OBAMA Leading by double digits in polls.

Um, so was Kerry last election. Reagan didn't have a chance either.

Kerry? was not leading 15 days before election. give me a break debts and accept it.

ITS OVER.

McCain-Palin on defense in must-win red states

I just went to Real Clear Politics.

     Today Rasmussen is Obama by 4 and Gallup has Obama by 2 , and then Gallup has a second 'expanded' which has Obama by 6 somehow........lol.....

     Its actually tighter today by the most reliable sources (gallup rasmussen) than it has since the economic meltdown started. I think its because of Joe the Plumber and the Dow has appeared to find a bottom.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Obama Continues to Lead in the National Polls

The National polls are now starting to get some post-debate data. Obama has a lead in all of them, with the average being 6.3%. By Monday we should know how much the third debate changed the national picture.
- Battleground (Obama +6)
- Diageo (Obama + 8)
- Gallup (Obama +6)
- IBD (Obama +3)
- Rasmussen (Obama +4)
- Research 2000 (Obama +11)
- Zogby (Obama +6)


It's even worse for McPalin if you go look at the state by state polls and not the national polls.

You forgot to add in the 'Huffington Post' poll where Obama is up 50.

Unless its Rasmussen or Gallup you can chuck the poll out the window as being utterly corrupt.

This notion that Obama is expanding his lead today is an outright lie. The race is tightening. And unless the Dow crashes again, its going to get even tighter.

bob barr FTW!

That whole 'Joe the Plumber' thing is so stupid. I know NO plumber that personally takes home over $250k a year, the only guys that MAYBE come close are the ones doing tons of commercial/state contracts and raking in 10 mill a year in gross. If Joe the Plumber can't figure out basic math with a little thing called 'common sense', maybe he should not try running a business in the first place????? What a joke that whole thing is.

Almost as bad as when McCain says that businesses pay 35% in taxes. Yeah, in what universe? Does anyone know a small business owner that doesn't write off everything under the sun? I'd be surprised if business people and corps. paid more than 15%. Maybe that's just me, having seen enough tax returns to know.

as for the polls, the only one that matters is the one on election day. And until we get rid of the electoral college, we're still not really counting all the votes equally, which is unfair to begin with.

"This notion that Obama is expanding his lead today is an outright lie. The race is tightening. And unless the Dow crashes again, its going to get even tighter."

LMAO but if this is what is going to get you through the next few weeks until election day I won't try to dissuade you. I've been on the losing side plenty and I know it's tough to take and that one tends to grasp at straws,

Jennifer it's more like 5% than 15%.

     Jennifer. I think Joe the Plumber put a face on some middle class guy trying to realize the American dream and move ahead in the world. . Joe the plumber wants to purchase a plumbing business. Not be a plumber making 50k a year. The whole point is simply not Warren Buffett's taking a tax hike. There are all kinds of business that employs folks and those owners make over 250k a year. Not just huge corporations.

     What we forget to realize is that even for the big corporations its going to be a tax on the middle class. Corporations employ THOUSANDS of people. If you raise their taxes, they wont just 'eat it' . They will cut benefits. Cut jobs, and even outright move to a more tax friendly country .

     Furthermore, no economists I have seen thinks its a good idea to raise ANYONES taxes during a recession. I don't think its going to cost Obama the election, but if he was able to go back in time  and saw this huge economic collapse coming, he wouldn't have included a tax hike for anyone. Now hes stuck with it.

The budget deficit is getting out of hand-- we are seeing the effects in the collapse of the dollar and inflation. It's obvious enough that both candidates agree that something needs to be done to fix it. And while McCain says the last you want to do in a recession is to raise taxes, the real last thing you want to do in a recession is cut spending -- particularly with a hatchet. The unfortunate truth is that the well off are the only people with enough money that increasing their taxes will actually effect the deficit.

The dream of the Bush tax cuts was that revenue loss would be minimal because of increased economic activity. This hasn't worked out. The Obama plan restores the top two brackets to where they were under Clinton. We know that it as at least possible to have a strong economy and low deficits with those tax rates. Who knows if that will continue to be the case, but it is at least a reasonable starting point.

"What we forget to realize is that even for the big corporations its going to be a tax on the middle class. Corporations employ THOUSANDS of people. If you raise their taxes, they wont just 'eat it' . They will cut benefits. Cut jobs, and even outright move to a more tax friendly country ."- I love when people throw this out there. What should we do then? let them pay no taxes at all? Do you think they'll drop their prices, or make more money??? We work for these companies, we buy their products. It's about time they had some respect for the country and the people that make being wealthy HAPPEN. They can take their jobs and their money overseas, I won't buy their damn products. How do ya like dem apples?

     The tax cuts when we were at war were stupid to begin with. Both Obama and Mccain voted against it. However, once the damage was done, you can't then raise them back up during a crisis. You cut spending. You cut spending to external sources. I have never seen anything that suggests cutting spending creates a recession. You don't increase taxes and increase spending.

     You cut taxes and cut spending. For starters, since Iraq has stabilized, we slowly leak them out but for heavens sakes, lets not send them into Afghanistan or Pakistan. Bring them all home and simply bide our time . We need to cut military spending , foreign aid and other external programs.

      Lets hope Obama can suck hole the world community like Clinton did so we can get our Allies to put up troops and resources to contain Terrorism. I am tired of footing the entire bill to keep everyone else safe.

      Lets drill all the oil we got while meanwhile slowly get our cars off oil and move them to electric and or hydrogen and natural gas.

