The Presidential Lunch Date

Do you think that Romney and Obama had a productive meeting over lunch?

What is your opinion on these meetings?

Does Romney have new ideas and plans that will be beneficial to solve the issues facing the country?

Let me know your opinion on my questions or anything else you have to say about their meeting.

2016?

Well if you watched TV today all you probably heard about was who will be running in 2016!

I can't count the amount of times I have heard about 2016 today already. With the President Obama beginning his final term in office there are those in the media already spreading rumors about who will be replacing him.

We still have 4 years to go and so many issues that need to be dealt with before the next presidential election. I honestly do not care right now who is possibly going to be running for President in 2016, I want these individuals doing their current jobs and not looking to move up. When politicians focus only on advancement they tend to get less done because they are worried about how their actions will effect their chances for the White House.

Where are the stories on the Farm Bill, the Budget, Military Sequestration, and the multitude of other issues that our country is dealing with. My message to CNN and FOXNews is to focus on the huge issues our country still has to deal with between now and 2016 and not who will run for President 4 years from now!

What do you think about these stories about 2016? What issues should be getting more coverage in the media over these rumors?

Worst Ads of this election cycle!

Ads what are they good for?

I have been watching TV a lot recently to see all the attack advertisements that the campaigns have been rolling out in the last week. With Election Day on Tuesday this week has been an ad blitz by the campaigns in the battle ground states.

I have never believed that political advertisements are persuasive or actually effect the vote totals yet millions of dollars have been spent on advertising this year. The negative ads are always the worst and believed to be the most persuasive by campaigns.

I found this article from the Flackcheck.org that effectively highlights some of the worst and most controversial ads of this election cycle.

The LA Times has a good list of other ads from this year as well.

What do you think of the political ads? Do they change your mind?

Here is a picture of the spending amounts for this presidential election compared to 2008.

And the Winner is....

No Surprise, I along with my followers and a majority of the people who saw the debate on Wednesday would say that Romney won hands down. He was a little more combative than i would really care for and walked over the moderator at many points. It doesn't matter how you win just that in the end you win. He has been the talk of the media all weekend and this week.

Romney saw a bump in the polls and the shrinkage of President Obama's lead in many of the swing states as the debate effects take hold. The Election is obviously becoming much more competitive in these final 30 days. Romney is riding a new head of steam now following the win in last Wednesday's debate that will no doubt carry into the VP Debate. Romney has seen his critics on the right pull an about face and they are now some of the strongest voices defending him in the past few days.

The strong comeback kid theme seems to be building around Romney and his campaign. They have effectively shaken off the 47% comments and begin to challenge Obama on foreign policy in a convincing manner. It seems that he campaign is beginning to shape the conversation to prepare for the next debate. With these new statements on foreign policy Romney is posturing to offer his view on what can be done to protect Israel and create a more stable middle east.

The entire next debate is completely on foreign policy and thus thus will be what we hear about in the news next week, after the VP Debate that is.

It will be interesting to see what the Obama team comes up with in the next few days to combat the failure in the debate and prep for the next one. I have heard of many excuses that were given to try to explain the failure and by far the oddest was Al Gore's state that the President was effected by the altitude in Denver. Yea I have heard of this being an issue but its not like Obama has never visited the city for a day.

All excuses aside Obama just fell flat and will need to work to prepare better and come out guns a blazing in the next debate to hold on to his lead. In the mean time lets all get geared up for the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday.

Money and its Effect on Party Affiliation

I just found a set of interesting graphs that show party affiliation and how it corresponds to income levels.

Do you feel that a persons income effects which party they belong to? Are you surprised by the breakdown?

Check out the story at NPR

Are You Registered???

Every person over the age of 18 should exercise their civic duty and vote for our leaders. Are you Registered?

No. Then you should find out where and how to register. Hurry up the deadline for registration is quickly approaching. Here in Illinois the dead line is October 9th.

Check out this website and cause for increasing the youth vote. http://www.ourtime.org/

Fact Check

As you all may remember from the news programs there are people out there who dissect political speeches the second that politicians finish talking. Most recent victim was the Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan and his speech to the GOP Convention. I watch to the speech and thought that it was a great speech that was geared to make Ryan out to be the Vice-President attack dog that many said he should be.

The question is why would you put some false information in a speech like that? How hard would it have been to find more credible attacks on President Obama's record? There are a multitude of different arguments that can be made to boost the GOP but Ryan and his speech writes chose to risk it has been the focus of a lot of media.

I feel that the media jumped on him a too hard because of some of the stuff he said in his speech. He did not  lie at any point he told his side of the story and some of it may have been a little stretched.

I want to hear your opinion on this speech and the over all message that the GOP took to their convention and how effective you think it might have been. Will the coverage of the Democrats be as hard as it was on the GOP? 

To better check the facts that are spread in this campaign I recommend Politifact.com.

Fail Friday

Last night was the final night of the Republican Convention filled with stories about how Mitt Romney and his past. This has been the part of the convention where they begin to tell his story to the american public. He is looking to reintroduce himself and show what he can do for the country. They brought in a surprise guest to draw more attention to the night as well. Clint Eastwood was the surprise and he brought with him a skit of comedy and dry wit. Some say that he truly fell flat on his face and was not what was needed on the final night. From what I saw he used comedy and his dry wit to energize the base and make fun of the President.

 If you missed it watch it on Youtube. Let me know how you think it went and if Clint should have actually been a speaker at the convention.

 Hope you find it entertaining.I welcome comments.