One of the talking points of the Bush campaign has been that John Kerry has “very few signature achievements” from his 19 years in the senate. Now I could be mean and say that the only “signature achievements” that Bush had from his time as Governor of Texas were taking credit for a patient’s bill of rights law that he vetoed, publicly dissing the family of lynching victim James Byrd, and the highest death penalty rate in our nation’s history….but that would be wrong.

Rather than engage in mudslinging, let me point out some of the highlights of John Kerry’s career :

While the numerical comparison of bills passed makes for an easy tit-for-tat, Congress experts agree that it’s a simplistic way of measuring relative senatorial success. “I don’t think, taken by itself, that it’s a fair way to compare,” says Yale political science professor David Mayhew. “It’s easy to get your name on something if you’re the chairman of a committee.” Besides, he says, “legislating is not the only thing that they do that makes them important.” Mayhew says there are three ways for a member of Congress to distinguish himself: as a legislator, as a leader of the public discourse — think Sunday talk regulars like Jesse Helms or Joseph Biden — or as an investigator.

Kerry has made his mark as the latter. As freshman senators in 1985, Kerry and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin sent themselves on a fact-finding mission to Nicaragua to assess the dangers posed by the Sandinista government. Upon their return, Kerry began to receive tips suggesting that the Reagan administration was illegally funneling aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, the rebels struggling to overthrow the Sandinista government, and that the Contras were using supply chains established with U.S. assistance to carry on a bustling drug trade. Kerry took it upon himself to launch a probe. In the months ahead, he developed enough information to persuade more senior members of the senate Foreign Relations Committee to conduct a full-scale investigation.

In a follow-up investigation, Kerry developed information that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was trafficking in drugs and sending money out of the country to the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, or BCCI. Kerry launched another investigation and developed information leading to criminal indictments and the collapse of BCCI in 1991.

A year later, Kerry and Sen. John McCain led a senate select committee assigned to investigate whether American prisoners of war were still being held in Vietnam. After an exhaustive investigation, they reported finding no evidence that any American was still being held. Based on that finding, the two Vietnam veterans, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, worked together in an effort that would ultimately lead President Clinton to normalize relations with Vietnam in 1995.

In the American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias expands on those points a bit more :

Which is not to say that Kerry’s been doing nothing all this time. Many of those thousands of votes were important. And Kerry’s made some tough — and correct — calls on controversial issues like the Graham-Rudman deficit reduction bill, the 1993 budget deal, and the 1996 welfare reform act, all of which were controversial within his party and often unpopular in his home state.

Kerry was one of a very small number of senators with the guts to vote against the appalling Defense of Marriage Act; did some solid work on investigative committees in the 1980s; expanded the writ of the previously piddling Fisheries Subcommittee he briefly chaired in 2001-02; and really was a key player in normalizing relations with Vietnam, something that doesn’t take up a lot of mind space here at home but has contributed immensely to improved living standards in Southeast Asia.
. . .
Kerry didn’t do much as a senator besides read bills other people wrote and decide how to vote on them. The president, meanwhile, doesn’t read the newspaper. Or his daily intelligence briefings. Or the reports of government commissions. Not even the executive summaries!

There’s even more about Kerry’s senate career at his Rapid Response Center.

In the end, the election shouldn’t be about what the candidate has accomplished in the past, but whether he’s got the brains, guts, and reasoning skills to make the right decisions in the future. Bush’s reluctance to keep informed about multiple sides of a debate, willingness to put his personal interests ahead of those of the American people, and history of making important decisions based on their political implications should, in a perfect world, be enough to disqualify him from the race entirely.

Back in high school, I had a geometry class with one of those teachers who was a spineless weenie and could never control the students in his classroom. After a few months of having his lessons overwhelmed by loud chatter, one day he snapped and started yelling at the loudest of the troublemakers. Rather than shut up and pay attention, the response by some of the students was to call him a racist. The next day, stunned by this attack, one wall of the teacher’s classroom was decorated with a huge picture of Martin Luther King Jr.

