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you can rest assured that very very VERY little of that was given by your average citizen

The site you linked to said he received $656 million or 89% from individual contributions.

Firstly, I am not an American, so please forgive me for any mistakes that I am about to make here.

From the outside looking in, at least to myself, it appeared to be more a case of who could amass, and consequently spend, the greater amount of political donations.

I could be wrong here, and I am perfectly willing to accept that, but that is how it appeared to be to me.

Political donations, or more accurately "bribes," (because that is what they are, regardless of what your government tells you) are used during the campaign to pay for speech writers, spin doctors, and also to pay off the media so that they are cast in a favourable light.

Then once the vote has been carried out, and the winner decided, all of those people who have donated substantial amounts of money to the campaign, then start demanding their dues. After all it was they who ensured victory, therefore they should be rewarded for their assistance.

$712M (Banking on becoming President) dollars was spent on the Obama campaign, and you can rest assured that very very VERY little of that was given by your average citizen. So once again, the corporations have elected a president, and now they want something in return.

I know that democracy is "government for the people, by the people," and I believe that that is what the intention was. However in recent times it has wavered from that ideal, and we are all having our freedoms stripped by our governments on the behest of the corporations (lobbyists, etc) who financially support the campaigns of the political parties.

A link to opensecrets would have been sufficient. Most of the Media money goes to Democrats, most of the Oil money goes to Republicans.

Pointing this out is not particularly insightful; the troll mod is justified. Making Democrats out to be particularly heinous because they accept money from the RIAA is disingenuous. As far as leeches on society go, the MPAA/RIAA are not the greatest, and the issue of bribery crosses all party lines.

I think it's clear that Obama is doing the best he can to not be a criminal, excluding lobbyists from his administration for example

Obama the One, the Messiah whom we can never criticize (how absurd), has had lobbyists working for him and he took millions from lobbyists during the election, including over $7 million from TV/Movies/Music, and you know they will be expecting tougher IP laws for their bucks. Had Obama kept his pledge to take public funds as he promised McCain, there would have been a hell of a lot less lobbyist money in the campaign, and the election might have been closer. So it's fair to say that lobbyists had a significant impact on Obama getting into the White House.

So now he's Mr. Clean? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I'd prefer to hear him reject lobbyist money for the 2012 election cycle, and ban his staffers from talking to lobbyists, not the token, meaningless ban on employing them in his administration.

This whole "Obama is above criticism" meme is fucking scary in a constitutional democratic republic.

And your open admission that you would abuse your mod points to punish someone for having the temerity to do so makes me hope you never get any.

[citation needed]

How about this? He was only in the Senate for 3 of those years, yet he still managed to rank second!

Or maybe this?

Or this?

I could go on all day, but what's the point? You're just going to make up some ridiculous excuse.

"No terrorist in Guantanamo (or Afghanistan, for that matter) could ever do this much damage to the country, and yet none of those responsible will ever be executed, waterboarded, or undergo"

This is true. They should have been arrested, but instead, we hire them as new leaders of our country.

Obama received the third highest in campaign contributions.

Barney Frank should also be investigated.

McCain stayed within public financing limits. Obama exceeded them.

Not quite true. McCain and Obama both said, during the primaries before either was nominated (or the front-runner), that they would limit themselves to public financing, $85 million each, if their opponent did as well. When McCain sewed up the nomination, he pressed Obama, who had begun his inch towards the nomination. His campaign had also become a cash cow. Obama reneged. So, McCain declined the public limits, too.
MSNBC story from Feb. about this.

End result, instead of $170 million spent between the two, it was more like $1000 million ($630 million for Obama, $360 for McCain).
Source for the spending totals, they were tough to find.

Yup, point taken, and a lot of interesting reading there, some of it is a hair to the right of Occam's razor, but overall, it adds up. Who knows? maybe Soros did buy himself a president. He probably got a better deal than the Saudis did on theirs.

  With or without Quid-pro-quo, its an abuse of the system to be able to affect the outcome by throwing money at the game. Thats just my opinion, your opinion, and a possible interpretation of McCain's words and actions this election. Obama doesn't see it the same way.

