Obama Expected to Better Address Housing Market Issues than McCain, According to Zillow.com Survey

Housing/Mortgage/Foreclosure Among Top 3 Issues New President Should Be Prepared to Address

There's no shortage of issues presidential candidates must be prepared to contend with if elected and a new survey shows 58 percent of Americans think that, between the two major candidates, Sen. Barack Obama will better address the current state of the housing market than Sen. John McCain (42 percent). The survey of 2,016 U.S. adults was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of real estate Web site Zillow.com.

Zillow.com is an online real estate community where homeowners, buyers, sellers, real estate agents and mortgage professionals find and share vital information about homes, for free. Read the entire survey story.

Young voters, homeless targeted in Ohio's election

By STEPHEN MAJORS – 1 day ago
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign blitzed bars and advocates for the homeless have lined up vans to ferry potential voters from shelters.

The prize could be thousands of traditionally elusive voters in hard-fought Ohio who would have the chance to register and vote on the same day — if the courts don't intervene.

One-stop voting, scheduled for Tuesday through Oct. 6, would be especially convenient for those Democratic-leaning voters who have traditionally had trouble getting to the polls. It's a reality not lost on two parties locked in a tight race four years after President Bush's 118,000-vote victory in Ohio gave him a second term.

Read the entire story here.

WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.

For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan.

By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. Rather than help try to resuscitate Wall Street’s bloodied bulls, McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington’s legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress’s middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he’d inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.

The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis. I’ll leave any physiological explanations to gerontologists — if they can get hold of his complete medical records — and any armchair psychoanalysis to the sundry McCain press acolytes who have sorrowfully tried to rationalize his erratic behavior this year. The other answers, all putting politics first, can be found by examining the 24 hours before he decided to “suspend” campaigning and swoop down on the Capitol to save America from the Sunnis or the Shia, or whoever perpetrated all those credit-default swaps.

Read the rest of Rich's blistering column here.

The cost of deregulation is indeed very high --- to the U.S. taxpayer.

From the NY Times:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

You've got to be kidding, right? We are now rigging the debate formats to compensate for a know-nothing candidate drilled in meaningless talking points? And the Obama team agreed to this? And so did the press?

The Washington Post notes the historically unprecedented attempt by a vice-presidential nominee to hide from press accountability:

Mr. McCain's selection of an inexperienced and relatively unknown figure was unsettling, and the campaign's decision to keep her sequestered from serious interchanges with reporters and voters serves only to deepen the unease. Mr. McCain is entitled to choose the person he thinks would be best for the job. He is not entitled to keep the public from being able to make an informed assessment of that judgment. Ms. Palin's speech-making skills are impressive, but the more she repeats the same stump speech lines, the queasier we get. Nor have her answers to the gentle questioning she has encountered provided any confidence that Ms. Palin has a grasp of the issues.

There are only a few weeks to go before the United States may pick a potential president who has never given a press conference as a candidate for national office. This is not a functioning democracy.

And McCain is even worse: 40 days since his last press conference.

As was the case in 2004 and 2006, Democratic candidate yard signs are being stolen at many times the rate as their Republican counterparts. In UA's case, it's around 100:1.

Again this year Democrats are going to great lengths to protect their signs. Bob Krasen (photo on right) of Blenheim Road in Clintonville has had three Obama signs stolen this year. According to the Dispatch article, "He added a cow bell to the third one as an alarm, but both the sign and the bell were taken. Now he has made a permanent sign and planted it in his yard."

Several UAPA members have had their signs stolen multiple times, others as part of the mass theft operation mentioned in the Dispatch story.

There have been many sign thefts over the past several weeks. Remember, if your sign is stolen:

1. Request a replacement sign* from UAPA free of charge. Don't let the vandals and thieves silence your voice!
2. Put your address on the inside of the sign in case your stolen sign is recovered.
3. Consider donating to UAPA to help defray the costs of new and replacement signs.

* Please note that new replacement signs are available to Upper Arlington, Ohio, residents only. We are unable to mail or hand deliver signs outside of the 43212, 43220 and 43221 zip codes. We regret any inconvenience.

Monday, September 22, 2008

ColumbusDispatch.com

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has provided more than ample eye-roll material since her coming-out as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

I'll leave her lack of experience to other columnists. Disability is my beat, and the blatant exploitation of a cute baby to support a promise that has captured the hearts and hopes of too many parents of kids with disabilities was an outrageous slap in the face of every genuine advocate.

We have had real advocates as leaders in our government and we'll have more, but simply giving birth to a baby given a diagnosis does not an advocate make. Baby Trig has a label: Down syndrome. Period. No one knows yet what his disabilities, physical or cognitive, will be.

The chirpy governor hasn't a clue what it is to fight for a disabled child's education, weigh the pros and cons of surgeries, find speech therapists or navigate the cruel land mines of prejudice that are encountered on playgrounds and hockey rinks.

Read the rest of Kendrick's opinion column in the Columbus Dispatch.

1. Request a replacement sign from UAPA free of charge by filling out the form below. Don't let the vandals and thieves silence your voice!
2. Put your address on the inside of the sign in case your stolen sign is recovered.
3. Consider donating to UAPA to help defray the costs of new and replacement signs.

Don't have a sign yet? Request a new sign here.

Already have your sign? Encourage your Obama/Biden supporting friends and neighbors, who may not know of our sign initiative, to sign up.

Take away the bait: We are encouraging you to take your yard sign in at night and place it prominently in your yard in the morning. Sign thieves are easily caught during the day. Notify the police of the license number of the car.

Please note that we are providing replacement signs for Upper Arlington, Ohio, residents only. We regret that we're unable to mail or hand deliver signs outside of the 43212, 43220 and 43220 zip codes.

How does a professed Christian tell so many public lies so often and repeatedly, even after they have been debunked?

The lies keep piling up and now CNN has the most thorough debunking on the myriad of lies coming from Team McCain.

• Obama wants to teach sex to kindergarteners? Lie.
• Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere? Lie.
• Palin hasn’t taken earmarks as Governor? Lie. See 'Palin's earmark requests: more per person than any other state'
• Alaska produces 20% of America’s energy? Lie. Continuing to tell this lie earned her 4 pinocchios from the WashingtonPost: 'Palin Exaggerates Alaska's Energy Role'
• Palin visited Iraq and Ireland? Lie.

Washington Post points out how proudly deceitful Palin is:

"The Republican vice presidential nominee continues to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.

FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers

After a week of the RNC Convention, The Daily Show's daily recaps are just the comic relief and insights the doctor called for.

On Day 3 of the RNC Convention, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart exposes the Republican's hypocrisy, inconsistencies and political theater.

See CBS's "Factchecking Palin" and 'Palin v. Reality' for a complete list of Palin's lies during her speech.