Well, Hillary is at it again. Earlier in this campaign in the Midwest her side had been accused of conducting push polling and she reportedly repudiated it. However there is now evidence that her hired guns are doing it again in North Carolina.

For those are not aware of the meaning of push polling it is where a pollster for a candidate will ask questions ostensibly to get a feeling of the public as to certain issues but instead the questions will actually be posed in a way to point or push a respondent toward a particular point of view.

A political activist in North Carolina by the name of David LaMotte received a phone call from a polling organization and he thought it would be fun to participate in such an endeavor. However, this is a sample of how it went from a tape recording of the call by Mr. LaMotte:

"Hillary Clinton knows that people are being squeezed by the rising costs of everyday items, especially the cost of a gallon of gas. People have been paying through the roof and at the pump, and she thinks it is time the oil companies paid their fair share. She wants to end their special tax breaks and use that money to invest in alternative energy that will create millions of new jobs. As president she will launch a full-scale investigation of the oil companies' price rigging. Upon taking office as president she will lower gas prices by taxing the excess profits of the oil companies and use that money to cut gas tax. Do you consider that a very strong, strong or weak or very weak reason to support her candidacy for president?"

Later on:

"I'm going to read you a few criticisms opponents might make about Barack Obama. For each one please tell me if they give you very major doubts, fairly major doubts, some doubts or no real doubts about supporting Barack Obama for president. At a time when we need leaders who are clear, strong and decisive, Obama has been inconsistent, saying he would remove all troops, but then indicating that he might not, and pledging to renegotiate NAFTA, but then sending signals that he would not actually do so as president. He supported George W. Bush's 2005 energy bill which payed six billion dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, nine billion dollars in subsidies to the coal industry and twelve billion dollars in subsidies to the nuclear power industry. It was called 'a piñata of perks' and 'the best energy bill corporations could buy. Would that leave you with major doubts, some doubts or no real doubts?"

Sure sounds like a non-partisan objective poll to me...right? Well the polling organization was the firm of Geoff Garin, the new head of Hillary Clinton's campaign team. She will do anything it seems to try to get this nomination no matter how much more it cheapens her. Since it worked for George Bush I guess she figures "why not?"

I found this information at the following site which also has a clickon to hear the tape yourself:

Huffington Post

Stay tuned.....

Uh oh.....Obama better look out.....the man who helped create the the 1988 "Willie Horton" attack ad is looking for money to create an attack ad on Obama.

Conservative activist Floyd G. Brown wants to show a new spot accusing Obama of being "weak" on Chicago gang killers in 2001 and suggesting he'd be the same way on terrorism, too. Brown bases his claim on Obama's vote against a bill which would have made gang killers automatically eligible for the death penalty.

The anti-gang activist, Chicago State Rep. Susana Mendoza, who sponsored the death-penalty bill said that she doesn't consider Obama weak on crime despite his opposition to her proposal and said the ad "completely mischaracterizes Senator Obama's position against ruthless criminals."

If anyone wants to check the record, they will see that while Obama is not a cheerleader for the death penalty, he has supported it for a number of crimes – including terrorism. He voted for an Illinois law in 2003 that includes the death penalty for convicted terrorists.

This information came to me courtesy of FactCheck.org which is a non-partisan corporation that seeks out only the truth while scourging liberals and conservatives alike who misrepresent the facts.

I'm waiting for the "Swiftboaters" to raise their reprehensible heads pretty soon also. I never could understand how the Kerry campaign let those jerks get away with their actions. Why didn't Kerry come out with a response which basically could have said "At least I was in Vietnam and I volunteered. Where the hell were Bush and Cheney? Why hasn't anyone come forward to claim the $100,000 offered by Larry Flynt to anyone who could prove Bush was actually in Alabama when he was supposed to be there?" To my knowledge no one ever claimed that reward. Based on his admitted actions during his youth, Bush was probably drunk and/or coked up and never went. Oh well, I digress.