Pity campaign finance reform is such a loser issue.

Obama doesn't owe any favors to companies or even to his own party.

Let's not be too hasty here: It's not like Obama didn't also receive major support from industry donors. So while we shouldn't discount that part of this victory is owed to our corporate overlords, we still, as you say, shouldn't discount that part is due to the folks in your neighborhood.

Money talks; let's hope the unprecedented small donations from individuals this time talked loudly enough.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

... is the one issue I've had with this election. Barack Obama raised over $639 million dollars, and spent over $573 million dollars throughout this election (source).

Yes, it's common for politicians to spend huge amounts of money on advertising for their Presidential elections, but in a time when the economy is going to hell and back... maybe a 30 minute TV commercial on the major TV stations in a prime-time slot was a bit... wasteful.

I'm not saying I don't like Obama - he's my favorite candidate, and I hope he's elected President, but the money he raised could be used a lot of different ways. Some of the things he used the money on really helped his campaign and was worth it, but some things were unnecessary...

The mere fact that tons of state and local level positions go to candidates who have no opposition on the ballot shows that these positions are soft targets in comparison to higher offices. Can you imagine the ballyhoo if the Democrats or Republicans decided that they didn't have a hope in hell to win the presidential election some year and just let it go? That's exactly what I mean by a soft target.

These parties are willing to throw millions and millions (soon to be on the billion dollar mark as dumb and dumber's combined totals at this point are just a million dollars shy of a billion) at a race they can't win but abandon others? That's certainly a soft target. Even the Libertarians have spent a million on Bob Barr's bid. Not a great amount in comparison but how many races could be helped where the candidate has an actual chance to win with these funds? That's where I would want my money to go.

The way American campaigns are financed it's a wonder we have any freedom at all.

John McCain asked Barack Obama to take a pledge to take public funds, which would limit private contributions. Obama agreed, then broke the pledge once he realized how much more money he could raise from lobbyists.

And guess which lobbyists really, really like Obama?

Same site, different link; check out the Heavy Hitters list of lobbyist money. 8 of 10 are very (D) oriented. The other 2 are just CYA even-handed, for now.

You want change? Just wait until the (D) party has a no-checks-and-balances majority.

> For a member of Congress to take such a bribe should be a death penalty offense.

Well Congress would be pretty frickin' empty..... But if they couldn't make a Quorum nothing could get done and I for one could live with that. :)

Seriously, I'm a Republican (and have the flamebait mods for questioning The Chosen One to prove it) and think today is a great day for Justice. Crooks need to go, regardless of party.

Now if we could just clean out the assholes who caused this current economic meltdown that started at Freddie and Fannie.... Sens Dodd (Banking Cmmt Chairman) and Obama (#2 lifetime money take in only four years), Rep Frank (Chief House cheerleader for subprime lending while fucking the guy in charge of subprime lending for close to decade while overseeing em), etc.

Or just take Open Secrets:All Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008 and work yer way down the top twenty or so.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00006424&year=2007

Estimated net worth for John McCain is about $28M.

You have a reasonable argument with one small exception. City congestion is a physical problem. Bandwidth restriction is not. A little math problem: The cost of bodacious bandwidth upgrades minus the money spent lobbying the FCC and legislators (or their equivalent in other countries) equals? Take that result and subtract the cost of bandwidth metering and limiting systems. What is the total now? Split dividend payments every quarter for the next two years and apply this to the cost of upgrades. Now what is the remaining cost? Oh, forgot, add back in the additional revenue from new customers who want to pay a few dollars more to have solid Internet service that you are now providing. What is the cost now?

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CMCSA#chart3:symbol=cmcsa;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=VZ#chart1:symbol=vz;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=TWC#chart1:symbol=twc;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=T#chart1:symbol=t;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CHTR#chart1:symbol=chtr;range=my;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=CVC#symbol=CVC;range=my

Looking at the fortunes of some of the larger USA ISP companies, they all seem to be doing about the same. That is to say that none seem to be suffering all that much compared to any other... in other words, their market share and markets are steady.

