I'm getting really, really tired of all of the drama surrounding the $250,000 per year income level that's being bandied around by McCain. The Republicans have their faithful convinced to vote against their own interests in the hopes of winning the lottery - they've been doing it for years. Most people don't make any bones about Republican policies being tilted to favor the wealthy, but they get played. They are sold a dream, a myth.

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We went down to the Liberty Memorial Saturday to see Obama speak. It was quite an experience. I've heard that 75,000 people showed up, and it looked like it. There were all sorts of people, all ages, all races. Representative Cleaver spoke and got the crowd worked up a bit. Obama went on a little late, but people were happy to wait for him.

He delivered essentially the same speech I heard on POTUS/XM earlier in the day, customized for KC, and emphasized that now is not the time to try and coast, that we (his supporters) need to work even harder to get out people to vote. He had very little to say about McCain - maybe sixty seconds to two minutes of his speech were about his opponent.

I was amazed at the mix of people - to be expected, I know - but even more impressed by the fact that everyone I encountered, even in the crowded passages to and from the street, was polite and friendly; there was a sense of community brought on by a common goal. I think it's been sorely lacking in American politics for a long, long time.

I'm pretty sure Obama isn't the second coming, or Superman, or even Bat Man, but he's become the center of a movement, driven by people disenchanted with the status quo, by his rhetorical skill and charisma, and by his plans. His "College for Service" plan is a great idea, I think, and so did the crowd - and, I think, most Americans (outside of the Republican Faithful). He says the right things about oil and alternative energy, he says the right things about health care, he says the right things about the economy.

Colin Powell's support pretty much provides a solid answer for those asking "Is Obama ready to be Commander in Chief?". It's hard to say how much that will swing the vote, but it's another nail in McCain's political coffin. No matter how you cut it, I'll bet ya five dollars that Obama is the next President of the United States. And I'm pretty happy about that.

Last night I sat on my couch and watched the antics with a slight sense of resignation, tinged from time to time with a cautious elation as McCain mugged, sighed, snorted, and twitched his way through body language that would alienate his own mother, were it directed at someone she liked. I expected McCain to belabor the same old points and support them with non-sequiturs, and he didn't disappoint.

First, though, I want to get to the sole big point McCain won in the debate. It was a well thought out, although poorly delivered line: "I'm not President Bush; If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run in 2004." If he'd delivered it calmly and directly, without that almost adolescent "nyah nyah nyah" feel, it would have been devastating; as it was, it was just a "good shot".

Oh, wait, there was one other point that probably scored points with viewers, but McCain didn't play it right again. The "Spread the wealth around" could have been a killer point, too, but McCain couldn't deliver it with the confidence that it needed. "Redistribution of wealth" is to Americans what "desire to be a king" was to the ancient Romans, and McCain missed the opportunity to hoist Obama with the petard of faux communism.

And that was the long and short of McCain's debate. For the rest of the debate he came off like an angry, petulant, interrupting gnome. He sniped at Obama with verbal jabs and barbs that were completely defused by the snarling "I'm so clever" delivery that put one in mind of the cranky, self-important teenager no one can stand. His dramatic sighs, eye-rolling, and curmudgeonly presentation alienated anyone that's not already part of the Republican Faithful.

The discussion of abortion was both telling and disgusting. Obama handled the topic gracefully, with kid gloves. McCain, on the other hand, derided the health of the mother with scare quotes and sneers, and discussed the mythical pro-abortion movement. The "Radical Pro Abortion Movement" is an article of faith (myth) with the faithful; many profoundly religious souls will tell you that there are people out there trying to figure out new and better ways to 'kill more babies'. Obama was on-message and calm:

But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, "We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby."

At this point I cannot say whether Obama or anyone on the ticket will follow through, but this is the kind of speech one hopes to hear from one who unites, while McCain's diatribes are still in the typical Washington language of division.

McCain's caught so far out in the debate that he's forced to calling out Obama's oratorial skills and eloquence as a bad thing as he tries to convince us that Obama is lying by misdirection and cleverness. The problem with that is that you must understand what the person actually said before you can critique it; this is a dangerous tactic for someone who isn't at least as eloquent as the person they're attacking. Here's what McCain said:

Well, you know, I admire so much Sen. Obama's eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words. He said, we will look at offshore drilling. Did you get that? Look at. We can offshore drill now. We've got to do it now. We will reduce the cost of a barrel of oil because we show the world that we have a supply of our own. It's doable. The technology is there and we have to drill now.

