Trust on the Economy

The Diageo/Hotline poll offers not only a daily tracking number but more detailed questions asked on a daily basis. It shows, not surprisingly, that the importance of economic concerns has been going up steadily over the past week (the portion of respondents describing it as the top issue was 39% on Tuesday and 47% on Friday, dwarfing all other issues). But (as Jim Geraghty notes) Barack Obama's advantage on the economy has eroded in the same period:

Which candidate do you think would do the best job handling the nation's economy?

September 16: Obama 47%, McCain 36%
September 19: Obama 44%, McCain 41%

Both candidates started the week pretty poorly on the economic crisis, but McCain seemed to gain his footing by week's end while Obama didn't. Perhaps voters noticed, though we will need to see a few more days of data to know if there's a real trend here.

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Obama Stoking Fears Amidst Economic Crisis

Barack Obama is out on the campaign trail stoking fears that another Great Depression, complete with bread lines and high unemployment, is just around the bend. While the financial crisis is indeed serious, the differences between the economy of the 1930s and today are vast.

In a piece earlier this year for the Business and Media Institute, Nathan Burchfiel highlighted statements commentator Andy Rooney made about lines during the Jan. 27 edition of 60 Minutes on CBS:

"Big bakeries gave away their bread when it was three or four days old, and people who were out of work and hungry lined up to get it," Rooney said. "We don't have anything like that now."

Unlike Rooney, who was a teenager during much of the Great Depression, today's teenagers are far more likely to find themselves in line outside of a Best Buy, Circuit City or Apple Store, hoping to get their hands on the latest iPod or iPhone.

According to the folks at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, 24.9 percent of the total work force or 11,385,000 people were unemployed at the height of the Depression in 1933. Last month, the unemployment rate in the United States was only 6.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to Fox Business Channel's Neal Cavuto this morning, only one in four American families owned their own homes during the height of the Great Depression. Today, some 65 percent of Americans are homeowners.

As you watch the news coverage of the ongoing financial crisis, it might serve you well to adopt the mindset of super-salesman Zig Ziglar. He said something to this effect:

"The media has accurately predicted ten of the last two recessions."

In other words, he's saying those in the news media don't always get things right - especially during a Republican administration.

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Obama ad goes to war with abortion survivor

Video slams woman for 'despicable lie'

In the increasing flurry of this election season's negative political ads, the Barack Obama campaign produced a TV commercial that not only attacks Republican rival John McCain, but also takes aim at an unusual target: a 31-year-old woman who was born alive after her mother's botched abortion.

Obama's commercial predictably takes shots at the GOP campaign, calling McCain's ads "the sleaziest ever, truly vile." But when the screen shows clips of abortion survivor Gianna Jessen and the ad she made asking Obama to reverse his stance on born alive infant protection legislation, the Obama ad calls Jessen's appeal "a despicable lie."

The attack on Jessen has angered pro-life advocates. "It is despicable, repulsive and beneath contempt that Barack Obama would attack Gianna Jessen," says Jill Stanek, a pro-life columnist who testified before Congress in support of the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act, in a statement on Jessen's website. "She is a courageous abortion survivor and living miracle who would not be with us today if Obama's policies had been in place when she was born."

Jessen herself released a statement saying, "Mr. Obama is clearly blinded by political ambition given his attack on me this week. All I asked of him was to do the right thing: support medical care and protection for babies who survive abortion - as I did."

Jessen was born in a Los Angeles abortion clinic 31 years ago after her birth mother's saline solution abortion failed. "The abortionist was not on duty the moment I came into this world," Jessen said in a recent Fox News Channel "Hannity & Colmes" interview. "Had he been there, he would have ended my life." "He wasn't there, so a nurse called an ambulance, had me transferred to a hospital where I was placed in an incubator, weighing two pounds," she said. Lack of oxygen to Jessen's brain resulted in cerebral palsy, and her doctor said she'd never be able to hold her head up, sit, walk or talk.