From http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/entertainment-l.html

That said, the FCC -- as part of the Comcast order (.pdf) -- sees filtering as an attainable goal. Here's what the FCC said:

"We also note that because consumers are entitled to access the lawful internet content of their choice, providers, consistent with federal policy, may block transmissions of illegal content (e.g., child pornography) or transmissions that violate copyright law. To the extent, however, that providers choose to utilize practices that are not application- or content-neutral, the risk to the open nature of the internet is particularly acute and the danger of network-management practices being used to further anti-competitive ends is strong."

-- emphasis is mine

To be certain, any large ISP's start up costs are huge. Verizon has been investing in fiber to the home (FTTH) to increase capacity for delivering IP based content. If Verizon can invest in bandwidth, why can't any other ISP?

Lets have a look at lobby expenses:
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?lname=B09&year=a

Wake up. Your obamessiah voted to keep telecom immunity. He doesn't have the balls to stand up to his telecom overlords

Here's your answer.

The rest should be self explanatory.

Obama McCain Far more of McCains money is from unknown sources and PACs. Additionally while Obama's money from Big content is enough to register (unlike McCain's)it's still only 1% of his total. In this election who is donating to you does not mean much, most of the money is coming from the people for both candidates.

As for the bills you speak of I see no such thing from McCain on http://thomas.loc.gov/. Can you please tell me what bills you are referencing?

Obama McCain Far more of McCains money is from unknown sources and PACs. Additionally while Obama's money from Big content is enough to register (unlike McCain's)it's still only 1% of his total. In this election who is donating to you does not mean much, most of the money is coming from the people for both candidates.

As for the bills you speak of I see no such thing from McCain on http://thomas.loc.gov/. Can you please tell me what bills you are referencing?

Like recession? Then you'll love Obama!

While that was an ad-hominem, and was modded as such, it should be noted that Obama would be more likely to support a Copyright Czar than McCain. Dems are owned by big media, who're the ones pushing for this. Also note that Bush turned down the idea of "Copyright Cops."

I know everybody loves Obama, and loves to hate McCain. But on some issues, Obama isn't the best choice, harsh but true.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power"-- Mussolini

OK, if we are going to quote Mussolini as a great political scientist, let's extrapolate on this a bit. Who created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the true "merger of state and corporate power" in this crisis? Democrats. Who further extended this by creating the CRA? Democrats. Who expanded its mission into accusing bankers of racism ("redlining") and extorting them to make more bad loans, or else be investigated? Democrats. Who ignored warnings and blocked efforts at reform in 2003? Who killed efforts at GOP reform of the FMs in 2005? Democrats. What party was Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who took millions in lobbying money from the financial services industry and got sweetheart loan deals a member of? Democrats. What party was the guy who was boning the assistant director of Fannie Mae while he was on the House Financial Services Committee a member of? Democrats.

Funny, I see a lot of suspects that your oh-so-insightful post left out.

But don't worry. help is on the way. Barack Obama, who also got a sweetheart loan deal, will be sure critics can't speak out against him. He will define truth, just as Orwell predicted, since the media is asleep at the switch. What party is he from?

Whoever modded parent as "insightful" are all so busy slamming Fox News that you don't even know who is responsible for all of this. But don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

They started contributing just in time.

Even if Congress passes and later overrides a veto, Cheney and/or Bush will simply starve it out of significance, if not existence. But be wary of the media industry cartels (RIAA, MPAA, BSA members-- others will likely list them up) lobbying the White House directly to get the President to appoint a copyright czar by executive order!

And who is the media industry donating the most money to?

And Slashdotters think Bush is the enemy.

Good for Bush that he is preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution, which defines the executive branch as a separate, co-equal branch. All I hear on Slashdot is how Bush tears up the Constitution, but here he is standing up to Congress just not because they are attempting to turn the FBI into copyright cops, but also to defend the presidency from becoming Congress's lapdog. This is *exactly* why there is a veto power! And all you guys can do is dog him? Let's see some intellectual dishonesty here.

Bottom line, good for Bush, and Leahy and Specter should be run out of town on a rail. If only someone in the media would challenge them on this issue, but as usual, the mainstream media is too busy rooting for Obama to take on these bought-and-paid-for crooks on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And let's not forget who is getting the most lobbying money from Big Entertainment.

