Military members and retirees, paid typically on the 1st and 15th of each month, are dealing with increased pricing of products and no pay raises, increasing family sizes and unscrupulous business practices. In military towns such as Killeen, Texas where the Army base Fort Hood is located, simply driving down the main streets show the extent of how this town has turned against the military not because service members are rich, but simply because they have a steady income and tend to have the same cash flow issues month after month. Cash advance shops advertising specifically towards military unable to make it from one payday to the next, pawn shops stating they’ll offer the highest price possible for those in the service and “easy loans here” signs are easy to spot in this town. Offering quick cash with extraordinary high interest rates allow these military members and retirees to feed their families but stay in debt for possibly years to come.

read more | digg story

The future isn’t written, but I will say, I am proud to be alive at this moment in history, for it is a very proud day for Americans everywhere.  While racism hasn’t been defeated, it has been dealt a large blow.

Now then, I must finally get to sleep!  Good night all… may tomorrow bring even more good tidings!

EDIT – Now that it’s official, enjoy (from Patrick Moberg):

(Click here for wallpaper size)

Pollster.com (Obama: 291 | McCain: 142 | Tie: 105)

Electoral-Vote.com (Obama: 353 | McCain: 174 | Tie: 11)

Real Clear Politics (Obama: 278 | McCain: 132 | Tie: 128)

And even Karl Rove himself (Obama: 338 | McCain: 200 | Tie: 0)

So we only have a few hours to go… who will be right (if you note, all are very similar)?!  What are your predictions?  Do you think they’re right, or do you feel that McCain still has a chance to pull off the win?

Here is some last minute information for you to help make up your minds:

Barack Obama: Democrat

John McCain: Republican

Ralph Nader: Independent

Bob Barr: Libertarian

Cynthia McKinney: Green

I look forward to seeing the results tonight!  Get out the vote!!!

As far as the election itself, it is currently assumed that with his stable 5 point lead Obama is untouchable and will be our next President, but history shows that’s not always the way it goes.  Just look at the Gallup poll of Nixon vs Humphrey:

In 1968, the race between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey narrowed over the last month of the campaign, from double-digit leads for Nixon in late September to only an 8-point lead for him among registered voters in polling conducted Oct. 17-22. By Gallup’s final pre-election survey, conducted Oct. 29-Nov. 2, Nixon held only a 1-point edge among likely voters, and ultimately won the election on Nov. 5 by less than 1 percentage point, 43.4% to 42.7%.

As you can see, Nixon just barely won, even though Humphrey was way behind until the very end.  Actually, in the past, the polls have never been that accurate, as you can see in this chart:

The polls showed higher numbers 9 times outof the past 14 elections… in fact, when polling higher, it averaged 6.59 points higher.  When polling lower, it averaged 3.2 points lower.  So, what does that all mean for Barack Obama?  It means that his supporters shouldn’t just assume that he has it made since he’s polling 5 points higher… for John McCain, it means his supporters need to get out en masse and try to win this thing.  It’s been reported that in California, a State where Obama is polled at +18, when it comes to over 210,000 early voters, he’s ahead by only 1000 votes (just +0.5), so yeah, your vote does count.

To sum this entire post up:

GO VOTE.  DON’T WAIT.  YOUR DEADLINE IS 7 DAYS AWAY.

Did the internet just cause Sarah Palin to destroy evidence? The potential Veep is in a bit of trouble for conducting state business using her personal, unarchived email address (gov.sarah@yahoo.com) instead of her official account (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). Emails from that Yahoo account are already being sought in connection with the Troopergate investigation. Now comes word that Anonymous, the fun-loving Internet trouble-makers based loosely around the message board 4Chan, gained access to another Palin email account: gov.palin@yahoo.com. It looks legit! The offending posts, screenshots, heretofore unseen family photos, and emails have all been deleted from Imageshack and 4Chan. But we have them. You want to read Sarah Palin’s email?

