Are you tired of having Obama-loving, newbie “left-leaning” and hardliner Dems as well, play deaf when you make your case for McCain’s (and Republicans’) economic credentials? I am.

And, guess what? That statement by McCain on “the fundamentals of our economy” being strong? True statement! GDP, GDP per capita, growth of both…all are stronger than Asian countries and the EU, as well as most of the individual EU countries. Who beats our numbers from time to time? Ireland…who has a much lower corporate tax rate than we. Hmmm.

Our deficit? A fraction of the deficits of other democracies, when considered in comparison to our GDP…

Our unemployment rate? Lower than that of the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, France, the EU average, and Spain… Remember that our unemployment rate is around 6%…and that 4-5% = full employment. It can’t get lower than that.(Also, our employment rate growth is 3X the major EU economies.)

Our current economic (and credit) crisis? Brought on by widespread foreclosures and the effect of that loss of value in the marketplace, as a traded security. Why the increase in foreclosures? Democrats (Frank, Schumer, Dodd, reduced the standards of credit approval, backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and dozens of unstable mortgages were written since 2000.

Our current rate of taxation of the “rich”? Already much higher than under Carter and under Clinton. Taxes on the poorest taxpayers? G. W. Bush reduced them to an 30-year-low. And taxes on the “middle class?” Also lower than ever before, as a percentage of total taxes paid.

We need to help people with inquiring minds understand why Obama’s economic policies would do damage. I have found that the simple statement, “Obama is a Socialist,” doesn’t hold up our end of the case for McCain and the Republican administration.

All of these points, and more, are made in graphics presented in the video. Have a look.

mfsheldon linked to this well-done (albeit 11-minute-long) video this morning, and it makes the best case I have seen in a long time for why our conservative government policies need to be continued for the sake of economic growth in America.

Watch it…share it…. It deserves to be viewed broadly!

`

I will quote mfsheldon below the fold, who posted this video as a comment in Doc Holliday’s diary on Rep. Murtha.

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So one Town Hall meeting/debate down, one more to go.

While you’re online reading the post-debate spin, why not click in your support for the candidate you think did the best in the online polls around the internet?

These things are not scientific, and they really shouldn’t matter, but we don’t know if they do. The less well-read voter is definitely going to glance at the online poll results, and McCain supporters’ opinions may matter more than we know!

So, happy voting, and go, Senator McCain!

P.S. I’m still updating the links. Some of the polls aren’t coming up this debate, which is probably a good thing, on the whole.

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(Updated at 12:30 am Friday after the debate…sorry about the couple of bad links, guys!)

Gov. Palin did us proud! While you’re clicking around reading the spin…why not express your opinion of who won in those Biden-heavy e-polls?

No one can say that this will make a huge difference, but I would suggest that the ranking of candidate performance in these unscientific polls pulls more emotional weight than we’d think.

And, if you need another reason, we know that the Kos kids have been getting out the e-vote for the last couple of debates…we may as well at least give balance to the ‘net, I think.

A number of links are below. You can always look at your local TV & paper sites, and if you want to keep going, Kos has dozens of links listed…. The kids don’t have anything better to do, maybe?

Happy voting and go, McCain/Palin!

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Can anyone explain to me how this clear conflict of interest doesn’t matter? I am bewildered.

Here’s why.

The banner on Drudge right now reports that the VP Debate Moderator, Gwen Ifill, is releasing an “Age of Obama” book on Inauguration Day. Here’s a link to the article on WorldNetDaily.

Doesn’t that make it obvious that Ms. Ifill will have a financial interest in one of the candidates winning? Is there something that I am missing?

I believe that Janet H. Brown, the Executive Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, needs to hear from us. What to say? At least that the potential for bias has been noted, that there should be a disclaimer, and perhaps even a replacement of the moderator to someone truly neutral. (Am I being fanatical? Sorry if I am…it’s late and I’m tired.)

My not-100%-reliable sources say that Ms. Brown can be emailed at jb@debates.org. I will offer you some sample text below…this was the email that I sent. Feel free to improve upon it; you can be much more insistent and disgruntled than I chose to be.

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Senator McCain had originally planned to attend a Town Hall Meeting in Columbus, OH, this Sunday morning; it was to be hosted by ABC’s Meet the Press and moderated by George Stephanopoulos.

Due to the ongoing negotiations toward a solution to the nation’s financial crisis, Sen. McCain has returned to DC. ABC announced that the Town Hall had been cancelled, and McCain will be the lead guest on a normal MTP.

The NY Times reports that ABC took ownership of the choice for venue change:

Asked who had initiated the change of venue, Alison Bridgman, an ABC News spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message, “Since there is likely to be a vote in Washington on Sunday, we offered McCain the option to do the show from (DC) instead and he accepted.”

But the Times also quotes a Stephanopoulos email to those who had planned to attend where his word choice pins the cancellation on McCain:

Mr. Stephanopoulos sent the following e-mail this afternoon to those who had planned to attend in Columbus: “Thank you very much for agreeing to be part of my show this Sunday. Unfortunately, as a result of the ongoing Congressional debate over the economic bailout package, John McCain has elected to stay in Washington DC and do the program from here…”

(Here’s a [link to today's NY Times story])(http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/town-hall-scrapped-mccain-will-be-interviewed-on-this-week/).

Three thoughts:

1-Stephanopoulos, you partisan, Clintonian scum.

2-This almost amounts to unbiased, nonpartisan reporting by the NY Times?!?

3-Will Stephanopoulos gently correct McCain if he refers to his “Muslim faith”? Let’s wait and see…

Here’s a list of polls where RedStaters can vote on who won the debate. It seems that our lovely friends on the other side of the internet at DailyKos have sent their minions to swarm these polls. Perhaps we could do our share?