McCain/Diebold - We can't lose!

Voting machines will probably favor the candidate who has raised the most money. Corporations won't want to waste their investments.

Obama has raised $454 million compared to McCain's $230 million.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php

Obama's top donors:
Goldman Sachs $691,930
University of California $611,207
Citigroup Inc $448,599
JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919
Harvard University $435,769
Google Inc $420,174
UBS AG $404,750
National Amusements Inc $389,140
Microsoft Corp $377,235
Lehman Brothers $370,524

McCain/Diebold - We can't lose!

Voting machines will probably favor the candidate who has raised the most money. Corporations won't want to waste their investments.

Obama has raised $454 million compared to McCain's $230 million.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php

Obama's top donors:
Goldman Sachs $691,930
University of California $611,207
Citigroup Inc $448,599
JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919
Harvard University $435,769
Google Inc $420,174
UBS AG $404,750
National Amusements Inc $389,140
Microsoft Corp $377,235
Lehman Brothers $370,524

What does this say about the Democratic party when the bill breezes through their hands unfettered? And the Republicans are saying no?

It says that Hollywood has paid the Democrats rather well and not so much for the Republicans. But then again, it's been that way for a very long time -- Hollywood makes no secret of favoring the Democrats and Democratic causes. Some of the largest contributors to the Democratic Party and to Democratic candidates for office include some of the biggest names in Hollywood -- Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, etc.

Obama is just another lawyer ... who ... ha[s] a ... stance of ... "hmmm, these RIAA guys, they DO pay kinda nice."

[citation needed] buddy. This truthiness crap is ridiculous. Unless you can prove the RIAA has employed Obama, that's libel. Watch yourself bub.

He didn't say the RIAA *employed* Obama...only that he got paid, which he did, *$5,161,298 from the media corporations that own the labels that are members of the RIAA (and studios, etc in the case of the MPAA).

*[citation] http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

Ninth on the list.

Also of note:

"Lawyers/lawfirms"-$24,060,136
"Education"-$10,375,038
"Securities and investment"-$9,873,356
"Business services"-$6,746,937

He seems to be beholden to many "interests" that Slashdotters love to hate.

Cheers!

Strat

TV / Movies / Music: Top Recipients

Hmm, nearly $5 million donated to Obama. Do you think the entertainment industry is donating all that money to Obama because he promised to reform the DMCA as more consumer-friendly?

Citation please.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/09/10/us/politics/10fannie.graphic.jpg . That's a graphic showing contributions from the officers of Fannie and Freddie.

And then look at this: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html. Read the comments at the bottom. Several people come up with seemingly plausible and vastly conflicting numbers, using cherry-picked data from the source: http://www.fec.gov/disclosure.shtml.

This from politico is ubiquitous: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11781.html. From July.

International Herald Tribune: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/10/america/lobby.php. Note that several top members of McCain's team were actually real-life lobbyists for Fannie Mae (they've all since found Jesus, of course).

Even after all that, I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

[...] or whatever they are called [...]

Indeed. You should read about them. It sounds like you aren't even sure about what they are.

You probably need to know this, too:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

Your credulity is being cynically taken advantage of. Either that, or you're racking up your McCain points.

I believe most of his campaigns have been financed with his own money.

Sibling could have at least provide a link. You would find (with a casual search for "R" and "D" which seems pretty effective) that the Republicans got 1.53 million, and the Democrats got 1.27 million. Hardly a glaring difference.

Sibling could have at least provide a link. You would find (with a casual search for "R" and "D" which seems pretty effective) that the Republicans got 1.53 million, and the Democrats got 1.27 million. Hardly a glaring difference.

Sibling could have at least provide a link. You would find (with a casual search for "R" and "D" which seems pretty effective) that the Republicans got 1.53 million, and the Democrats got 1.27 million. Hardly a glaring difference.

It is NO co-incidence that Microsoft is one of hte top corporate donors to the Republican party. They scratch each others backs regularly.
I am absolutely not a fan of MS, but you must know something that others do not.