The problem is that he didn't even understand what Obama said.

And I think that we should look at offshore drilling and implement it in a way that allows us to get some additional oil. But understand, we only have three to four percent of the world's oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's oil, which means that we can't drill our way out of the problem. [emphasis mine]

Obama didn't say "Look at it" as though he meant we won't really do it. He expressed the reality of the situation; offshore drilling is a placebo for our oil addiction. Even the DOE says that offshore drilling may provide as much as 1.8% of our oil consumption by 2025, while our oil usage is increasing steadily. Even Dick Cheney knows we can't drill our way out of it, and really expensive oil is not too far down the road. Only an alternative energy solution will allow us to retain something like our 20th century oil hegemony.

Joe the Plumber was well represented. As if it matters, recent developments show that he's not officially a plumber. I'm not sure who cares beyond the humor value of the situation. McCain was trying to make a connection between Obama's "over 250k" rule and "Joe Sixpack". The problem is that if Joe does buy or build a plumbing business and it's total revenues are $250k, then the point is moot - you don't pay taxes on revenues, you pay them on profits. If he's showing $250k in profits, well, he *is* rich - or well on his way. You're talking about a business with at least half a million in revenues if he has any employees to speak of, and probably upwards of a million if he's showing $250k profits and he's not screwing his employees to death on their pay scale. Tell you what. I'll take the 3% tax hike if I get to make $250k in taxable income, no questions asked. I'm pretty sure most Americans are in the same boat I am. $250k taxable income is a long, long way from my salary, and I do all right.

But McCain kept dragging Obama back to Joe the (non)Plumber. Next was health care. McCain says "Sen. Obama wants to set up health care bureaucracies, take over the health care of America through -- as he said, his object is a single payer system." I don't remember Obama saying anything like that, frankly, and I've not seen it in his platform or that of the Democratic party, so I'm not sure where McCain pulled that one out of. He says:

Now, my old buddy, Joe, Joe the plumber, is out there. Now, Joe, Sen. Obama's plan, if you're a small business and you are able -- and your -- the guy that sells to you will not have his capital gains tax increase, which Sen. Obama wants, if you're out there, my friend, and you've got employees, and you've got kids, if you don't get -- adopt the health care plan that Sen. Obama mandates, he's going to fine you.

Now, Sen. Obama, I'd like -- still like to know what that fine is going to be, and I don't think that Joe right now wants to pay a fine when he is seeing such difficult times in America's economy.

When Obama answers that Joe's fine will be zero, McCain feigns surprise with theatrically wide eyes. Obama explains that he'll exempt small businesses from the requirement. Which he's explained before. This is obviously an attempt at a hatchet job.

The debate was 90 minutes of Barak Obama being presidential, and McCain acting like an angry, egocentric hobbit. You can read it yourself; the transcript is online in many places. Read it and decide for yourself.

So the House failed to pass the Bailout, or, as I like to call it, How the Rich Guys Got Richer While Screwing the World. I suspect it wasn't because of any particular crisis of ethics or principles; It's got more to do with the fact that the Representatives know that their constituents don't support the idea. They know that voting for it might cost them their seats.

Meanwhile the President is crowing about the urgency of the situation. We need to bail out his rich buddies or they might take their balls and go home. If we stop to think about it, it might be over already. We really, really need for the Treasury to bail out these people that made money like crazy during a period where the Capital Gains taxes were dropped to amazingly low levels. Banks that overextended their lending and took notes that were unsound are now in serious danger and MUST BE SAVED. What about the banks that didn't play? There are many that didn't get embroiled in this business, that maintained their standards and stayed away from Alt-A and most SubPrime loans. They get nothing, because they weren't greedy enough.

