Blogging for America

McCain has to consult with his staff to find out how many homes he has, Obama has a million dollar home--the point is each of these two top presidential candidates are trying to connect with the average middle class American voter.
See Paul Krugman's column in today's NY Times to understand the impact of defining middle class:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

According to the US Census Bureau the median income is $48,200* and only 68.1% owned their own homes ** (most probably with some financial institution). As to second home ownership the numbers fall sharply to between 6 and 12.1 per cent own second homes (Census bureau, and Kiplingers' Report).

Mike Hein, the current Ulster county(NY) administrator (and Democratic candidate for County Executive***) recently called people with household incomes of 50-60,000 dollars the working poor when it comes to looking at home heating costs for this winter (NYSERDA July's home heating oil average for NYS at $4.685, which means that heating costs could average over $4000 this winter).














*http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/010583.html
**http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/annual07/ann07t12.html
***http://heinforexec.com/

Labels: homeownership, presidential candidates

Saturday's "Forum on Faith" between Obama & McCain moderated by evangelist pastor Rick Warren is an abomination to our democracy. We are not a theocracy, there is NO state religion, in fact there is a separation of church and state.
I wish the presidential candidates would remember the Constitution, not to mention the rest of the citizenry who may not be Evangelical Christians, or even Christians!!

See:
The complete transcript of the forum:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0808/16/se.02.html

--there are video clips
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/tonights-obama-mccain-faith-forum/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/16/forum-on-faith-puts-obama_n_119362.html

Labels: religion and politics, theocracy

Its mid-summer and politics as usual--Obama toured Afghanistan, Iraq and Europe:he'd be voted Most Popular Presidential Hopeful in a Mr. World Contest; McCain is treading water furiously; non-candidate John Edwards has admitted lying about an affair and being a narcissist; W. is slouching in his seat looking bored at the Olympics--all of them are doing their best (with help from the media) to avoid anything of real import to Americans.
Not one of them is focusing on how to correct the downward spiral of the average American. The cost of living is spiralling out of control, and looking forward to the heating season is everyone's worst nightmare.

Help: We need a politician who cares about Americans!!!!