Oh rats, here's another digression. I have still not gotten over my anger at Al Gore for not contesting the 2000 election based on the Republicans, the Florida State Police and Kathryn Harris' actions during that time. Michael Moore also showed Democrats in the House trying to get one Democratic Senator co-sponsor their protest against the stolen election and not one stepped forward. I hope somewhere and somehow those people will face a karmic consequence. The rest of us sure did when Bush took office.

Okay, back to present time....can the Democratic Party come back together after this campaign to beat McCain? It seems to me that the emotions are more fractured on both sides than usual and it makes me wonder if the threats from the losing side to bolt to McCain are real. I just have to ask though.....how on earth can anyone who believes in the positions espoused by Obama and Hillary (they really are not too far apart, you know) then turn around to vote for John "100 Year" McCain who also would vote to put more SC justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas on the SC bench? I mean, come on!!!! I am an Obama man who is not happy with Hillary at all and yet there is no way on this green (?) earth I could ever vote for Anger Management John. HAS EVERYONE LOST THEIR SENSES????

Stay tuned.....

I am so tired of thinking about politics and drought and my work on my novel and recession and my clients' peccadillos tonight that I thought I'd take a step back to comment on perhaps some trivial things.

I mourn the loss of the easy decision of whether to go to a movie or wait until it comes out on cable or DVD. I LOVE going to the theater to see movies on the big screen and I LOVE the smell of movie popcorn wafting in the air. Movies are so expensive now even at the senior citizen discount which my local theater gives that I only go to those movies which need a big screen to really show off their wares. Regular dramas or mysteries or comedies can wait now. It's only the big action or sci-fi flick which gets my fanny plopped down in the stadium seating now. That's a shame.

Why can't the DVD and Blu-Ray people and movie makers just sit down and think of the public once and make all of the new productions able to be played by both types of players with a minimum of fuss. I have a bunch of DVD's and I really don't want to have to re-spend my money to get outfitted again with some of my favorite flicks. Jeeeze....

My two favorite things to eat at a county fair are corndogs awash in yellow mustard and lordy lordy those big roasted turkey legs. I can taste them now. My next favorite would be roasted corn on the cob drenched in butter and lightly seasoned with some salt. Mmmmmm....

Speaking of food I am a sucker for just about any kind of warm cobbler when I see it on the menu. No matter how full I am I find myself ordering a serving. It's all I can do not to order icecream on top. Yum....

I refuse to look at a scale to judge the depth of any fatness. It's too somber. I find it much more soothing to judge myself by how my pants fit. If I'm too tight, then I know I have some work to do or food to stop eating or both.

I was looking at my wife today and once again realized how lucky I am to have her in my life. She has her faults as we all do but son of a gun her good qualities so outweigh the bad ones it's like comparing the intellect of William Buckley to George W. Bush. Sorry about the political interjection.....and I'm not even a Republican.

I LOVE sports. Baseball, football and basketball...the big three....I currently play basketball three mornings a week starting at 6:00 AM going to 7:15 AM and for a guy who is 58 I still can hold my own in the things I do well. If my man doesn't respect me and slacks off to help cover someone else, I can still hit the 20 footer. And I have my own deadly version of Kareem's skyhook. Life is good..... LOL

Take care and stay tuned.....

I want to plug a book coming out soon written by Arianna Huffington titled "Right Is Wrong". In her own words this is what it is about:

"One of the main themes of my new book, Right Is Wrong, is the role the media have played in allowing the lunatic fringe now in control of the Republican Party -- the people who believe in torture but don't believe in evolution -- to hijack our democracy. I document how the real problem comes not from Fox News or the likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly, but from a mainstream media that has so internalized the Right's framing and messages they have now become a part of its DNA........."

"Next came a double-whammy in Sunday's New York Times. First up was David Barstow's epic revelation of the unseemly complicity between the Pentagon and the mainstream media in delivering the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq via "a kind of Trojan media horse" -- Pentagon-approved, prepped, and financially- enriched "military analysts" dutifully parroting the Bush party line, with nary a raised eyebrow from the TV stations and newspapers offering these highly-decorated sock puppets their prestigious platforms.

