Politics

Subscribe

Just In: Ashcroft Sending Poll Watchers to Mississippi

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ANNOUNCES FEDERAL OBSERVERS TO MONITOR GENERAL ELECTION IN STATES ACROSS THE COUNTRY (including) Jones, Kemper, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, and Winston Counties, Mississippi.

Giuliani Blames Troops

Nothing like supporting our troops. Salon reports:

Madison Mayor's Husband Arrested for Corruption

Clarion-Ledger reports:

U.S. Supreme Court

Jermal Clark - District 3

Two Democrats are vying for the position. Jermal Clark is challenging incumbent Frank Figgers Jr., who has served two terms. Clark, however, is not running a very vigorous campaign from what we can see.

Josephine Anderson - District 2

Small Business

October 28, 2004 Given our country's sluggish economy, both presidential candidates say they will help spur small business growth over the next four years. Their strategies are very different, however. President Bush, in a speech to aviation workers in Wisconsin, elaborated on his tax relief plan, which emphasizes the reduction of personal tax rates. He claims that cutting the personal tax rates has a positive effect on small businesses, because most of them are subchapter S corporations or sole proprietorships, which means they pay tax on corporate profits on their personal returns. "If 70 percent of the new jobs in America are created by small business, and by reducing all tax rates puts money into small business' pockets, it seems to make sense that people ought to be supporting the tax cuts all across America," Bush says.

Tort Reform

October 28, 2004 "Tort reform"—which, in the past few years, has primarily meant capping non-economic damages in medical- and product-liability lawsuits—has been a major political football in Mississippi over the past few years, including a huge driver in election-year fundraising and a serious component of our recent race for the governor's mansion. Early this summer, in a special session, tort-reform interests won a $500,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in all medical liability cases, along with in any general business liability case. The Bush administration believes that tort reform should happen at the federal level, and it has introduced a federal cap of $250,000 of non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. But it hasn't passed Congress. Instead, tort-reform supporters have focused on individual states, where they've had success placing caps in more than 23 states in the past 15 years.

Gay Marriage

October 28, 2004 With countries such as Spain and many others making gay marriage legal, is it time that America takes the same step? That question has made gay marriage and civil unions the hot-button wedge issue of the 2004 election. Some analysts say Sen. John Kerry's reference in the last debate to Mary Cheney—the vice president's openly lesbian daughter—hurt him in the polls. Kerry's exact words were: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as. If you talk to anybody, it's not choice. I've met people who struggled with this for years, people in a marriage and they struggled with it. I've met wives supportive of their husbands or vice versa when they finally broke out and allowed themselves to live who they were, who they felt God had made them. We have to respect that." Kerry proponents, and many homosexuals, point out that the only way one can view his answer as bad or offensive is if the person finds homosexuality to be bad or offensive.

The Economy and Taxation

October 28, 2004 "It's the Economy, Stupid," is the famous line posted on the Clinton campaign's war room wall during the 1992 campaign. The conventional wisdom is that in most election years, people vote with their pocketbooks—if the economy has been good under an incumbent, he'll often be re-elected; if it's been bad, then the incumbent faces an uphill battle. The situation faced by the Bush administration has been anything but typical. There has indeed been a recession, and there's been wartime spending. The economy was declared to have been in recovery as early as 2001 by many academics, although there was fighting over that until mid-2003. In the past year, about 1.7 million private -sector jobs have been created; while this is good news, job growth seems to have slowed in the summer of 2004. Economists say about 1.6 million jobs must be created per year to keep up with population growth, meaning unemployment levels remain flat or, when adjusted for "discouraged" workers, actually continue to rise somewhat. The Bush administration will face the election with a net job loss—the first administration to do so since the Hoover administration in 1933.

Eminem's October Surprise

His new video.

Bush breaks with GOP on same-sex unions

Washington Times reports:

ABC Poll: Voters say U.S. on ‘Wrong Track'; Kerry Ahead

ABC News is reporting: "Skepticism about the nation's direction is boosting John Kerry's campaign for president: Fifty-five percent of likely voters say the country is on the wrong track, and their discontent is fueling Kerry to an even race against President Bush. Overall, 49 percent of likely voters now support Kerry, 48 percent Bush, 1 percent Ralph Nader. Given polling tolerances that's essentially a tie, but it is the first time since Aug. 1 that Kerry's held a numerical advantage, however slight, in ABC News polls. A weekend advance did it: Saturday and Sunday were two of Kerry's three best individual days since this daily tracking poll began Oct. 1. Today's results are based on Thursday-Sunday interviews. Discontent is the necessary element in removing an incumbent from office, and Kerry clearly has harnessed much of it: Among likely voters who say the country's on the wrong track, 84 percent support him."

Daily Newspaper Endorsements: Kerry Leads So Far

Click story for a full list, updated as more come in.

Editor & Publisher is keeping track of daily newspapers' presidential endorsements. Through today (Oct. 23): "Sen. John Kerry continues to pile up the newspaper endorsements, but in a reversal of past trends it was President Bush who nabbed the larger papers in today's update of E&P's exclusive tally. While only adding four papers to his total, Bush did win the backing of two big papers. [...] Kerry now leads 48-34 in the number of papers that back him. In our updated chart below, we find that Kerry now leads Bush in the circulation of papers backing him by almost 2-1, but just a few days ago the incumbent trailed 5-1 in that category. Kerry's papers have 8.9 million readers while Bush's clock in at 4.7 million, so far."

Factcheck.org: Would Kerry Throw Us to the Wolves?

A misleading Bush ad criticizes Kerry for proposing to cut intelligence spending — a decade ago, by 4%, when some Republicans also proposed cuts.

Blogs

Video