That bit of pandering is what popped into my mind when I saw the “Delegate Diversity” page on the site for the Republican National Convention :

When the Republican Party hosts its first-ever national convention in New York City next month, it will welcome the most diverse group of delegates in party history.

Under the steady and optimistic leadership of President George W. Bush, the Republican Party is celebrating a milestone achievement in our party’s connection with America’s minorities. Since the 2000 convention, there has been an estimated 70 percent increase among minority delegates.

With President George W. Bush leading the ticket, the Republican Party has experienced historic growth in minority delegate representation. This year, African-American representation is up an estimated 65 percent and Asian-American representation is up nearly 40 percent. This August, Hispanic delegates will be the largest minority group represented, adding another 15 percent to the 100 percent surge Republicans saw between 1996 and 2000.

President Bush’s policies are producing results for all Americans and minority voters are joining the ranks of Republicans across the nation working to re-elect our president. Republican minorities make up a record 17 percent of total delegates and alternates, up from 10 percent just four years ago.

Jeez, the Republicans are really bending over backwards to prove they’re not racist. They even go as far to trash the Democrats for not having as high an increase :

Percentage Increase Of Ethnically Diverse Delegates between the 2000-2004 National Conventions

Graph reflects overall percentage increases in reported convention numbers.

After looking at this graph, I immediately thought “Wow. I had no idea the Democrats were so racist.” So I decided that I should check out their “Minorities Love Us!” page. Since the GOP one is prominently featured on their homepage, I figured the Dem one would be easy to find as well. So I looked and looked, but I can’t seem to find it. (You can look for yourself here)

Nevertheless, numbers don’t lie, right? The Republicans had a much larger increase than the Democrats, so it’s clear that diversity is more important to them. Since a whopping 17 percent of the Republicans delegates are minorities, I wonder what the senate percentage is. After searching on Google, I found this :

The convulsive 1968 convention in Chicago blew the lid off the old system.
. . .
The commission, chaired initially by then-Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, recommended eliminating the winner-take-all system that worked in Humphrey’s favor, and required the nominating process – whether caucus or primary – to be more open, more inclusive, and more in tune with what voters said they wanted.

Under those changes, women, youth, blacks and other minorities were represented according to their proportion in state populations. Delegates were allocated proportionally, according to primary or caucus outcomes.
. . .
This year, nearly 40 percent of the more than 4,350 delegates are minorities, with record numbers of blacks, Asians, American Indians and Hispanics, according to the senate National Committee. About half are women.

So there’s the difference. The Republicans have 17% and the Democrats have “nearly” 40%. The Democratic party has a system that ensures that delegate demographics reflect the diversity of their states (what the GOP derides as a “quota system”). The Republican Party pats itself on the pack for improvements while still having less than half as many minority delegates. They may be proud of having the greatest improvement in their party’s history and a greater percentage improvement than the Dems from 2000-2004, but it’s all in an effort to hide the fact that, compared to the Democrats, they’ve got a lot more improvment to do.

Here’s a few questions I’d like to as those guys who are (successfully) smearing John Kerry’s war record :

1) Throughout the campaign, all of the men who were on John Kerry’s swift boat have spoken out about his bravery during Vietnam. If John Kerry is lying, does this mean all these men are also lying?

2) In order to win his Bronze Star, John Kerry turned around his swift boat and endured heavy fire to save Jim Rassmann’s life. If Kerry didn’t deserve this medal, does this mean that Jim Rassmann and George Elliott (who recommended Kerry for the medal) are liars too?

3) In the swift boat ad, Louis Letson claims “I know John Kerry is lying about his first purple heart, because I treated him for that injury.” Does this mean that J.C. Carreon, the man who signed John Kerry’s medical report for that injury, is a liar?

4) Also in the ad, George Elliott says “John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam”, but in 1996 he campaigned alongside Kerry saying “I ended up writing it up for a Silver Star, which is well deserved, and I have no regrets or second thoughts at all about that”. Does this mean Elliott is a liar too?

