Acorn 'n Company

The so called ACORN was a company that McCain brought up in the 3rd presidential election with Obama and McCain. With the original quote being “We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with Acorn [Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now], who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” So what is this “ACORN” company. Well not a lot of people knew what this was, including New York Times “Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we.” New York times describes ACORN as “... a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people”(NYT) and “is a grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization”. It was involved with Katrina relief, education reform, and gun control [in which I think gun control means the use of both hands, but you can be the judge]. But the part that was talked about in this campaign was its voter registration drive that went on this year. McCain accused ACORN of using fake names such as “mickey mouse” and already registered voters.

John McCain also said that the FBI was investigating the biggest voting fraud in American history. In which is true in that a “senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.”

So what went wrong and how much damage is there? The company claimed that some of the employees were paid to “phony names constitute no more than 1 percent of the total turned in”(NYT). In the end “Obama denied any significant ties to ACORN and mocked McCain for bringing it up.” In which he also stated that he only was involved with them for another reason, but never contributed again. McCain also came back with supposed facts that say that he funded ACORN further, along with Obama saying that it is not true.

Debates History lesson

The debating history has changes quite a bit, and even quite recently. So lets go through its history until we know it as we do today. Fist off, there were no presidential debates until 1960. Before that they only had smaller roles have debates like the important “Lincoln and Douglas” debates for senate in Illinois. In 1940, there was an invitation to Franklin D Roosevelt to a debate, but he refused, so the wait still continued. In 1948 there was a debate on the radio in Oregon between Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen. The first general election presidential debate was on September 26, 1960, between John F. Kennedy, and Vice President Richard Nixon at the studios of CBS' WBBM-TV. This debate was televised on all networks in black and white. In 1976, a second televised presidential debates series was held during the general election campaign season, which has happened onward. The 1980’s debate was also a game changer in which also helped viewers swap their vote.

“He first debate for the 1960 election drew over 66 million viewers out of a population of 179 million, making it one of the most-watched broadcasts in U.S. television history. The 1980 debates drew 80 million viewers out of a 226 million”

In 1988 to 2000, the formats have been governed in detail in secrecy by the Memoranda of Understanding (MOU). It was allowed in 2004, but then later released by both candidates. The vice presidential debates have been held since 1984, helping to the presidential campaign, but not good enough potential as the presidential campaign had. The styles of debates were not developed from the campaigns; they were practiced in the presidential debates from other various events.

Internet!

Ahh, the internet, the invention in 1969 that has evolved though different mediums like html coding to which we know it today; but through all this what effect does it have on the presidential elections. Very little? Not really, there is more to it than that!

            First off, every candidate that is in the campaign for president has their own website. Both Barack Obama and John McCain! Obama has BarackObama.com, and McCain has JohnMcCain.com. When you go to any site, it will automatically relocate you to the donation page where it will ask you for your name, number, and stuff and the donation amount. This is their little method to remind followers to keep helping them throughout their campaign. This way we actually have presidential candidates that are able to travel around the US with parties and debates too. Having a campaign is not a free-paid trip from the government. Also on their website, they give their followers their views and what they will try to accomplish in their role as president.

            That is just the beginning. With every debate that goes on, there are always people that want to watch it but either can’t watch it at that time, or want to re-watch it. So, sites like www.youTube.com (a video posting cite) where other users post the video so other people can watch along with other events that may be going on, including records that may not have been seen on TV, like unofficial interviews and mess-ups. Along with videos there are transcripts of the debates at http://www.debates.org/.

            But that’s not all! If you noticed after the debates, the news covered the debate and released debriefings of the debate. Those debriefings, as well as other videos are posted on their website where other people can see, with an advertisement at the beginning of every video paying for this free tool. Also, if you listen to the debriefings after the debate, they mention that there are polls on their website in which people like you can vote on. These polls are recorded and released for another debriefing for another story.

            Along with that, there are still more! There are actually a lot more. But this is the last one that I will talk about. Along with all the above that there are. There are public editable domains in which can shape the way we look at the candidates. The websites are such like “Blogspot/Blogger”, “Wikipedia”, “My Space”, and others like that give the more everyday person prospective into it; which may as well be not as accurate as the news articles, but may be easier to understand for some people.

            Through all this technology, it seems as though new improvements are coming out each election that are helping Americans (as well as some other people as well) keep along with the presidential campaigns. If this is good or not, that up to you.

Economy drop? Is that really news anymore?

Across the headlines for today reads:

“Monthly job losses cut across 41 states.

More than 80% of states reported jobs disappearing in September, with Michigan suffering the highest losses, according to a government report.”

This dreaded quote is the reminder that to all Americans that the stock market crash is not going to go in and out fast. This headline from CNN shows all the readers how close and personal this really gets to the American society and how we operate as we do today. In class when it started, the outcome of this dramatic drop was unexpected and scary. This has never happened in the history of America, and was not going to pass with just a brush.

Through this article it shows the many facts of the downfall of the job losses. This is currently the ninth month streak of declining jobs, not good for anyone that has one or wants to get one. In the article they bring about different statistics that are currently going on, such as the statistics of the states affected by this crisis (in which was in the title). They went more in depth with that in which they found out that the worst decline in jobs is in Michigan. “Michigan lost 28,300 jobs in September and has lost 77,900 jobs in the past year”, was the quote that I found the most interesting because of the shear numbers. Then in second place: Georgia, with “22,300”! Not much of a subject to joke about, but these numbers looks like they should belong in a video game!