Vote at AOL

Vote at Drudge

Vote at Newsvine

Vote at MSNBC

Vote at Chicago Tribune

Vote at Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Vote at Michigan Live

Vote at Rocky Mountain News

Vote at Politico

(ed. note: These two were added later in the day…)

Vote at Instapundit

Vote at Fox News

There are surely others, perhaps most notably your local stations’ and papers’ news pages.

Don’t get creeped out as you see the handicraft of those who got a jump on us…

Also, I don’t want to poison RedState, but here’s the post on DailyKos. Slugs.

*FREEP LIST FOR TONIGHT’S DEBATE *
by Kevinole
Fri Sep 26, 2008 at 05:50:57 PM PDT
After every presidential debate news outlets all across America (and the world) post polls on their websites that ask “Who do you think won the debate?”

I’m posting this handy starter list of news sites that host these polls.

Your mission is twofold…

Add to this list with local and national news sites that have polls (swing states especially!)
At the end of the debate, visit as many of the sites listed here as you can and cast your vote for Barack Obama.
I hate to ask for recs, but it would be very helpful to keep this diary visible in order to collect more poll sites and to get maximum votes for Obama.

You know our opponents are doing the same thing to spin the debate in McCain’s favor. We’re just going to be a little more organized about it.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz has released the long-awaited next chapter in the reporting on what connection Sen. Obama has had with radical “reformer” (and domestic terrorist) Bill Ayers. You will find Kurtz’s story in the Wall Street Journal here. There is more of his commentary available at the National Review Online here.

Both are worth a read. (Incidentally, the NRO article includes the Obama’s official response to Kurtz’s original allegations.)

RedState readers are probably familiar with the basic facts…Obama’s only real “executive experience” was as the chairman of the board responsible for fundraising for an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). The CAC gave more than $100 million (all privately raised) to what Kurtz describes as “community organizers and radical education activists.”

The projects implemented by the CAC were led by Bill Ayers, who has confessed to bombing the Pentagon and other government entities as a founder of a group called the “Weather Underground” in the 1960′s. By the 1990′s, his aim was to train a new generation of activists, starting their instruction as schoolchildren. Kurtz repeats a quote of Ayers where he described himself and his work:

“I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist,” Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, “Sixties Radicals,” at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers’s radicalism into practice.

Why does this matter? Is painting Obama with the Ayers brush unfair?

You can choose for yourself. I believe that this collaboration is exemplary of what matters the most, and what is reported the least in the mainstream media. Obama worked to advance Ayers’s goals, which are indefensible! Their connection is not casual and passing, as Obama has alleged; it is as far from that as can be.

Did Obama help Ayers bomb buildings? No, of course not.

Did Obama help Ayers in his later work of instilling his own brand of radical activism in Chicago children? Of course he did.

Prof. Kurtz concludes his WSJ article making this point:

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming “guilt by association.” Yet the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Once in a while, we all would probably admit that we find some in our midst on the right who does not seem to agree on the priorities in our country, our government, or this campaign. Today I ran into a sickening example of racism from what I assume is the right, and I thought it deserved stamping out here.

Have you already heard about the “Obama’s Waffles” mix that some sick folks decided to sell at the Values Voters Summit? If not, read about it here in the Los Angeles Times blog. Obama’s waffling on positions needs substantive discussion, and this base joke obstructs that by showing Sen. Obama in Middle Eastern headwear and lampooning him with rap song references.

Yesterday, I thought I had accidentally tuned in to the Jim Crowe south when I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh’s show and heard a song–a full-length song!–called “Barack the Magic Negro” (sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”) I am not sure if that was to get a laugh, or to condemn abuses of free speech…I admit I had missed his reasons for broadcasting it.

What place does race-baiting have in this campaign? Who didn’t realize that these images and words are inflammatory? Why engage in this base “humor” when Obama’s non-race-related shortcomings need so much serious discussion?

I humbly request of all my fellow readers, all who support the McCain/Palin ticket, and all those undecideds and Obama-supporters, as well…. Please! If any part of your critique of (or your support for) Sen. Obama for president is in any way related to the color of his skin, then please keep that opinion to yourself. And, by all means, do not make jokes that will at the least offend the rest of us and at the worst, drive even greater wedges between us, stoking flames of racial hatred on both sides.

In case you haven’t had a chance to hear this incredible woman’s story, which she told to an audience in Australia on Sept. 8, 2008, I strongly encourage you to spend 16 minutes to hear her via these two YouTube videos:

Gianna Jessen’s story, part 1

Gianna Jessen’s story, part 2

I know that abortion may be the last topic that voters may feel comfortable discussing, especially in the context of the upcoming elections. Thank God that, as Gianna says in her own eloquent words, she is out there “blazing through the world, offering hope.”

Not Obama-style hope. Real hope.

Hope for children, who, like she says of herself, are “hated from conception.” Hope that the inroads that have been made to defend the life of the unborn will be just the very beginning of a great trail to be blazed. Hope that our next president will stand firm in these children’s defense.

In 2002, Pres. Bush signed into law the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” that Gianna refers to in the first video. This law, thank God, ensures that these children, born amidst adversity and, yes, unwanted by their parents, will not be smothered, strangled, or tossed away like an infected organ after a transplant. This law ensures that all children born alive in this country will receive all the rights of protection and health care that any other human being in our great country is guaranteed.

Had Barack Obama been president when this arrived at his desk in the Oval Office, he most surely would have vetoed this law.

What would make me suggest such a hideous thing? Surely, I don’t believe that Sen. Obama believes in “infanticide?” That he supports the murder of children?

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