5) What was the reason for the men who served on Kerry’s boat, the man whose life he saved, the man who treated his injury, and the commanding officer who recommended him for the Bronze and Silver Stars to lie in the late 60′s? Why should their accounts, which couldn’t have had a partisan motivation 35 years ago, be dismissed in favor of the accounts of men who didn’t serve directly with Kerry and chose to keep their complaints to themselves until the Kerry chose to run for president?

There are a million holes in these complaints, but the rudderless media loves a good controversy. So they’ll continue to give these guys a platform to stand on in the interests of covering “both sides of an issue”. I just wish that every hack who had a politically-motivated and meritless attack on George Bush was afforded as much credibility as these liars.

(The source for all these questions is this incredible site.)

Okay, I know you’ve probably read about this on other blogs, but for the few of you who haven’t, let me give you the scoop on Rodney Alexander :

The state and national GOP are backing U.S. Rep. Rodney Alexander of Quitman, a newly minted Republican, rather than throwing their support behind longtime party member John “Jock” Scott, a former state House member who is running for Alexander’s 5th District seat, party brass said Tuesday.

“We are behind Congressman Alexander,” said Jon Bargas, executive director of the state Republican Party. Bargas said state party officials are discussing ways to approach Scott about bowing out of the race and deferring to Alexander, a Republican of five days.

“We most definitely are supporting Rep. Alexander and will do everything we can to assure his re-election to the House” as a Republican, said Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Alexander, a conservative who qualified for re-election last Wednesday as a Democrat then re-qualified as a Republican in the waning minutes of the sign-up period Friday, has already received a $10,000 check from GOP party brass, and more is on the way, Forti said.

It’s not that he switched parties, but the fact that he did it twenty minutes before the filing deadline so he wouldn’t have any competition. Alexander’s cowardly move has already alienated everyone around him. People who have donated to his campaign are demanding refunds, his entire staff quit en masse on Monday, and someone from his state is suing to get him thrown off the ballot (via Atrios, who has more here) :

A voter in Louisiana is filing a legal challenge to defective Congressman Rodney Alexander’s ballot qualification, and seeks an injunction preventing the Secretary of State from issuing ballots printed with his name. The petition, filed by a voter and based on both Louisiana statute and prior precedent, rightly argues that Alexander’s SECOND filing 20 minutes before the deadline is in effect a withdrawal of his candidacy under Louisiana law since candidates are prohibited from amending their ballot qualification in any way once it has been made. Others in Louisiana have been tossed for just this kind of behavior in the past. Look for a news releases from multiple parties soon…

The fact that Alexander would screw his constituents is mirrored by the GOP’s screwing of a longtime party member to support this turncoat. These assholes deserve each other, but the people of Louisiana deserve better.

That’s the question Bush is asking in his latest campaign ad (via Pandagon):

My most solemn duty is to lead our nation , to protect ourselves. I can’t imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th. We cannot hesitate, we cannot yield, we must do everything in our power to bring an enemy to justice before they hurt us again.

I can’t imagine what the hell he hopes to accomplish with this ad. The agony over deciding “which child to pick up first”??? I kinda doubt there was a situation on 9/11 in which a parent was standing over the bodies of two or more of his/her children, and if there was, I really doubt they were tearing themselves up about which kid to pick up first. From Bush’s vantage point, the agony isn’t about seeing your children die, but having to play favorites.

So, puzzling statement aside, Bush’s new message seems to be that 9/11 made him very sad and that we can’t let the terrorists win. This follows in the long line of controversial stands like “Freedom is good” and “Suiciders suck.” You gotta give Bush credit : he really sticks to his guns no matter how unpopular his views are.

There have been so many political documentaries coming out lately it’s hard to keep track of them all. While I’ve caught a few of them either on DVD or in theaters (“Fahrenheit 911″, “Super Size Me”, & “Outfoxed”), there are still quite a few that I hope to catch before they disappear (“The Corporation”, “The Hunting of the President”, & “The Control Room”). Among this crowd, one little documentary has been lost in the shuffle. In fact, if I hadn’t been sent a review copy (for which I am very grateful**), I wouldn’t have even known “Bush’s Brain” existed.