Many things have been done for the lulz, but this one is very big… I wonder if any far reaching effects will come from it.

Hopefully whoever the next president is, be it Barack Obama, John McCain, or even a third party candidate, they will help protect this country from any further attacks and step up the hunt to bring bin Laden to justice.

It’s hard to believe it’s been seven years since that day… if you had a child the day of the attacks, they’d be entering second grade this year.  It’s amazing how time flies and how old wounds tend to take longer to heal.  In related news, they’ve finally finished the design for the WTC Memorial entrance… I really hope that the buildings are started (and completed) sometime soon.

So, as is custom, where was I, the morning of September 11th, 2001?  I was in bed and had been woken up by Jessica when it first came on the news.  I then spent the rest of the day trying to call relatives who live within a few miles of the towers.  Luckily none were injured

Where were you?

These types of stories are usually seen in the gossip mags at the supermarket checkout line, not spouted out over CNN.  People act like these are the big stories.  “Didja hear?  Sarah Palin’s husband had a DWI back in 1984!”  So?  What are her feelings on the conflict in South Ossetia?  “The news just said that Obama’s house cost $1.65 million!”  Okay… did the news say what his plan is to help fix our runaway national debt?

Why is it that it seems most of us Americans don’t choose the leader of our country based upon their track record or what they stand for, but rather, by their feelings?  If your company allowed you to “vote” on your next company president, would you be asking hard hitting questions like “has he/she ever cheated on their spouse” or would you ask things like “would they clamp down on useless company spending?”  It’s amazing to me that the key issues seem to play little role in politics, and whenever they come up, people usually accept answers that usually make little sense (example: “I plan to cut taxes and at the same time I’m going to start all these new projects!”).

I know this isn’t a long (or in depth) post, just something I’m a little fed up with.  When I’m online or around the office, I didn’t hear discussions about Obama not wanting to fund NASA or McCain seeking to add Amendments to the Constitution.  No, I hear about Obama not wearing a lapel pin, or that it was rumored that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist.  It’s just ridiculous to me that these are the “issues” that the average person cares about.

You know, both parties and almost all candidates this year preached that they’re bringing some kind of change, but to be honest, I don’t see it anywhere.

Well, Sarah, I’m calling you a liar. And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better.

Funny quote on her having no desire for the Vice-Presidency aside, the article is direly clear. No one knew she was pregnant, not even her own staff. Quite a feat. Why the secrecy? Sarah has never given an answer, and upon further reading, no one has bothered to ask.

Checking with the Anchorage High School that Bristol Palin attended, reporters were given word that her family had taken Bristol out of school due to contracting infectious mononucleosis. The amount of time Bristol was absent shifts from five to eight months.

Bristol is pregnant in these pictures. She is not carrying belly fat, which grows outwardly wide, and does not become dome-shaped. That’s because fat is generally evenly distributed around the abdomen and a fetus is not. Bristol’s chest is sticking out, a normal body reaction when sucking in stomach muscles.

So there you have it… according to the DailyKOS, their facts, summed up, are:

1. Sarah Palin didn’t look fat in the select pictures they found.
2. Bristol Palin isn’t a skinny supermodel.
3. Sarah Palin wanted her baby to be born in AK.
4. Bristol Palin was sick and missed school.

That’s their shocking evidence.  Since the DailyKOS picked it up, websites from Neowin to SomethingAwful to Fark to Snopes to nearly 5000 blogs started talking about this “story”.  Each one spent time studing this poor 17 year old girl and talking about her belly fat.  Did the daughter ask for this?  No.  Was there ever any proof?  No.  With just a little digging, last night I was able to find both statements from Sarah Palin’s doctor and a picture of her looking pregnant:

Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, “which is not active labor,” the doctor said.

“Things were already settling down when she talked to me,” Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.

“I don’t think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back,” Baldwin-Johnson said.