It was -- and, indeed, continues to be -- a propagandists' field day. And while the moral bankruptcy of the "military analysts" -- many of whom now admit to promoting "facts" they knew to be untrue -- is astounding, it is more than matched by the bankrupt behavior of the media mavens who enabled the Pentagon disinformation campaign. Barstow paints a picture of TV and newspaper execs turning a blind eye to the conflicts of interest their analysts were drowning in. And now they are going mute: many of the news organizations Barstow contacted for his story -- including CBS, Fox, and NBC -- refused to comment, while others offered up half-hearted mea culpas. "We did not ask ... the follow up questions we should have," said CNN."

A lot of us saw this going on but felt powerless. I am going to read her book with great interest.

Now to the "Fair Tax" proposal.....a wonderful idea or a boon to the rich???? Well, I think they are cooking the books to produce their economic proof. Even the Bush administration, no lovers of taxes they, said through two of its economic agencies that the 23% sales tax proposed would not produce the revenue necessary to keep our country and/or government rolling. This tax was proposed by Neal Boortz, a conservative Atlanta talk radio maven and attorney and John Linder, a Republican Congressman from Georgia.

Let's hear what Allen Buckley, the Libertarian Party's candidate for the U.S. Senate from Georgia has to say: "John Linder said that the Fair Tax includes a 23 percent 'revenue neutral' rate. that assertion is a lie. After two government studies showed the revenue neutral rate to be roughly double the 23 percent tax-inclusive rate (29.9 percent in common terms - a $1 sale would produce a tax of 30 cents), Fair Tax advocates paid a group of professors from Boston University to prove that their rate works. Those professors produced a study showing that 23.82 percent (31.27 percent in common terms) works.

The professors' study had the following assumptions that, when corrected, make the revenue-neutral rate in the ballpark of the government studies: 1) no Fair Tax evasion; 2) the federal government pays itself a Fair Tax; 3) virtually all consumption being taxed, even though business purchases are exempt from the Fair Tax; and 4) purchases by state and local governments taxed, even though such taxation more likely than not would be unconstitutional. The current system is a complex mess that needs to be fixed but installing a 60 percent sales tax would not be a good idea."

Mr Buckley's letter to the paper looks like it was botched by the Letters Editor but the point remains. The FT proponents are playing around with numbers to make their point look good. They are literally guessing in their frantic efforts to reduce overall taxes for the richer folk. To try to switch to a system like that without figures which can be provably accepted by a super majority is madness and would throw us into chaos. I do not have one shred of amicability toward the IRS but this FT as proposed by its adherents does not pass muster.

Stay Tuned....

I get a free podcast every day from a private intelligance site by the designation of www.stratfor.com . They give pretty good evaluations of a both domestic and international situations. They claim to be non-partisan but if you read them often enough there might be a little right wing bias (they have occasionally credited Bush with a modicum of intelligence and capability). Pardon my attempt at some humor regarding Bush. However I don't necessarily have a probem with that as the information and opinions provide for good reads. Here is one I received today I'd like to share about the oil possibilities in our own hemisphere and the possible ramifications if we go heavily there.

The Geopolitical Diary: Blue-Skying Brazil

Brazil is a rising power politically, economically and militarily. Not only is it South America’s largest country in terms of population, economic heft, military strength and land area, its geopolitical power is expanding while most of its traditional competitors — namely Argentina and Venezuela — are contracting.

But while Brazil is almost certain in the next few years to evolve into a regional hegemon — a step up from the region’s most powerful state — it is still difficult to see Brazil playing a leading role on the world stage. South America’s geography is too fractured for any power to control the whole space, and the continent is too remote from the world’s power centers — 7,000 miles from Buenos Aires to Brussels, more than 10,000 miles from Santiago to Singapore — for any of its powers ever to be a major global player.

Unless, that is, something changes. And for a few hours on Monday, it appeared that that something had indeed changed.