For those unfamiliar with the book it’s based on, “Bush’s Brain” is about the career of Karl Rove, Bush’s chief advisor and the brains behind a slew of successful campaigns. Like the book, the movie is told through the accounts of reporters, campaign workers, and former rivals who have been following his career for more than 20 years. As an indictment of Rove, the film is a pretty sloppy polemic (although most of this is by necessity), but I would still heartily recommend the film to everyone on the left as a warning sign about the dirty tricks we can expect in the weeks leading up to the November election.

The film’s biggest flaw is that it can’t conclusively pin anything on Rove. While the flood of circumstantial evidence is as overwhelming as it is damning, the justifiably angry tone of many of the film’s participants would make it very difficult to refute charges that this film is little more than a collection of political “sour grapes”. In fact, some of the most powerful arguments in the film come from Rove himself in the form of excerpts from a letter that he sent to the authors of the book. In these scenes, Rove argues against what he sees as the book’s distortions and hyperbole.

Let’s face it, Karl Rove is a political genius. He wouldn’t have gotten as far as he has if he was sloppy enough to get caught. So while the film builds a persuasive case (at least to those of us who go into the film ready to accept its conclusions), there’s nothing in this film that couldn’t be refuted by a competent spin doctor. So if the film is primarily an attack on Karl Rove, it’s a failure.

The more important story told in the film is the list of dirty tricks that seem to follow every campaign that Rove is associated with. From his early days in which he “allegedly” planted a bug in his own office a few days before the election in order to make the Democrats look like crooks, to the 2000 election in which rumors that John McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was the result of an affair he’d had with a black prostitute, clearly Rove campaigns have a dark side that follows them. Even if Rove isn’t personally responsible for attacks like these, the fact that his campaigns are an environment in which dirty tricks are deemed acceptable is enough the convict the man for me.

So with an election as important as this one coming up, I strongly recommend checking out “Bush’s Brain“. While it may not make as strong a case as “Fahrenheit 911″ (all the fat jokes in the world aren’t enough to discredit the movie), the film is a powerful reminder about just how low people will sink to win elections.

** Seriously, getting a free DVD in the mail totally kicks ass. Just because I don’t have ads on my site doesn’t mean I won’t sell out. If you want your book or movie to get a spotty review on a moderately successful blog, email me.

Here’s the opening of CNN’s NewsNight from last week :

AARON BROWN : Good evening again.
Here’s a question to start the night. If someone makes an allegation in a political campaign, a serious allegation, should we report it simply because it’s made? Is the allegation itself news?

Let’s say, for example, that someone alleges that a candidate had a drug problem at some point in his life. Should that allegation be reported if we don’t know the truth of it or can’t confirm any of it just because someone makes the charge?

We actually dealt with this four years ago with one of the candidates for president and we didn’t report it because, though we tried to find the evidence, we could not.

Was that the right call? Were we taking sides by not reporting the allegation? Should we just allow anyone to say anything, let the other side deny it and go home, call it a night?

This is the political season and some pretty nasty things are being said and will be said. Do you think we should report them all, throw in the denials and say we’ve done our job? That’s a question for you to consider tonight.

And here’s a transcript from eight and a half hours earlier on Inside Politics :

ANNOUNCER: John Kerry’s war record comes under attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is lying about his record.

ANNOUNCER: Are these charges true? And who’s paying for this commercial?

So are these charges trash that shouldn’t be reported or not? Obviously somebody at CNN can see through the bullshit here. To be fair, Inside Politics had people on both sides debating the issue, but do dirty tricks like these even deserve the free exposure that the news is providing?

On literacy :

“I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.”
- George Bush

“I read four or five papers a day if I can.”
- John Kerry

On taxes :

“People need to be aware of this talk out of Washington, D.C. that says, oh, don’t worry, we’re just going to tax the rich. That’s not the way it works in the tax code. The big rich dodge taxes, anyway.”
- George Bush (via Kos)

“This President wants to shift the tax burden from wealth onto work-cutting or eliminating dividends taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes for even the wealthiest estates. In his America, a public school teacher pays a higher tax rate on their work than a millionaire stockbroker pays on their unearned wealth. This is wrong. It is wrong for our values. It is also wrong for our economy.”
- John Edwards

While I was watching the Woodward and Bernstein interview on Larry King last night, this part really stuck out to me….

