In the last couple weeks the financial crisis has single-handedly given Obama a comfortable lead in the national polls, and made the electoral road map very tough for McCain. He will need to win almost all the battleground states and find some way to flip a state like New Mexico, Minnesota, or Virginia where Obama has established significant leads. Is the race over? No, and it’s hard to tell how accurate the polls are. I heard an interview with Zogby I think it was who said that 80% of their calls they get hung up on. That means to get a poll of 3,000 people to answer there were 12,000 that hung up.

But regardless of the polls, I’ve already accepted that Obama might be the next President, and sadly I think it has much less to do with the vision and philosophy that Obama has put out, and more to do with the Republicans lack of fiscal restraint. Don’t get me wrong, I think Obama and his Herbert Hoover style of raising taxes will be worse for the economy than anything John McCain does, but right now the general public wants something new. I’m surprised I haven’t heard anyone mention how different the race might be right now if it was Romney against Obama, but no one could have predicted the economy would be the sole issue this election.

With the public declaring they want something new, I don’t think there is much McCain can do to change their minds. What he needs to do is come out and say that he will decrease the size of government and lower taxes (which would be in stark contrast to Obama), and while he has sort of said that, there are two big problems he faces. The first is that on one hand he says that, and then he says he wants to bailout all the stupid people that bought houses they can’t afford. The second is that people have lost faith in Republicans as believers in smaller government.

I think George W. Bush’s greatest mistake was letting government spending run rampant because he has damaged the Republican brand immensely. I think the War on Terror will be judged positively if Iraq becomes a beacon of hope in the region (and there hasn’t been another 9/11, which Bush deserves credit for). The economic issues have been pushed to the side though, and that’s what has McCain in such a pickle. He can’t come out and say the best way to get out of a financial crisis is lower taxes and smaller government, because people think he’s full of crap. It’s in this that I think Republicans have hope for the future.

If Obama wins and Democrats control Congress and the White House, I think Republicans should take a long look at what they stand for. I’ve said before that I’m a conservative first and a Republican second, and in recent years the Republicans in office have strayed a great deal from conservative principals of smaller government. If the Republicans find themselves in the minority in the next four years they need to stop and think about how they got there. Being “democrat-lite” is not what people want.

I think Obama’s policies will self-destruct if he governs anything like he talks and has voted in the past. Herbert Hoover was a one term President, so it’s possible the Republican party can turn itself around in four years. My biggest fear is that the economy recovers like it did in the early 90′s under Clinton. The economy had started a major upswing right before he got into office, and instead of the first Bush getting the credit it was Clinton. I’m not sure that can happen with Obama because we’ve just started to have major problems, and the end isn’t even in sight. That being said, once we hit bottom, there is only one way to go, and that is up. I guarantee if things get better the media will make sure it was Obama’s doing.

If that happens, the road for the Republicans is more difficult, but only time will tell. Whether Republicans can keep the White House or not, they’ve been getting spanked in Congress for a while now, so they need to sit down and really think about what they’ve done, and what they need to change. Get back to the party of limited government and lower taxes, and maybe then the people would be willing to trust you in office.

It’s not taking very long for the differences between Obama and McCain to become obvious. Here’s a short list thanks to Hugh Hewitt.

Barack Obama wants to hike social security taxes, double the capital gains tax and restore the death tax to its highest levels.

Barack Obama opposes any expansion of exploration for oil even though the price you are paying at the pump is soaring and the only way to halt the rise is increased production.

Barack Obama wants to meet, without preconditions, with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and Kim Jung Il.

Barack Obama wants the U.S. to quit the field in Iraq ,imperiling the victory there that is emerging with unmistakable clarity.

But for this post I’d like to focus on the first point. Obama wants to extend the cap on your income that is subject to the social security tax. If you make a six figure income, you ever hope to, or you ever hope your children do, then you should be against these taxes. This doesn’t just effect the super rich, but a LOT of regular Americans who are already taxed too much. Not to mention the wealthy who pay a TON of social security taxes will not get that money back. It’s downright stealing from the rich to give to the poor, and Obama is perfectly OK with “fairness.”

I’ve heard several people now say that they’re leaning towards Ron Paul, so I thought I’d make a special post about him.

Ron Paul is a Libertarian at heart, so it helps to understand the beliefs of the Libertarian party. Much of what he says about smaller government sounds great, but there are a few looney things that over the years have kept the Libertarian party a meaningless third party. Below are a few of those things that Ron Paul ascribes to.

1) He’s anti-death penalty, but most Republicans are the opposite. Surprisingly he’s pro-life which isn’t a given for Libertarians, but from what I can tell Paul is coming from a Christian background. He’s mixed some of his Libertarian values and his Christian values, and that has led to his own special version of being a Republican.

2) He’s anti-drug laws. He’s made some crazy statements that the war on drugs is keeping down the black man in the inner-city.

3) He doesn’t understand the danger of Militant Islam. A woman in the Sudan was being threatened with death for a Teddy Bear named Mohammad. What does that have to do with us “meddling” in foreign affairs as Ron Paul likes to say? What about when Iraq attacked Kuwait in the first Gulf War? According to Ron Paul since we weren’t threatened, then it’s not our fight. You know what, just forget that whole peace through strength thing. It’s better to just sit on our thumbs and get attacked first, and then we can worry about protecting ourselves.

