I am an American, and as such, I believe in four basic tenets.  One: Life.  Two: Liberty. Three: The pursuit of happiness. And Four: Denver Broncos Football. 

Now, I know that with the election going on right now it may seem a bit trite to discuss the Denver Broncos.  But I remind you all that no matter what the outcome of the election next Tuesday the Broncos will play on Sunday and will still be at the top of the AFC West Division.

I am happy to note that this weekend we will have Tony Scheffler, Selvin Young, and Eddie Royal back in the mix. This is great news for Jay Cutler (the incomparable #6) as he will again have ALL his weapons back on offence and will no longer be relegated to throwing only to Brandon Marshall (the incomparable #15). 

Now we will be coming off of a loss to the Patriots – heck, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while – and a bye week. But with our record of wins after a bye week being unquestionable, I feel great about this weekend.

So remember, even if the outcome of the election stifles your joy, and your cup is less than full, the Broncos will still play, the Broncos will still win, and Mile High Magic will still be magical. 

The only argument I have heard the Obama campaign use to counter any of this is, “It’s not socialist to take money from the rich to give someone a chance.” Or, “We’re trying to build this economy from the bottom up.” So really what’s happening here is that they are disagreeing with the definition of socialism rather than our characterization of what it is that they are actually doing. Ok. Let’s define socialism then.

Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as “a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.”

That is exactly what Obama is proposing! His campaign says that they have refuted these claims that he is a socialist. Well, they have disagreed with them, but that’s not the same thing as refuting. They have offered up no adequate alternate definition for what it is they are trying to do. They have run away from the hard questions like, “How is your plan not Marxist?” – Even refusing to do future interviews with news organizations who ask those tough questions. So if to ‘disagree’ now means to ‘refute’, McCain has refuted all of Obama’s assertions about him. And the next time someone tells me that Obama will be a good president and offers no evidence to support their claim, I will say respectfully, “I disagree.”     

In the past few weeks and months I have been shocked to discover how many republicans are admitting defeat, and if not that, are bemoaning their state of being. If you listen to a lot of talk radio like I do, I am sure that you have heard the same. This phenomenon displays two things to me. First, that the republican party isn’t doing enough to make its members feel actively engaged in victory, and two, that the conservative movement is not as closely tied with the republican party as it used to be. 

Obama begins by telling us that he will make sure that only the wealthy or rich will be burdened with a tax raise. He means those that make $250 thousand per year or more. How this arbitrary number was reached, I have no idea – maybe someone should ask him. The first problem with this plan is that the top 25% of income earners in this nation already pay 86% of the tax burden for our nation, and simply because they can afford it is not a good enough reason for people to be levied a tax. In fact, it is not a reason to do anything at all; they earned that money and should keep what they have worked so hard for. 

The second problem is that he applies this to small businesses. He says that only a very small percentage of small businesses make over $250 thousand dollars a year anyway so the small business market will not feel the burden of a new tax. Well, I have news for Obama. He was confused and got it backwards. In fact, only a very small percentage of small businesses make less than $250 thousand per year. The vast majority make between half a million and $10 to $15 Million. Obama has tried to mislead us here as he has on many other issues.

The last thing I’ll mention about this plan of Obama’s is that he never states what portion of that supposed $250,000 and above he will tax. Is it gross income? Net Worth? With Inventory included? What? Because that is a game changer as well, and for him to be so vague about this is dangerous. He will definitely cause small businesses to lose money. If they lose money, then they lose jobs, and when they lose jobs, business decreases, and when that happens, the markets struggle and before you know it, recession time – and all in the guise of helping the middle classes by punishing the so-called rich with taxes.     

Today, Obama has mentioned a $3000 tax credit for businesses that create jobs. Again, Obama’s ignorance gets the best of him. How on Earth is lucrative for a business to spend – and this is just a guess – $65,000 to create a job (salary, benefits, etc.) just to get $3000 in tax credits. That’s like giving a homeless man $3 and then taking him to the most expensive restaurant in town and telling him to have a full meal and then to pick up the check. (This analogy isn’t mine; I’m borrowing it from someone else!)

The point I’m trying to make with all of this is how ignorant Obama is about economics. It’s obvious to me how little these plans of his could work. But, it seems, the ignorance abounds and millions of Americans – including the middle classes – will be fooled by his rhetoric. He seems to be simply regurgitating what his handlers have told him without understanding any of it. Proof of this can be found in his speech this week where he promised a cut to the capital gains tax on investments made in small businesses. Well, the last time I checked, there was no capital gains tax on investments in small businesses – unless, of course, he is planning to institute one, and then cut it for political expedience.

The solution is simple. Cut taxes. You cannot raise taxes during an economic slowdown and hope to spur growth.  It’s like putting water on a smoldering fir and hoping that it’ll make the flames become hotter and higher. No! Remove the burdens placed upon working Americans by the government; give the economy back to the people. The government has no business running business when it can’t even seem to run itself. It is not government’s job to make my life bountiful, it is mine, and the sooner the government relinquishes that right the sooner we can get our country back on track and on the road to growth and prosperity that only our country has ever known. The idea that is America is its people – not its government. With Obama-nomics it would be the other way around – and that way lies disaster.   

It certainly isn’t used anymore to thrash your opponent’s positions, or to disqualify someone else’s arguments. This trend was typified in last night’s second presidential debate. 

