Debate #2 and Much More
It's been a startling week politically, the second presidential debate took place, vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was acting like pitbull let off her leash, the economy spent Monday and Tuesday in the Marianas Trench, McCain's Keating 5 scandal from 20 years ago was brought back up and of course there was some political scandal.
Debate #2
Presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain squared off in a town-hall type debate where regular Americans are allowed to ask questions of the candidates. Unfortunately, they aren't necessarily allowed to stop the candidates from ignoring the question and rambling on about their own platform.
Politico.com called the event "one of the dullest and least satisfying presidential debates in memory."
John McCain spent as much time as possible attempting to distance himself from President Bush, as one of Obama's main tactics has been to join the two Republicans together in the minds of voters. McCain's plan for the $700 billion bailout bill was to buy up mortgages directly, hoping to help homeowners rather than large corporations. He followed that up with "It's my proposal. It's not Sen. Obama's proposal. It's not President Bush's proposal."
Governor Palin
Governor Palin has been unleashed according to a number of sources, given free reign to hound Sen. Obama about his past, his policies and his politics.
Over the last week or so, Palin has been quoted as saying:
"''There's a pattern here, it's of a left-wing agenda that is packaged and prettied up to look like mainstream policies."
" ''This election is about truthfulness and judgement needed in the next president...Barack Obama does not have it."
"Our opponent (Obama), though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," she said. "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."
Democratic VP nominee Sen. Joe Biden stated she had gone too far, adding "It's just malarkey, flat malarkey."
Economic Woes (and Lows)
Between Monday the 6th and Tuesday the 7th, the stock market was down almost 1% on the Dow, and even more on the Nasdaq. Foreign markets started to hit the skids, casing American markets to collapse at the same time. The federal government unleashed a variety of tactics to combat the fall, including lowering interest rates on Wednesday, but nothing has worked so far. Some economists are claiming we aren't at the bottom yet, stating "...the recession is deepening and will last into early 2010."
Keating 5?
Sen. Obama is launching a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain in the "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain's public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.
Background: The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln. Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of $2 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings.
Palin E-mail Scandal
David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn. was arrested and charged in Knoxville,TN with intentionally accessing Palin's e-mail account without authorization.. The son of a Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker pleaded not guilty to hacking the e-mail account of the Republican vice presidential candidate.
Kernell's father is longtime state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. The lawmaker has said he had nothing to do with the hacking incident. David Kernell was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Knoxville and faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Trial is set for Dec. 16.