She has since, "by the grace of God" according to her testimony, been able to run marathons. She has also been an eloquent advocate for babies like her - who are born following failed abortions - through her organization, BornAliveTruth.org. Jessen first drew the Obama campaign's ire for producing an advertisement that points to the senator's record of voting against born alive infant protection laws as an Illinois state legislator.

In the response ad from the Obama campaign, the video shows clips of Jessen's advertisement with a female voice saying, "Now, votes taken out of context accusing Obama of letting infants die. It's a despicable lie." Obama did, however, vote against Illinois born-alive infant-protection bills four times, as Jessen's ad claims.

Obama has often said, and his own website repeats, that he would have supported the Illinois state law protecting those born-alive infants if it had had a "neutrality" clause like the federal version, which states the law specifically is not intended to impact the status of babies before birth. As WND reported earlier, however, documentation uncovered by Doug Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee reveals Obama did vote against a version of the Illinois law that was the same as the federal law, contrary to what the candidate has stated.

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No Time for the Facts

From the McCain campaign

Time magazine's Karen Tumulty accuses this campaign of racism for launching this ad targeting Senator Obama's ties to Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines. Why? Tumulty writes:

Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

The only problem with Ms. Tumulty's story is that we also released an ad today targeting Senator Obama's extensive ties to Jim Johnson. The ad is called.Jim Johnson. And Ms. Tumulty might have been aware of its existence if she'd bothered to call this campaign to find out the facts (reporting) before indicting us for racism in a half-baked, late night rant. Tumulty also takes Obama's response, signed by Mr. Raines, at face value. The Obama campaign says Raines didn't advise the campaign, and Tumulty apparently wasn't interested in getting to the bottom of that either. So we contacted Ms. Tumulty and told her of the multiple sources that tie Raines to Obama, including three separate instances in the Washington Post, none of which was ever challenged by Raines or the Obama campaign until yesterday.

Tumulty did not correct her post, she simply responded "I grew up in Texas. I know what this stuff looks like." Well, now we all know what hysterical liberal bias looks like as well.

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Criticizing Obama isn't Racist, it's Patriotic

After all, isn't what the left has been telling us when we rightly questioned their patriotism as they called for early withdrawal from Iraq? They've been telling us that critizing the war, the tactics, methods is the epitomy of patriotism. Well touche! I would say it's exactly the same principal applied. Criticising Obama is too an exercise of one's patriotism.

It's therefore patriotic and not racist to question a presidential candidate's platform and message regardless of the color of his skin. Isn't that what Martin Luther King said, that he dreamed of the day when a man wouldn't be judged on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character?

This is of course the exact opposite of the beliefs of many on the left. They talk of nothing else except the color of one's skin over the content of character. In fact character means noting so long as the color is "right". Take the left's view of convicted and now executed murderer Tookie Williams. Would there have been such a call for his release had he been white?

Very definitely no. Yet it wasn't with William's skin that the judge sentenced him to die, but for his actions - his words and deeds. Obama isn't Williams or even close. But we are seeing the very same type of "hands off" being commanded by the left simply because of the color of his skin. It's with Obama's character and words, and connections, that we have issue with and that isn't racist, it's patriotic in every sense of the word.

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Obama Tells Supporters to Confront Unbelievers, `Get in Their Face' He Says

Well, so much for the kinder, gentler Obamessiah we all kept hearing about. Now he is telling his supporters to belligerently impose their views on anyone not falling under The One's spell. In a Nevada campaign stop as he was on his way to the adulation that Hollyweird was to bestow upon him later that night, Obama told his supporters to "get in the face" of people who doubt his word from on high.

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

Wow. That is pretty aggressive and mean, isn't it? Obama just told his automatons to almost physically attack people who don't agree with him. After all, that's what "get in their face" means. It is a loud, petulant action, a forceful, aggressive tactic. It is usually done by one who is overly emotional, filled with hate, pushy, and unhinged.

Screaming gay activists, anti-war outcasts, and half sentient loons engage in this sort of behavior. Is this the new "face" of the Obama campaign? Is this that "new tone" we keep hearing about? Will the media portray this ignorant tactic for what it is? Where oh where did that Barack "the light worker" Obama go, anyway?

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