So what’s important to Michigan that we need? Well, Michigan is the biggest automobile manufacturing state, yes cars, motorcycles and AV’s. In which one of the hard hit car companies is General Motors (GM). “General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) announced that it would close a metal stamping plant near Grand Rapids, Mich., by the end of next year, costing about 1,340 hourly jobs.” Which is not good on anyone’s morning, it shows the economy in America unraveling as it was wound so tight. I will be great to see when America catches the spindle to stop this along with how much it has spun out.

Licoln & Douglas Debates at Galesburg

My debate that I am researching about is the Galesburg debate at Knox colege. The Galesburg debate was about what will happen to slavery, a very popular topic at the time. Galesburg with a history of 20 years before the debate, was also a major train hub, to use new technology to make train transport easier. The debate ended getting the best outcome. Although it had a great turnout, it was a bad day to have a debate, the weather was causing quite a raucous as papers were being shuffled around and arguments going on in the crowd (as it was not a requirement for the quite to be quite during the debate at this point in time). In fact the crowd could throw in their two sense as long as they were not disrupting the debate. All this talk and I haven't even introduced the contestense. The people in this debate were Abraham Lincoln, and Douglas. This debate was very critical because this debate decided if the right of slavery would be abolished. A really big thing back then when they used slaves for a lot of every day uses. Compared to todays standards, it was like asking America to send every computer to a recycling plant because it is wasting too much energy (this was just an example, don't worry). So obviously they have two sides of the argument. Lincoln, being the man as he was, stood up for the slaves under the moral stand point. And on the other side, Douglas, believing the concept of majority rules, so if America wants to abolish it, so shall it be, otherwise keep it. Back then slaves were also considered to be more or less as property, so they did not vote. But if they did vote, I don't think any slave would vote for their selves into slavery. And they would be overpowered by the ratio of whites to blacks at the time. The storm that was going on inside with the crowd made the whole debate sound like a movie to todays standards. Surprisingly, there were few blacks in the crowd at the debate. Although Douglas' stand point was the most favorited in the south, Douglas was not all that effective in his speech. That lead to his downfall in the debate and Lincoln took the reins and took over the argument.

The changing census

For a warm-up in class, we were looking at the Demographics of the United States, who really is the “United States”. Now while I was looking trough some articles online when I found some really shocking facts. A report in August 2008 from the Census Bureau projects that by 2042 non-Hispanic whites will no longer make up the majority of the population. This projection is not shocking since this is one of the top ten immigration states for Hispanics. So what’s the big deal, they are just people. Well the make up of the Hispanic population does not want to stay; they just want economic relief from their previous country. They would much rather be in their own. That changes the game play a lot, especially on the way the presidential campaigners have to “throw the ball”. Instead of the 15% of Hispanic population that we are currently dealing with as well as Non-Hispanic whites as 68%. The Projection is going to change from 2008 with the models we have already seen and now morph into the new model that may shape the United States into a different country. The new statistics in 2050 are planned out look like 46% of Non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics as 30%. This new foresight is indeed a model, just like any foresight model, it might be wrong, changing as the world changes (as well as unknown variables). If the cards are played right and we do end up with this as our census for 2050, expect that the standards on the presidential campaign’s list will change dramatically as the majority changes.

The history of The Democratic Republicans

Left: Modern Democratic Icon; Right: Old Whig meeting poster

Through out the many years of service the Democratic party went though, they went through a lot of changes, each in which changed as a major event occurred. The changes has changed it throughout its history, splitting it up to what we know it as today. The party first started out in 1795 or 1796, it was introduced as the “Republican party”; they all voted for the “republican ticket” or for the “republican way”. In 1800, there was a revolution in the party, where the party had two candidates, Jefferson and Aaron Burr, in which each voted for equally. They had to choose one, so in return Hamilton, believing that Burr would not be a good choice for president, let Jefferson win. This decision eventually lead to a move that would result to the fall of the Federalist Party including Hamilton's death. Four years later, Hamilton died at the hands of Burr in a pistol duel.

The party was split into two parties in 1824, one in which was the “Democratic Party” as we know today. The other was the National Republicans, which evolved into the Whig party. Thomas Jefferson wrote on the state of party politics in the early 1820s:“An opinion prevails that there is no longer any distinction, that the republicans & Federalists are completely amalgamated but it is not so. The amalgamation is of name only, not of principle. All indeed call themselves by the name of Republicans, because that of Federalists was extinguished in the battle of New Orleans. But the truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this country, they rally to the point which they think next best, a consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down the rights reserved by the constitution to the states as a bulwark against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the constitution at its birth. Hence new Republicans in Congress, preaching the doctrines of the old Federalists, and the new nick-names of Ultras and Radicals. But I trust they will fail under the new, as the old name, and that the friends of the real constitution and union will prevail against consolidation, as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know myself which is most to be deprecated, a consolidation, or dissolution of the states. The horrors of both are beyond the reach of human foresight.”. Thomas Jefferson saw the new party failing to spit apart from the main party, and was not following by the parties guidelines. In which the Whig party eventually dissolved in 1856.

The party changed even further throughout history as big events happened such as wars and the great depression. I certainly thought that this was cool,especially the fact of the tie in with history between Hamilton's pistol duel, even if you may have known everything beforehand.