Initial reports from the Brazilian government asserted that a new oil find in the Carioca offshore block contains 33 billion barrels of crude. Within a few hours, however, an announcement that seemed to have global implications fizzled. By nightfall Petroleo Brasileiro, the state-influenced (and quite competent) national oil firm, had formally denied that test drilling had even reached the depth necessary to confirm or deny the presence of oil — much less a mammoth find.

Offshore region rich in oil

Brazil only began exploring the region in question in 2007, and it already has generated probable finds of at least 13 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Many, many more discoveries not only are possible, they are likely. What has been found to date already has doubled Brazil’s reserves.

This crude will not come online cheaply or quickly, however, and much uncertainty remains in these heady early days of exploration in Brazil’s ultradeep. But with potential discoveries of this size it is worth exploring a possible future.

Brazil has recently become self-sufficient in oil production — not counting the recent (and likely future) finds. And that got our analytical team thinking.

‘What if’ exercise:

What would a world look like with a Latin American Saudi Arabia? How would things change on the global scene? At Stratfor we undertake what we term “blue sky” exercises from time to time, albeit typically in a much more compact geography and on a much shorter time line. These exercises help us think outside the tactical minutiae of day-to-day events, and prevent us from becoming too wed to our own predictions. It is not every day that something happens that can change global economic and political interactions on such a grand scale.

So rather than tightly edit our analysts’ responses to this question, here are some of their responses in the raw:

Should Brazil become a significant oil producer, global interest in Latin America will increase in proportion — not only from the United States, but also China, Russia, Europe and others. Competition for access to — and potentially control of — the resources, for security of the shipping routes, and for influence over the Brazilian government and energy companies also would rise. A resource-powerful Brazil, coupled with China’s labor, India’s tech and labor pool, and Russia’s energy and arms could also revive the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) concept, perhaps making it a more viable bloc of formerly second-tier players, and bringing some counterbalance to U.S. global hegemony.

Brazil is too far away from energy consumers like India and China to tap without great cost. The United States is a much closer consumer. In time this would lessen U.S. energy dependence on the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia — leaving that region for other energy consumers, like the aforementioned India and China. Such a shift largely would regionalize energy routes, leaving the United States looking at its own hemisphere for energy supplies, Europe to the former Soviet Union, and Asia to the Middle East (leaving Africa as a swing player). Though this may look like a more peaceable reality, it would be far from it, and could actually lead to more instability as no power would have much of an interest in stabilizing energy supplies going to other regions.

Canada’s tar sands hold anywhere from 800 billion to 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. Oil shale deposits in the U.S. Rocky Mountains are estimated at around 800 billion barrels. The success of tapping these deposits is uncertain, and technological and economic factors must play out, but in 15 to 20 years, substantial oil flows from Brazil, coupled with these potential new sources of North American oil (though more difficult to extract and expensive), and only moderate efficiency gains could guarantee almost complete energy independence for the entire Western Hemisphere.

A legitimate and proximate alternative oil source means the primary geopolitical motivation for immense U.S. investment in military operations in the Middle East begins to slowly evaporate. Though mastery of the world’s oceans remains a core geopolitical imperative for Washington, the disproportionate focus of the U.S. Navy on the Persian Gulf and the maintenance of the Strait of Hormuz becomes far less critical. Suddenly freeing the energy and capability the Pentagon would lead to a very robust and flexible — but far more evenly distributed — global U.S. naval presence. This could also be just the opening for the Navy, which in many ways has failed to re-evaluate its post-Cold War stance, to fundamentally remake itself for the 21st century.

The region with most to worry about from this development is the Middle East. From Washington’s view, getting oil from a relatively friendly and stable country to its south is far, far preferable than dealing with the chaos of the distant Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the other major Gulf powers will become distant not only from their biggest energy customer, but also from their biggest security guarantor. With a diminished U.S. interest in the Middle East, regional fault lines are more likely to erupt, spelling more instability for this already largely volatile region. Israel in particular has much to lose as it sees its regional security framework — which is built around having the United States deeply involved in the Middle East — weaken, and its alliance with the United States strained as a result.