Some Banks will tell you that this is the Democrat's fault, for forcing them to loan money to minorities. No, really. That's what they say. The Community Reinvestment Act MADE them loan money to minorities, and to meet the ratios required, they had to make subprime loans. I've heard them say that the CRA is what created this disaster. Let's get something straight here. A "Sub-prime" loan is one that doesn't mean the high qualifications of many commercial lending institutions. For instance, a young couple with no credit history, decent jobs, but no money to put down would be a 'sub-prime loan'. They did not, however, need to pick up "Alt-A" loans to fulfill the requirements of the CRA. "Alt-A" loans, the way I read it, are the instruments like "Interest only" loans, and "No Income verification, no asset verification", and ARMs with big balloon rates after two to five years - you know, the primary culprits in the "Sub-Prime" disaster.

Other Banks will tell you that it's the Republican's fault. Deregulation, rampant free market behavior, the lowest Capital Gains tax level in years, and high quantities of available cash chasing a shrinking pool of "Prime" mortgages. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say the Bush Administration put pressure on them to increase their holdings in the minority markets, meaning they had to buy sub-prime notes. Some point to the Stimulus package of early 2008, where the Bush administration raised the maximum mortgage that the FMs could pick up to over a quarter of a million dollars - a 50% increase (or so). Some say that the influence of the FMs 'drove the market'.

Some folks say that this was inevitable from the point where the secondary market was created. Some folk's say it's God's punishment on a wicked nation, while others claim the Devil is bedeviling our God Fearing Country. Some say this is covert black-ops action against the Chinese. No shit. Some say it's just greed in action.

One can draw many conclusions about this financial 'disaster'. You can look at bunches of data, some conflicting, and say "Ah-HAH!". I've got my opinions (mostly, a perfect storm of stupidity on the part of many players), but they're just that - this confluence of events is much too complex for a simplistic explanation.

But there's one thing I can say for certain. If we allow Congress to write a $700Bn check to bail out their rich, lobbyist employing, bad-mortgage buying, money market playing cronies, then we are the suckers here.

So the candidates finally meet, face to face, to "have it out" on matters of great import. The economy and foreign policy were the big subjects, with a few minor nods to health care and taxes.

Right off the bat, I want to point out that McCain performed much better than I expected. The word "performed" is appropriate, however. His stance, in most cases, was more theatrical than relevant. I didn't appreciate his constant appeals to emotion, American Exceptionalism, and blind nationalism at all. I was also irritated by constant profound "inaccuracies" in his assertions.

Obama does shine as an orator, but he gave McCain FAR too much room to ramble. Barry is going to have to learn to be a little less gracious. Towards the end he was starting to show a little irritation, I thought, trying to interrupt McCain in the middle of the old guy's long winded rants, but it was too little, too late. McCain's constant repetition of the phrase "What Senator Obama doesn't understand..." was intentional, effective, and a performance trick.

McCain's appeal to emotion and misplaced nationalism reached its pinnacle early with his bracelet story. I'm extremely sympathetic to anyone who's fighting in this ridiculous war, and to anyone who's died or lost someone in this ridiculous war. Unfortunately, though, we as humans don't do our best thinking when we're emotional about things. And sympathy or no, it's not rational to use a mother's pain as justification for creating even more mothers/wives/husbands/fathers/children devastated by the loss of their child/spouse/parent. You fight wars if you MUST; you don't fight wars to make people feel better about them. I think this rhetorical tactic was probably somewhat effective, at least among the GOP faithful, as they operate largely on such emotions, and Obama's frustrated dismissal of the verbal tactic might have seemed to some to be callous towards that mother. That's what the piece was designed to do, and it probably worked with the people it was designed to reach.

Let's get something straight. Trivia doesn't make policy. I'm impressed that John McCain can spit out stuff like "The South Koreans are 3 inches taller than the North Koreans" - but it's irrelevant, emotional trivia. His constant declamation on military history - wrong in some cases - was a tiring exercise. For example, the Eisenhower "Two Letters" story was bullshit the way he played it. Documentation available to all says that he did write two letters, but made no mention of resignation whatsoever. If you're going to spout trivia, you have to get it right.

Knowing trivia about something is not the same thing as having a solid policy on that thing. I knew a fellow once that knew, seemingly, every battle and skirmish of the Vietnam war, with timelines and the names of commanders and the like. He could give you a great overview or detailed historical recounting of nearly every battle recorded by history - or so it seemed - and tell you the names of authors that disagreed on events, what they disagreed about, and which re-telling of events was more likely. But when you ask him what SHOULD have been done, he would launch into a diatribe about how the United States should have gotten our foreign policy from James Tiberius Kirk, and how The Captain would have handled that little brushfire.