KING: We’re seeing a scene where you meet with Deep Throat, Robert Redford playing Carl — playing Bob Woodward. Bob, you’ve never revealed the name. You’re not going to of course reveal it tonight. You said you will reveal it when he or she dies. They must be getting up in years. Can you tell us that? Are they at an age where you might check the obits?

WOODWARD: Carl and I are getting up in years, too.

BERNSTEIN: That’s right.

WOODWARD: We will tell that story, and it’s a — it’s kind of one of the last missing pieces of the puzzle. And I think once people see who it is and exactly what happened, will understand why the super secrecy and the confidentiality, and why it was not revealed for such a long time.

So here’s a theory : Could Deep Throat be either Gerald Ford or a member of his staff? I could understand the whole secrecy in a situation like that since it would throw his entire presidency into doubt. The idea that Deep Throat was someone who was driven by disgust at Nixon’s conduct is something we take for granted, but what if he were just motivated by the desire to gain power for himself? I’m not very familiar with all the details of the Watergate scandal, so correct me if my speculation makes no damn sense.

From the greatest moment in Bush’s political career :

Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism.

“Secret even in success”?? Well…that was then, this is now.

When faced with growing questions about a controversial terror alert, the Bush Administration chose to reveal the identity of an Al Qaeda mole in order to cover their asses :

A senate senator asked the White House on Monday to explain why the name of an imprisoned al-Qaida terror suspect was disclosed to reporters even as the suspect was cooperating secretly by sending e-mails to terrorists so authorities could trace their locations….He cited press statements by authorities in Pakistan and England that the disclosure was harmful to their investigations.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday in a televised interview that Khan’s name had been disclosed to reporters in Washington “on background,” meaning that it could be published, but the information could not be attributed by name to the official who had revealed it.

The U.S. government’s disclosure on Aug. 1 of Khan’s arrest and some of the information tied to Khan came amid a furious defense by the Bush administration explaining its decision to warn one day earlier about possible attacks against U.S. financial buildings in New York, Washington and Newark, N.J.

Okay, Bush Administration. You win. You were right and I was wrong. The last terror threat was perfectly legitimate.

That being the case…what the hell were you thinking?! Having a double agent inside al Qaeda is the holy grail of intelligence gathering. To reveal this information to the media in order to calm down the public is a million times worse than yelling “Boo!” every time your poll numbers drop.

Are there many liberal celebrities who have turned their fame into a political career? I’m curious, because almost all the ones I can think of are Republicans :

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Ronald Reagan

Charlton Heston

Sen. Sonny Bono

Sen. Fred Thompson

Clint Eastwood (mayor of Caramel, CA)

Sen. Fred Grandy (“Gopher” on the Love Boat)

Needless to say, none of these guys has been treated with even a fraction of the vitriol that Barbara Streisand receives every day. With the way Hollywood is slandered, you’d think the influence of celebrities would be overwhelming, but the only left-leaning senate politicians I can think of are Jerry Springer (who was a mayor before his show) and the guy who played Cooter on “The Dukes of Hazzard”.

Remember a few years ago when everyone was ga-ga over stereograms? It seemed like lunacy to me, since I’ve never seen a hidden picture among the kaleidoscopic mess. Nevertheless, every time I stared at one and tried to follow conflicting advice like “let your eyes get blurry and focus past the picture”, some 3-D prodigy would come along and with the slightest glance say “Cool, it’s a dolphin”

That’s the feeling I have when I look at this chart. Blogs everywhere have touted this chart as definitive proof that Bush issues a terror warning every time his poll numbers dip, but I see a confusing array of spots and lines that don’t mean anything.

Since the chart doesn’t seem to make the case alone, however, the authors were kind enough to make the conclusions for us :

There are few things that are quite evident from the chart:

- Whenever his ratings dip, there’s a new terror alert.

- Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings.

- Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there’s another alert or announcement (distraction effect).

Of these conclusions, you can discount the third immediately since there’s no data about “unfavorable headlines” anywhere on the chart. The only events listed on the chart “9/11″, “Iraq War”, and “Saddam Captured” were all very favorable for Bush.

The first point is written in broad enough language that you’d think that Bush’s first reaction to negative language is to scare the bejesus out of the public. If that’s the case, why aren’t there more terror warnings between 9/2002 and 2/2003. Bush’s ratings seemed to dip quite a bit then.

The second point is even more ridiculous. We’ve taken it as a given for a while now that terror alerts always favored Bush, but parts of the chart tell another story entirely. On 3/20/2003, 12/2003, 9/2002, and 2/2002, the terror alert came in the middle of a rise in the polls. Based on the chart, those alerts either aren’t reactions to dips in the polls or aren’t responsible for the rise in the polls. Even worse for those looking for correlations, the 1/20/2003 terror alert is followed by a dip in the polls.

Making arguments about this is a dead end, especially when you use charts that don’t prove the point you’re trying to make. If the Bushies were guilty of issuing terror alerts every time their poll numbers drop, every terror alert would be preceded by a poll dip and followed by a bounce. Like many on the left, I’ve suspected this was the case for a while now, but this graph proves otherwise.

As I’ve said previously, I definitely think that the Bush Administration is guilty of manipulating the terror threat to score political points. But I’ll be the first to admit that I often can’t prove it. So considering all the reasons to distrust the Bush administration, I tend to shy away from the ones that make me look paranoid loon who doesn’t grasp the severity of the real threat that terrorists pose.

If you like the way it looks on your computer, you should see how it looks in your living room.

We’re selling these at cost and supplies are extremely limited. So if you’re interested in getting a copy, act now before we run out.

I’m shocked that so many people are surprised by these numbers (via Atrios) :

The nation’s payroll growth slowed dramatically in July with a paltry 32,000 jobs being added_ a potentially troubling sign that the rough patch the economy hit in June was no aberration.

The unemployment rate, however, dipped down a notch to 5.5 percent last month, from 5.6 percent in June, the Labor Department reported Friday. The new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001.

The payrolls figure and the unemployment rate can sometimes go in different directions because they are derived from two separate statistical surveys.

Economists, however, look more closely at the payroll figure as a better barometer of the health of the jobs market. The 32,000 net jobs added in July represented the smallest gain in hiring since December and followed a revised gain of just 78,000 in June, even less than previously reported. May’s payrolls also were revised down to show a gain of 208,000.

The unemployment rate is calculated based on a survey of households – a sort of poll – in which people are asked to state whether they have jobs or are looking for work. The seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment rate thus is the percentage of the labor force represented by those who are either listed as officially unemployed or searching for work. With a contraction in the size of the labor force, that dropped the unemployment rate by a minuscule 0.1 percentage point from June to July.

Analysts were expecting the economy to add anywhere from 215,000 to 247,000 jobs in July. They were predicting the jobless rate to hold steady at 5.6 percent.

Lemme dust off a graph I posted last month and plug in these new numbers.

The red line is the number of jobs created each month of this year. If you look at todays numbers, you see that the 32K is pretty consistent with the diminishing returns we’ve been seeing after the job boom of March and April (which some would say was artificially inflated anyways). The blue line however shows the unrevised totals along with the low-ball estimate by economists. If job growth has been slowing for the last three months, why would they expect a job spike?

Needless to say, the “we’re creating jobs” spin is now gonna go the way of “Where’s the beef?” and “No new taxes”. Despite Forbes’ warning that “a contraction in the size of the labor force…dropped the unemployment rate by a minuscule 0.1 percentage point”, the new economic mantra by the Bush Administration is gonna be “lowest unemployment since October 2001″. Brace yourselves. Personally, I don’t think a 5.5% unemployment rate is that impressive when the rate has been hovering around 5.6% all year, but I’m sure the people who catch these soundbytes on their local news don’t know that.