So the Palins flew on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Anchorage, stopping in Seattle and checking with the doctor along the way.

“I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor,” Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn’t in labor.

Still, a Sacramento, Calif., obstetrician who is active in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said when a pregnant woman’s water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That’s true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out, said Dr. Laurie Gregg.

“To us, leaking and broken, we are talking the same thing. We are talking doctor-speak,” Gregg said.

Some airlines have policies against pregnant women onboard during the last four weeks of pregnancy, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises against flying after 36 weeks.

This was going to be Palin’s last flight anyway, her doctor said.

Alaska Airlines has no such rule and leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said.

“The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress,” Boren said.

Palin never got big with this pregnancy. She said she didn’t try to hide it but didn’t feel a need to alert the airline, either.

Did the DailyKOS just wish this to be true so much they just selected “evidence” to support their theory?  Apparently today they had to bow to the stupidity of the rumor they started so they released this entry:

OK, there is a visibly-pregnant Sarah Palin talking with a CBS 11 (Dallas Juneau) reporter at the Governor’s meeting in Texas end of the Alaska legislative session.  She clearly appears to be pregnant.

Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now.  Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight.  Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

That is all.

And the picture that proved it?

So there you have it.  All over.  So now I need to ask all the people out there that helped spread this story:

Are you proud of yourselves?

A simple question, I know, but the fact is with no evidence to back anything up, people all over the internet were willing to spread false rumors not only about Gov. Palin, but her daughter who did absolutely nothing wrong.  Why don’t you all put yourself in her shoes?  Could you imagine being a 17 year old girl who isn’t as skinny as everyone else?  Now imagine there are giant blown up images of your stomach circulating the internet with people saying your little brother is your child.  I bet that does wonders for someone’s self-esteem.

I think that children of candidates should be off-limits to stuff like this.  They didn’t ask for their family to be in the spotlight, and I’m sure it’s hard enough as it is for them.  I just hope everyone who spread this rumor takes a long look in the mirror and asks themselves what made them not go looking themselves and to instead blindly follow the “facts” presented by one blog.  I used to think this type of thing was what the “right-wing” did to the poor “liberals,” but now I see that both sides can give as well as take.  How sad.

So I guess the bumper stickers were a pretty big hoax (as it was picked up by Drudge and Time), but now we have an answer. Biden is an odd choice… for a man preaching change, playing up McCain’s age, and needing to snag swing states, picking someone who’s been in Washington for 30 years, is 65 years old, and isn’t from a swing state is a very weird thing. to do. Some more info:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Barack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice presidential running mate early Saturday, balancing his ticket with a seasoned congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.Obama announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.”

Biden, 65, has twice sought the White House, and is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

Across more than 30 years in the Senate, he has served at various times not only as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but also as head of the Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over anti-crime legislation, Supreme Court nominees and Constitutional issues.

In selecting Biden, Obama passed over several other potential running mates, none more prominent than former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, his tenacious rival in dozens of primaries and caucuses.

Obama’s campaign arranged a debut for the newly minted ticket on Saturday outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

Obama’s decision leaked to the media several hours before his aides planned to send a text message announcing the running mate, negating a promise that people who turned over their phone numbers would be the first to know who Obama had chosen. The campaign scrambled to send the text message after the leak, sending phones buzzing at the inconvenient time of just after 3 a.m. on the East coast.

So where does this leave McCain?  Most likely he’ll be declaring his running mate soon, to make the news not focus solely on Obama (in my opinion).  So, there you have it… let’s see what skeletons they can dredge up from Biden’s past…

Indian-Americans
While speaking to a group of Indian-Americans in Delaware, Biden stated, “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” His comment was caught on C-SPAN.

“My state was a slave state”
In August of 2006, Biden was on Fox News Sunday and said “You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a northeast liberal state.”

Barack Obama
Talking about his fellow Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama he said, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, … I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Uh-oh… that was quick…