Obama Temporarily Suspends Campaign

In other elections election news, Obama has declared he will take a brief break from the campaign trail to visit his ailing 85 year old grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, in Hawaii, as her health has deteriorated "to the point where her situation is very serious." She had been in the hospital up until last week. Thursday he will suspend his campaign activities and will fly out to be with his grandmother.

Mrs. Dunham, Obama's white maternal grandmother, was referenced by Obama in a powerful speech he gave on race relations earlier this year when the Rev. Wright controversy had hit its apex. The Senator also briefly vacationed in Hawaii after he clinched the DNC Presidential nomination with his family. That was his last trip to the Islands. Obama will be off the campaign trail for both Thursday and Friday and it is presumed he will travel without his wife and their children. The extent of his grandmother's illness is not known but the situations has been quoted as "grave".

Patriots For Obama wish Senator Obama and his family the best.

The Obama Election Blog

It seems apparent that we may be facing yet another election day calamity. Eight years after the Supreme Court made its ruling, effectively handing George W. the Presidency, we may see problems with new machines in place and a record numbers of newly registered voters overwhelming poll places. Such a series of issues may convolute the entire election process and skew votes in favor of John McCain. This concern at a time when Obama is enjoying his highest "favorability" ratings seems very out of place but it is a very real problem.

The majority of US voters will be using new machines and many states have implemented new election databases intent on reducing voter fraud. These systems do not have all the bugs worked out of them and serious problems are expected by some observers. "You change systems and throw in lots of new voters and you can plan to be up the proverbial creek," says voting consultant Kimball Brace. In 2000 the major issue, many will remember, concerned the now infamous "hanging chads" in Broward County, Florida.

In addition, despite that it has been proven statistically that the more negative campaign typically loses, John McCain has played into the idea that he can win through voter intimidation and voter suppression. In an interesting twist, McCain has enlisted the help of a firm in California, Lincoln Strategy, which has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout. This, in light of the recent smear of ACORN, a ploy to link the Obama campaign yet again to some ambiguous and dubious scheme to deceive the American public, coupled with the McCain robocallers, lend further proof that the GOP plans to stop at nothing to keep control of the White House.

Thus with so many undecided voters in crucial swing states, it is entirely possible we may see a replay of 2000, with the highest court in the land once again deciding the Presidential election victor. There have been two recent additions to the Supreme Court by current President Bush which will undoubtedly lend a GOP bend to any decision. Can we trust them to get it right this time?

The McCain Automated "Robocalls"

Believe it or not, there is a new low in this year's Presidential race.

After the Wright controversy, the attempts to link Obama to terrorists, both foreign and domestic, the insults to his wife, his friends and even his patriotism, now McCain's campaign has gone high-tech. Sort of.

The McCain camp and some of his supporters have actually employed the use of very low-tech machines known as "Robocallers" to dial up people and deliver negative and sometimes very misleading automated messages. It has been reported that hundreds of thousands of such calls have been made recently, mainly because they are cheap and easy to produce. This has been suggested to be McCain's only viable response to the mind-boggling amount of media Obama has been able to put out given the record amount of money taken in from supporter's donations. Obama is heavily out spending McCain in all forms of media, however he has not taken it as far as to employ these cheap machines of ill will and discontent.

There are four primary messages, each referencing a falsehood regarding the Illinois Senator. One, the most widely played, is a sneering recount of Obama's relationship with William Ayers, an antiwar leader of the early 1970s. The caller says,

"You need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the US Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

Another message says,

“On the very day our elected leaders gathered in Washington to deal with the financial crisis, Barack Obama spent just 20 minutes with economic advisers, but hours at a celebrity Hollywood fund-raiser.”
However, these attempts to thwart Barack Obama's eventual win in the Presidential race are not new. It is ironic that McCain has chosen the robocaller route, as that was the very political tactic that many have attributed to his loss in the 2000 GOP primary, when George W. Bush effectively used the robocaller to attack McCain and his family in order to win the GOP nomination.

In an obvious effort to avoid discussing real issues facing our nation, like the Iraq War, education, health care reform, and the economy, McCain has taken his campaign into the mud by taking advantage of every opportunity to assail Obama's character. This is the strategy of the desperate candidate who knows his days are numbered and that the end is eminent.

In response to the calls, the Obama campaign on Friday added a link on its Web site to FightTheSmears.com, asking supporters to report robocalls.

Barack Obama, The New American Experiment

Barack Obama made a deeply symbolic gesture today when he spoke in St. Louis. The pioneer spirit for this historic campaign, his Manifest Destiny, is alive and strong.

Today's rally in St. Louis is just another step towards the White House for Barack Obama. His speech, in the shadow of the Gateway Arch, the point of departure for America's pioneers in the 18th century, who set out to make this country great, became the portal to the future for the United States. Today Obama made that clear.

His decision to hold a rally at the Gateway holds many meanings for many different people. Collectively, it gives a sense of rebirth, a chance for starting over, a chance for renewed hope. The symbolism, not lost on anyone who attended, is a defining moment in this year's election. Like the homesteaders of old, with Barack Obama we stake a claim on our nation's future. Now is the time for true change and true leadership.

Obama, taken back by the staggering number of attendees, could only utter the words "Wow". The 100,000 people represented the largest domestic crowd he has ever assembled. And he drew another 75,000 a few hours later in Kansas City. His best line of the day came as a defense to the ever vigil McCain camp, which criticized his tax cut proposal, when he said, "John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing, he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare'. George Bush and John McCain are out of ideas, they are out of touch, and if you stand with me in 17 days they'll be out of time."

In the coming weeks McCain will have to work exceptionally hard to have any chance of overcoming the forces of nature Senator Obama has put into motion. This historic campaign is one of the great moments in history and his eventual victory, come November 4th, will solidify our nation's future as a great one.

"Joe the Plumber", Not Your Everyday Guy

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Many are worried, especially after the last debate that our taxes may increase, our wealth will be spread around, the sky will fall and the world as we know it will end. This is the GOP strategy at its best (minus Karl Rove and the 2004 swift boat campaign that took out John Kerry).

Fear not, my friends (to steal a line from the Maverick himself), this is not the end of days. What it is, though, is an opportunity to set the record straight. First, Joe the Plumber turns out to be an unlicensed worker that will have to now (thanks to John McCain) attend certification classes to actually become a plumber and will have to pay the $1,200 in back taxes, which he owes to the state of Ohio. He is also a man thrust into an unwanted spotlight, mocked by many on Youtube.com and hounded by the McCain campaign to appear at rallies - until it became increasingly apparent that he was nothing more than another GOP opportunist. We are not saying that we relish in his undoing, despite the fact that he soared from obscurity in his attempt to catch Obama off guard and to ask him a truly disingenuous question about a business he never had any intention to assume. Now we know he was nothing more than a mere man from a segment of society that appears to be upset with the idea that one man can make a difference.

Fear not my friends, this archetype is far and few between. As we move closer to the eventual day when history is made, such pronouncements become lost in our collective past of bad campaigning. Soon the day will come when we can wake up and not see the stock market wildly swing 1,000 points. Actually, this is a time of great opportunity. Let us take advantage of the moment and "buy low". Allow me to implore my fellow American to to reinvest in America by not only buying stock in Wall Street but by voting Obama as POTUS; despite your party status, we all have a right to be prosperous.

Anxious people are difficult to be around. They do not learn well, they’re not adaptable, and they’re obsessed with the worst possible scenario. They’re not good at seeing any point of view beyond their own distress and fear, and they become experts at raining on parades. That is what John McCain, and the GOP party have been selling for eight years.

There are options. One especially, starts on November 4th.