Barak Obama is incredibly charismatic and has the ability to seduce voters from both sides of the aisle. This can mean only one thing…..he’s the Anti-Christ! That’s the theory anyways according to this thread at Christian-Forums.com. To be fair, all of these eschatological rantings are the work of a single poster (via Waxy.org):

I fear nothing except God. Fear is the opposite of Faith, and Faith I have. It is not only his name, “blessed”, but this guy doesn’t sound human to me. People can think what they want about me, I could really give a hoot. People think that the AC is coming out of the mid-east. My personal belief is that the AC is going to rise right out of the UN, and with this guys popularity, charisma, and how he is climbing the ranks in government real fast!!!, He may be in the UN next.
Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, born in Hawaii, raised in Chicago, was a little known Illinois state senator as recently as last year.

Now he’s the states senate US senate canidate, He will win, because now he is unopposed. I am watching everyone very carefully, especially since this chip is on the horizon, which I believe is connected with the mark.
The antichrist is not going to come in with devil horns on his head, and make an announcement…Hello all. I am the expected antichrist!!! I can see how people are going to be fooled when the AC does show up. He is going to be a charismatic fellow, with all of the answers for the worlds woes. Why not start in the US, since I believe that is where he is going to rise out of?? “who referred to Obama as a man who can help heal the division in our nation”. Only God can HEAL our nations divisions!!!

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When the whites start accepting a black man over a white man, and the white man has a great political career, then that is either a miracle from God, or the part of a bigger plan. Mans bigotry will never change as long as we are on this earth!!! This white man who had a great career in politics, is SUDDENLY shamed by a scandal. I think it was part of the bigger picture, so Obama will be the shew in for the senate. By his demeanor alone, that tells me that it is a spirit of deception that this guy is operating under.

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isn’t he married…??????? according to scripture the Ac will not have regard to women……

NO WHERE does the bible say that the AC isn’t married. Not having a regard to women doesn’t mean that he isn’t married. Alot of “normal” people are married, and do not have regard for each other. Like I said, the AC is going to be a “deceiver”, and I do not believe that the devil has totally “groomed” him yet for the purpose he is going to have on this earth. Just because this man is married and has 2 kids, how much more appropriate for him to fit right in with society.
I believe that with his popularity……..and he knows it by now, that the spirit of pride is going to enter him first. That road to “I am god” can’t be to far away.

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I could care less what people think of me. I just do NOT want people to be asleep, that this could very possibly be the man of sin. I personally believe that it is, but what others believe and think is their own choice.
As far as “eagerly awaiting” him, you make it sound like I think he is Jesus. Good grief, the AC is total evilness!!!!! The people in Mexico took the chip a few weeks ago, and now a man arrives on the scene that no one has ever heard of, and suddenly most all want him as President? Don’t you find that the least bit strange? I sure do. He has like a hypnotic power over masses of people, just like I believe the AC will, or does…….!!!! I’m not going to claim anything until I watch him further, and see what else happens regarding what he does, and how many are “affected” by him. That is the logical thing to do at this point. It is not just me that feels something is not right about this guy. Other Christians feel it also.

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If he turns out to not be the antichrist, then his message is a good thing. That shows that he really cares about what he is saying. It isn’t so much what he is saying, it is that he is not getting ANY negative feed back at all. Not even from the Republicans. There is no “mudslinging” at all. That is unheard of. Also, the Jews never listen to anyone. He has such favor with the Jewish people, that my warning signals are going off. This would definately be the guy to send over to Israel, and try to get their problems worked out with the Palistinians. Gee, the affect he is having on everyone, if the Palistinans go “ga-ga” over him, he is definately the AC. If Kerry wins the election, and sends Obama to a peace accord with the Israelis/Palistinians, and all goes well, then look up, for our redemption draweth nigh.

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I just found a post on Obamas website from a Jewish girl. Barak (different spelling) means “lightening” in Hebrew. Luke 10:18 ~ And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

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I find it interesting that Barak (Hebrew spelling) means lightning, and the definition of Lucifer is morning star from the Latin, and means light-bearing. Is this just a coincidence?

Sometimes there’s a fine line between piety and mental illness.