      I remember when I was in middle school reading about economic warfare was the new war. They had all figured out that bleeding people dry economically was far easier to crush your enemies than going to war. Well, guess what? We are LOSING . Not only are we still using the old school Vietnam way of taking over countries with troops, we are bleeding ourselves economically dry why everyone else sits backs and laughs at us.

sir allan, excellent points. At least we agree on a few things. There's hope for you yet!!! haha, just kidding ;)

Jennifer, I do know of an electrician that made over 250/yr. He just had to lay everyone off during this slump, but yes, the money was there.

"You cut spending. You cut spending to external sources. I have never seen anything that suggests cutting spending creates a recession. You don't increase taxes and increase spending.

You cut taxes and cut spending. For starters, since Iraq has stabilized, we slowly leak them "

Allan, do you know who Paul Krugman is? He just won the Noble Prize in Economics. He wrote this today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17krugman.html?hp

Now, if you have the necessary creds enable you to know more than a Noble Prize winning economist please post them. TYIA.

...which enable you...

debts- the business made that much, or the electrician made that much? And again, it can happen, but it's not the average 'Joe Six Pack' plumber that's taking home 250 g's a year. Someone has to pay for these wars (and everything else too!), we can't keep going the way we are going. Either we come out swinging with a 'we are all in this together' attitude, and make sacrifices and come together, or we continue to bow down to corporate interests and continue to watch our economy fall, and our country get passed by China and India in every facet imaginable.

I have always liked you personally Jenn. I just disagree that hiking taxes on corporations is the right thing to do. Taxes on corporations have always been simply dumped onto the consumer. Think about if you owned the business or corporation. Just like a weak dollar or high price of oil or anything else.

     If you hike any cost of doing business, all it ends up doing is having the consumer or employee eat it. I think that we should wait until the economy settles down. Then close the loopholes for companies to outsource. This is the real key.

     If I am Obama, I simply LOWER corporate tax to keep em happy. Then start closing loopholes in the tax code so they start paying more. Then make it difficult to outsource . Then disallow write offs for any outsourced labor at all. Only allow business deduction for raw materials . Nothing manufactured unless its impossible to manufacture it in the US.

      Then I start giving tax breaks for domestic expansion, but even harsher penalites for outsourcing . Then I would insist that if you are an american owner of any company, you pay US taxes on corporate profits regardless if you are also paying foreign taxes. If you dont like it, give up your American citizenship.

      After all that, I think eventually we can get back to the Clinton tax rates.

Outsourcing should be banned for 20 years. If you are going to make your money in America, keep it in America. :)

But for corporations to need any MORE incentive to keep good paying jobs here, and pay a fair wage is just crazy- they will ALWAYS choose higher profits over anything else. So while you may think lowering taxes will help- it won't in reality. Remember when Nike started outsourcing to China? Did they lower the prices of their sneakers? Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the answer would be a big, fat NO. The reason we are in this mess currently is corporate greed. We need businesses of all kinds to get real and have some ethics and values, instead they just care about themselves. It's repulsive if you think about it. here they are, blessed to be able to do and be anything they want to be, in the best country for innovation and business in the world, and all they can think about is 'oh, but I pay too much in taxes'. Mind-boggling. They should go live in Russia and see how they fair there.

"I simply LOWER corporate tax to keep em happy."

Lower??? With loopholes they pay close to the lowest corp taxes in the world.

"Then I would insist that if you are an american owner of any company, you pay US taxes on corporate profits regardless if you are also paying foreign taxes. If you dont like it, give up your American citizenship."

Most companies are public so are you going to make all the stockholders give up citizenship?

coco- are we just better informed up here in the liberal northeast??? ;)

I did a little research recently on the 'red state/blue state' tax stuff- for every dollar CT sends, we get 66 cents back. For every dollar Alabama sends??? They get a whopping 1.67 back! Yep, keep complaining about those pesky federal taxes red states! eye-opening to say the least.

hey, are you trying to say that nike is overcharging for their products after outsourcing to china?

if so then this is coming off my xmas list strait away

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

     I read this piece Coconut. Its not very convincing. Its all pro Obama and anti Mc Cain. Putting that aside and the Ny Times ridiculous liberal slant with their editorial pieces.

    George Bush doubled the federal defecit. How did that work out? Bill Clinton ran a surplus. This economist simply suggests Obama chuck money at the problem. Chucking money at the problem is a democratic platform and has more to do with idiology than it does being the bottom line.

    I will always loathe the idea of the Federal Government being a 'big daddy' . The government cannot solve all our problems. Raising taxes and increased spending is the Jimmy Carter recipe for disaster.

    All you did is stick up an opinion piece by an ULTRA LIBERAL obama supporter economist. You can go to Fox news and find a few dozen ULTRA CONSERVATIVE economists.

     Im suprised you stopped there. Why didnt you quote Huffington post or moveon.org? Perhaps Chris Matthews has an opinion too.

"coco- are we just better informed up here in the liberal northeast??? ;)"

Yes, I believe we are. And yes, blue states pay more in taxes than we get back and red states get way more than they pay in - which is why I especially can't stand to hear their constant whining.

NTETS- can you imagine if they DIDN'T manufacture in China? those sneakers would be $800!!! ;)

Sir- I think Obama is actually more fiscally conservative and forward thinking than McCain. You have to pay for what you spend- it's the way it should be. McCain talks about cutting spending, but let's be real- they aren't going to do that. Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised by Obama's policies next year :)

coco- isn't it nauseating? I mean really, the next time I hear some joe six-pack in Alaska say 'jee whiz and shucks, I don't want my money going to the federal government just so they can spend it on entitlement programs', I will laugh and kindly explain to them that they ARE the entitlement program!!! :)