If you’re a pacifist then this whole discussion is probably lost on you, but go read some of Paul’s comments. He says some looney things.

Overall I love what he has to say about limited government, and that’s the best thing the Libertarian party has going for it. Unfortunately for me, the other crackpot beliefs far outweigh my desire for a more limited government. Not to mention there isn’t a chance in heck he could win the national election. I also don’t understand how people like BOTH Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. Paul is a limited government person, and Huckabee sounds like a big government Republican like Bush.

I think Thompson has the right stance on a lot of issues, and he might be the most conservative at his core, but he’s too late to the party, and he’s not dynamic enough to win the nomination or a general election. Giuliani is top notch on everything except social issues, which I might be able to live with if it means no Hillary or Obama. For now Romney is my favorite.

Summer is off to a nice start. The dog is laying in the backyard sunbathing right now. She’s a weirdo.

Played a game of baseball online this morning. Went down early 2-0 against the Devil Rays of all teams, but had a couple nice innings and won 4-2, raising my record online to 10-4. Last night Angelo helped me fine tune my network setup and change my dsl router to a “bridge,” which should simplify things. But that’s nerdy mumbo jumbo you don’t care about.

We’re going camping this weekend at San Onofre which should be fun. I haven’t been to the beach in forever, and it will be nice to go “away,” even if it’s only for a short time.

Andrew and Sarah are well on their way of making Denise and Paul’s condo into their own. They’ve done some painting and moved in furniture. It’s great to see them start their new life together. I have a much greater appreciation than I used to for weddings and marriage, now that I’m married. You know what the people are getting themselves into and what a special time that is in their life.

We started to watch the season of ER that finished a month or so ago. We didn’t watch it all during the year, but instead saved it for summer viewing. It’s a well done show, but the liberal nonsense is unbelievably annoying. Here are the recurring liberal story lines:

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

Sorry for that diversion from my summer, I apologize.

I’m off to start Act 2 of the book. Act 1 clocked in at around 20k words, or somewhere around 45-50 pages in a real book. It’s sitting on Stacie’s desk waiting for a read through. It’s amazing how much time it takes to get a story going and established. I’m looking forward to what comes next. It should get exciting.

The following is an article from the Wall Street Journal by Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for President Bush. It’s a very interesting article for many reasons. The most fascinating reason I find is that it shows that the “rich” pay most of the the taxes, but it also shows that “rich” doesn’t mean you make $5 million dollars. It’s a very good read, especially for Democrats that want to raise taxes. Article starts here:

If the tax forms you’re filing this year show Uncle Sam entitled to any income tax, you increasingly stand alone. The income tax system is so bad, and increasingly reliant on a shrinking number of Americans to pay the nation’s bills, that 40% of the country’s households — more than 44 million adults — pay no income taxes at all. Not a penny.

Think of it this way. After dropping off your tax forms at the Post Office, you find 100 people standing on the sidewalk. Forty of them will be excused from paying income taxes thanks to Congress. Twenty of them, the middle class, will pay barely a thing. The 40 people who remain, the upper middle class and the wealthy, will pay nearly all of the income taxes. continue reading…

Here’s more bait for the leftists.

I’ve heard it said that “the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.” But a recent article I read has confused me. Hopefully someone can straighten me out. Here’s an excerpt.

**The number of U.S. households with a net worth of more than $5 million, excluding their primary residence, surged 23 percent to surpass one million for the first time in 2006, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

The survey by Chicago-based Spectrem Group found that the number of U.S. households with more than $5 million rose from 930,000 in 2005. In 1996, there were only 250,000 U.S. households in the “ultra-rich” category, Spectrem said.**

Here’s where I need help. How could more people be getting rich? If there is a small group of people at the top hoarding all the money, how could this group have grown by over 750k people? Where on earth are NEW rich people coming from? It doesn’t make any sense.

Hmmm, maybe this is a good answer. I bet it’s President Bush! He gets all the money from Iraq’s oil, and then he buys the whole world! And he’s like “hey you, come here and give me your money!” And all the poor people have to sell their Escalades and Jordans and have to start eating dirt. It’s so sad.

It seems that people are already preparing for elections that are almost two years away. An interesting Washinton Times article points out some of the hypocrisy shown by certain politicians as they shift their opinion on Iraq like the wind. The foolishness is shocking.

Here’s a snippet from an article about all the great economy boosting plans the Democrats have on their agenda:

"House Democrats have an ambitious agenda for the next few weeks. They have pledged to pass bills to raise the minimum wage, expand the opportunity for federally funded stem cell research, make Medicare prescription drugs cheaper, reduce the cost of student loans, implement anti-terror measures and reduce tax breaks enjoyed by the oil industry – all before Bush goes to the Capitol on Jan. 23 for his State of the Union address."

In case you weren’t paying attention, all of those, except the "anti-terror measures," are bad news for the economy.

Kinda funny how most people voted with Iraq on their mind, but much of what they’ll get is completely different.