Obama v. Palin

Just Received this.......

* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, and you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard Law School as President of the Law Review, you're unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months
as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

Hard Truths Behind Presidential Promises

As the election season heats up the buzzwords are flying on the campaign trail. Each party has a economic policy that prevents recession, a fiscal policy that strengthens social security, a foreign policy that keeps us safe, and a health care policy that improves care. Here are just a few of the obstacles in the face of whatever party moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

War:
-We spend about $16 billion a month on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
-The annual U.S. budget for autism research ($108 million) is spent every four hours in Iraq.
-A month in Iraq and Afghanistan could provide the yearly salary for 240,000 additional public school teachers or give 640,000 students 4 year scholarships to public universities.
-In December of 2007 the Boston Globe stated that according to World Bank estimates the cost of the Iraqi war could have fed and educated the world's poor for seven years.

Energy:
-America is just 5% of the world's population, yet we burn over 25% of the oil.
-By 2050 the planet's population will have grown from 6.6 billion today to 9.6 billion.
-The International Energy Agency predicts that the world's demand for energy will grow by over 50 percent from now until 2030.

Retirement:
-Over 70 million baby boomers will retire over the next two decades.
-Beginning in 2015 the Social Security program will begin to spend more in benefits than it collects in taxes.
-Between 2037 and 2075, the Social Security program is projected to run annual deficits totaling 30 trillion dollars.

Health Care:
-45 million Americans are uninsured.
-In 2007 premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose an average of 6.1 percent, while wages went up by 3.7 percent.
-Premiums for family coverage have surged by 78 percent since 2001, while wages have gone up 19 percent.
-Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security which consume about 18% of GDP today, will consume over 28% of GDP by 2050.

There are a host of other issues, both positive and negative, that will impact the way the next administration handles the challenges that lay ahead. For a glimpse at the presidential candidates position on the issues visit: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/news/0806/gallery.election_issues/index.html

Election Videos

A collection of the election videos I have been e-mailed over the past couple of days. Enjoy.

• Real McCain of Genius

• Obama Lion King

• Daily Show Republican Convention

• Barack Roll

• McCain vs. Madonna

Acceptance Speeches: Obama vs. McCain

The website wordle.net allows you to take a collection of text and turn it into a "world cloud". The website uses a computer algorithim which gives greater prominence to the words that appear the most in the text. Below are the word clouds I created from the acceptance speeches given by John McCain and Barack Obama at their respective conventions. Wordle.net is truly a revolutionary website allowing you to create word clouds from any text imaginable. (Click each cloud for a larger picture.)

Obama:

McCain:

One of the starkest differences between the two speeches is highlighted by Obama's word cloud. Obama decided to use McCain's name 21 times in his speech, a style not employed by McCain who mentioned Obama only 6 times. McCain instead referred most often to "his opponent" and "the democrats". Both speeches set viewing records for political conventions. McCain's speech was seen by 38.9 million households and Obama's was seen by 38.4 million. It truly will be an amazing 2 months on the campaign trail leading up to this historic election.