmm. It was bold, I'll give him that. McCain is a leader, no doubt about it. Personally I wouldn't have gone the route that he did. I think some will see it as desperate. Of course, financially our country is in a REALLY tight spot, so... We'll see. President Bush definitely helped him out by calling the meeting he asked for, but I think that more than anyone, Obama helped McCain out with his response press conference where he said, "I'm available if you need me." Hmm... doesn't exactly scream leadership.

Second: The speech from President Bush last night was pretty good. He left out a lot of stuff historically and sugar coated some other stuff, blaming the collapse of the mortgage industry on outside investment that came and went. From everything I've read and seen it really seems to have started with the HUGE accounting scandals by Freddie and Fannie back in the 90's and early 00's. As part of a pseudo plea bargain with Congress and the administration to not jump on them with increased regulation they increased their purchasing and encouraging of sub-prime loans in order to increase home ownership. This was seen as a win by the Bush administration and congressional leaders. This willingness to pick up bad loans by 'government backed entities' encouraged mortgage brokers to explore a whole new market of people who really couldn't afford loans. Worse than that, Fannie and Freddie were buying up way too many of these loans and putting themselves in a bad cash position. Greenspan and others warned about this. McCain and some Republicans tried to push through some legislation to clamp down on this unhealthy practice at FM and FM, but it was blocked by Senate Democrats. At the same time FM and FM were buying off politicians with campaign contributions to try and get them NOT to regulate FM and FM like regular banks (Sen. Dodd was the biggest recipient over his career and Sen. Barack Obama was number two in over all money after just TWO years in the Senate and yes John McCain over his two decades collected 1/5 the money that Obama did).

As the borrowers in the sub-prime market started to default on their loans, the cash position at FM and FM got worse and worse, until they finally got taken over by the Fed a couple of weeks ago. So then you have this downward spiral by all of the businesses that worked closely with them in addition to banks and investors who were heavy into mortgage securities. Banks are regulated (if they want to be FDIC insured) and so they have to have a certain ratio of cash on hand to outstanding loans (mortgages are a big part of that). Well, people start defaulting, FM and FM aren't buying up the loans like they were, so now banks are stuck with them and they panic and stop lending anything to anybody so that they can stay solvent and maintain the ratios that they need to be in business. The bummer at that point is that businesses then can't get loans, you can't get a car loan, and even though you have good credit, you can't buy a house because no one is lending money. This is the big pile of steaming credit crisis that we are in.

So, the 'bailout' package is basically purchasing these sub-prime loans from the banks that are in trouble so that they improve their cash position and resume (hopefully) responsible lending. Of course these loans are going to be purchase at something like 20 cents on the dollar. It is a "write down" for the company, but they are out of the loan and they have cash. Obviously these banks just can't go on business as usual. In most (if not all) cases the government will sack the management of the institution and put in government managers who will temporarily run things while the board of directors seeks new leadership. This is similar to the whole Savings and Loan fiasco a while back. In the meantime the American taxpayers become owners of all of this bad real estate. Congrats! :( The hope then is that the market turns around and that not all of the sub-prime loan holders actually default and eventually the Fed (you) makes their money back.

I think that's the gist of it. As a responsible person who pays their bills and taxes, you get hosed. But if they didn't do anything, then you wouldn't be able to get a loan to BUY anything. The company you work for would be in a similar situation. Good companies would go under. All kinds of jobs would be lost. Basically, you would probably get hosed even worse. At least this route, the financial industry can keep functioning, the stock market will respond well, people keep working and maybe in the end the tax payers make some of the money back. I've heard some people speculate that we will MAKE money on the deal, but considering it is all coming straight out of the national debt, I don't see that happening.

And when they say $700 BILLION, that is the high end. Of course that also equates to about $10,000 for every family in America. Nice eh?

News Busted

The Newsbusters website is dedicated to showing the bias in media. As part of their page they always include a news style video in the top right corner. Sometimes they are pretty funny. This one isn't great, but it does a pretty good job at poking fun at all of the favorites of the Newsbusters crew, the Right, the left, Hollywood and celebrities. Enjoy.

SHOCKING!!! ML asks some big questions! Obviously not a Biden fan.

This video is pretty shocking. If anything it shows ML is not a Biden fan. He points out one of Biden's missteps and gets Obama a little flustered and irritated. I like it. This is actually some legit journalism that we haven't seen from NBC. Nice. Then he points out the fact that Biden was a bad pick compared to Palin or Hillary for that matter. Classic stuff. Go Matt!

I am really starting to like Joe Biden

For the same reason that the Obama team is wishing they would have picked someone else.

Katie actually gets a good point in and Biden is quick to say how much he disliked the commercial put out and endorsed by his own campaign and his running mate.

Nice.

Ducking the Issue

It happens quite a bit. Someone gets called out on something and instead of addressing the real issue, they get 'outraged' over something completely irrelevant.

For instance, the McCain campaign came out with a very effective ad linking Obama's advisers to the corrupt federal mortgage industry. Check it out.




The reaction from the Obama camp was... this ad is racist. That's right. Racist.

What? That makes no sense.

Playing the race card whenever they want to duck an issue. That's not change, that's the same old trick.