The problem can be traced to a couple of key components in the structure of the so-called Debate. First, we have the moderator. Now Tom Brokaw is a seasoned professional for whom we should have much respect, but last night’s moderation was abysmal. The grand thing about a town hall style debate is that the questions that get asked are generally off the beaten path, and they tend to engender responses in the candidates that lead to more personality and poise being displayed. When Brokaw stated that he had chosen the questions to be asked personally, it became clear that it was going to be just another policy vs. policy debate without much substantive argument either for or against one candidate or the other. And that is exactly what we got. 

It seems clear that McCain won’t attack Obama on his character and his associations. And it seems clear that Obama doesn’t have a leg to stand on to finish McCain off. He couldn’t finish Hillary off in the primary season without the Super Delegates, and he can’t finish McCain off with his “eloquent’ speech skills, and his “calm” demeanor. 

McCain needs to bring out all of the questionable character flaws in Obama; beginning with his association with a known domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, then moving on to his ties to the ACORN organization – the organization that is close to the heart of our current economic woes, and more recently at the heart of an FBI voter fraud investigation. But McCain won’t do that. He wants his campaign to be as non-partisan as possible. The problem with this is that the Democrats aren’t non-partisan. How can McCain hope to defeat an opponent who he tries so hard not to annoy or make angry? McCain’s hero Ronald Regan was always partisan. He disagreed with almost everything that the opposing party believed in, and when he told them and the American public so, he won hands down. I am mystified by McCain’s tactics here.     

In the debate last night we had a moderator who negated the possible benefits to the format, and then couldn’t keep the format together. And then we had two candidates who refused to throw actual punches and simply slapped each other with limp hands. I guess that if I had to pick a winner, I would pick McCain. He definitely had more substance in his answers than Obama did, he just didn’t take the opportunities he had to smash Obama’s arguments the way he should have. I loved the way that Obama skillfully skirted around answering many of the questions that he was asked. It really showed how once he is off the teleprompter how awful he is at speaking. He would simply divert his answer back to one of his stump speeches, and go from there, hoping all the while that we would forget that he hadn’t answered the question. McCain called him on it once, but then didn’t press the issue as he should have done.

I can’t say how much the debate changes things in the election, if at all. Only time will tell. Looking to the past, candidates who have had many points’ lead in the polls with 3 weeks to go ended up losing the election in the end – Gore, Kerry and Dukakis to name a few. I think that the margin will be much closer whatever the polls say. In any case, polls have a way of being created to make the news, rather than being taken to see what the news is or will be. 

Until next time… I’m going fishing – I just need to remember to bring De-Bate!      

That is the most important question I can think of today. I watched the Senate pass a “Rescue Bill” on Wednesday that they claimed was better than the first version when it was no different than the first version at all except that it had $150 Billion in extra pork attached to it. And if that was all that was keeping the house from passing it – which it did today – then we can only form one conclusion. The vast majority of congressmen and women have little interest in “Doing what is best for the people of this country,” and instead are more focused on getting money for their own pet projects. 

How anyone who voted ‘no’ prior to today could vote ‘yes’ now on a bill that is for all intents and purposes, the same, is mystifying. There is all sorts of audio out there where senators and congressmen are saying that they didn’t want to vote for it, but they had to because something had to be done now to fix this supposed crisis. That’s like saying, “I didn’t want to sew up this gaping wound in my chest with this rusty barbed wire, but because there isn’t any thread handy I’ll go ahead and use it.” When all it would take is time to go find some thread. 

Now, I am of the mind that government should have very little to do with this economic situation’s resolution outside of getting out of the way completely. The market will correct itself. It may not be pretty, but that is what happens in a free market. Bankruptcy happens, and gradually new business comes in to fill the gap and strength is renewed in the market. That strength is stymied by the intrusion of the government. Anyone who has a safety net will be willing to take more risk than in necessary. 

May fortune favor the foolish!

Oh… The Senate.

Well there you have it folks. If you put enough candy into the toilet even senators will reach in and take a few pieces. That’s exactly what happened here.

In an attempt to get the House to soften its opposition to the 700 Billion Dollar Bailout Bill (BOB) the senate loaded their version with all sorts of goodies and treats designed to lure the unsuspecting little congressmen and women into the suspicious white van at the park of government meddling in the market. What they’ve done is wrap a very unpopular bill in two more popular bills – one a bill about tax breaks, and the other a mental health bill (I know! That’s how I like my irony served.). This ploy is designed to get House republicans and Democrats who voted against the bill originally to vote for it now.

The problem with this tactic is that while the wrapping may look better, the insides are still as rotten as ever. No real declaration of accountability in the markets. It states that the Treasury Secretary will have the ability to keep organizations accountable. But who will keep him accountable? Was he elected? Who will be the next Secretary? And this is just the tip of the iceburg. To borrow a phrase from another writer, “The solution to a problem created by bad government is not more government.” Especially since the bad government that created the problem in the first place isn’t being retracted.

So what we have here is a pickle dipped in chocolate. You can lick all of the chocolate off the outside but you still have a sour pickle on the inside.

Let’s hope that the house doesn’t want to be patronized by the senate. Let’s hope they will rise to the challenge. If the republicans do what they did last time, and vote against it, we will see just how the so called party of unity struggles to pass a bill that they have enough votes for even without the republicans in the house. We’ll se where Obama, the great unifier is. He may not even be able to unify his own party… STILL!!!