Many people on twitter seemed to think that McCain had the edge in foreign policy and national security, but I see it as more performance. He insisted that "The Surge Worked". Now, what Obama might have chosen to do was ask McCain what the goal of the Iraqi invasion was. Because we've not succeeded in Iraq in *any* of the many goals that the Bush administration has expressed in regard to Iraq. Yes, 'The Surge' has reduced violence in the location where the troop levels have been increased. This was expected by nearly everyone - I don't think that anyone in this debate honestly believes that any foreign military can stand up man-for-man to our own, not anytime soon. Even our opponents in Iraq know that - they made themselves scarce as the troops built up. But was that really our entire goal in Iraq? Reducing violence in Baghdad? Our first goal in Iraq was WMD, remember? We never found any, though, so then it was Terrorists, and we didn't find any of those at first, so suddenly it was Iraqi Freedom. The neoconservative goal was to establish an American-style democracy in Iraq that would be beholden to the US ideologically, politically, and monetarily. I think they really believed that the citizens of Iraq would greet us with open arms, abandon their fundamentalist Islamic roots (the people, not Hussein, who was largely secular) and become a little America shining the light of freedom and The Market across the dark lands of the Middle East, igniting a conflagration of reform across the lands. When that didn't happen, they fell on their face, and we've been trying to recover ever since. And in this long war, the Surge is a tactic, Mr. McCain, not a Strategy. The dictionary says a tactic is "a plan for attaining a particular goal", whereas a strategy is " an elaborate and systematic plan of action". Increasing Troop numbers to reduce localized violence is a tactic, no matter how you read that.

So now we've installed a fundamentalist Islamic Iraqi government that hates us. Oh, they can't TELL us that, not with our troops on the ground, not yet, but they do. They're primarily Shiite. Know who else is Shiite? Iran. And the Shia in Iran and Iraq are surrounded by Sunni. Know who we're fighting, mostly, in Iraq? Sunni. Know who else is Sunni? Our good allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. McCain repeated the "IEDs from Iran" myth that was debunked some time ago - not that Iran wouldn't supply bombs; they just aren't very likely to supply them to Sunnis. So no, Mr. McCain, the Surge hasn't "worked". All it did was make it safer for our people to do photo ops in Baghdad. Obama is right - there isn't anything for us to win in Iraq. So how is that Surge succeeding again?

Furthermore, I think Obama is precisely right in saying that we should worry about Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. Afghanistan is once again dealing with the Taliban in outlying districts. Our own intelligence suggests that Bin Laden is holed up in the hills of Pakistan, but McCain NOW councils caution and deference to the Pakistani political regime. I don't, for one instant, think that Obama is planning a war against Pakistan. I think he has in mind more of a tactical strike against Al Qaeda positions within Pakistan. I think if there's any justification for this "War on Terror" at all, then there's justification for such an action, and NONE for the action we undertook in Iraq at the cost of dropping Afghanistan through the cracks.

And if you want to improve American security, you need to get us off the Middle Eastern Oil teat. As long as the Middle East holds our energy future, we're going to be embroiled there, and we will be forced to funnel money into the hands of the very people who hate us. As long as we're keeping the government of Saudi Arabia propped up with the the threat of American Force, we'll be facing the wrath of those who believe that Saudi Arabia is the Holy Land. As long as we keep giving them money, they'll use it to fight us. We need to change our energy goals here in the US, to move towards renewables and increased efficiency rather than exacerbating the problem by spending all out effort trying to reduce the price of a vanishing resource. If we really invest in American Ingenuity (instead of American Oil Drilling), we could cut off a HUGE portion of the funding of terrorists in the Middle East, as oil prices would suddenly plummet without American Dollars chasing barrels of the stuff. They would still be able to afford Color TVs and Mercedes Benz cars in Saudi Arabia, with Chinese and Russian money, but probably not so many jets and bombs - and the same applies to Iran, Syria, etc.

McCain may have looked better than I expected, but he lied more than I expected, as well. And judging by Gallup's numbers (taken from my ipod touch "Election 08" app), many Americans believed that Obama had more to say that they wanted to hear, as he's had a two point bump since last night, with McCain unchanged. We'll see how it plays out in the near term.