It's not so much about underlying meaning, but about the prevalence of certain recurring patterns and the ways they are presented. Those are popular and therefore likely to show up more often, so this is no surprise. Surprising is from what I see, that the fear/terror/threat scenario only offers one possible solution, which the tv shows always get "right" (do what is necessary at no matter what cost, not what is right or within the law since both are stretchable at will). This raises suspicion since you'd expect a certain amount of imagination on the side of the authors and thus different outcomes, but it all seems to be variations on the same theme. Also, don't underestimate the importance of Entertainment in our societies and the potential for abuse. "Pane et circenses", anyone?

Just because I'm paranoid does not mean I'm not being followed!

Look:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00001669

Examining the top industry contributions to Biden, there is a TV/movies/music presence there, but it's less than a 20th of his top contributor. Also note that the RIAA/MPAA doesn't even rate a mention in the individual company contributors.

Basically, it looks like he formulated that opinion on IP without ... outside help.

Despite the conspiracy theories you're likely to hear about this, the reason why the DMCA sailed through Congress is the same reason it'll sail through Canada's legislative process... media companies are responsible for a nice chunk of GNP (and whatever they call it in Canada)

That's not really true.

The value of RIAA members' shipments (not sales) in 2007 was $10.37 billion.
The value of MPAA members' U.S. domestic box office and home video sales in 2007 was $37.44 billion ($40.92 per person box office + $118.39 per person home video times 235 million adults).

U.S. GDP in 2007 was $13.6 trillion, so together the RIAA and MPAA comprise 0.35% of the U.S. economy. For comparison, the MP3 player market in the U.S. for 2007 was an estimated $5.4 billion. That's just MP3 players, never mind accessories, home audio systems, headphones, car stereos, etc.

If they were a Fortune 500 companies, the MPAA's movie-related sales would come in at #62, and the RIAA's members would come in at #256. They wield so much power because they make a disproportionately high amount of campaign donations.

can be found here and here.

"College Opportunity and Affordability Act"

You gotta love the humor of conservative lobbyists. "Opportunity" to "act" to reduce the "affordability" of your "college" tuition by hiring a guy to play whack-a-mole with your P2P ports "and" write reports about it?

Umm, I suggest you look a little more deeply into the history of the bill and Hollywood in Congress.

• The Hollywood music and movie industries give more money to Democrats than Republicans by a more than 2:1 margin.
• The bill, with sec 494, was introduced and sponsored by by George Miller (D-CA) and 29 other Democrats.
• The House version (which introduced the offensive section) passed with Democratss voting 219-0 in favor, Republicans voting 135-58 in favor.
• The combined Sen/House version passed the House with Dems voting 234-0 in favor, Reps voting 146-49 in favor.
• The combined Sen/House version passed the Senate with Dems voting 45-0 in favor, Reps voting 36-8 in favor.

But since it's bad, of course it must be the product of a conservative agenda. The Democrats can do no evil, right?

Please. These are no "wild shots in the dark". If they were, they wouldn't work and wouldn't hold up in courts. As we've seen from cases in the USA and elsewhere, this is done algorithmically first by analyzing the shape of traffic to see that it is indeed p2p (by which ports it uses,etc) and then it uses a hash lookup table to identify known infringing files.

You need to pay closer to attention to the court documents that NewYorkCountryLawyer has excerpted here and on his blog. Your description of how the MAFIAA goes about suing people is FAR from accurate. For one, they do not use any traffic analysis - they just connect to bittorrent trackers like thepiratebay and/or user's own machines running limewire, etc. And two, they don't use file hashes, they just use keywords in filenames without even downloading the file themselves to check content. Yeah, I didn't believe it either until he posted some 'expert' testimony by one of the MAFIAA's 'expert' witnesses describing the process they use about a year ago.

The only reason their shenanigans have held up in court is that the relatively few people who have actually taken the gambit (the choice they offer is pay ~$2K now or they will take you to court for at least $10K and most people take the $2K fine rather than spend more than $2K on a lawyer and risk losing) have not had enough money or connections to bring in real experts to decimate the MAFIAA's piss-poor evidence collection.

If i don't, I have a mechanism to change this, which is to elect people who will change laws in ways that are amenable to me.

You must be awfully rich to be able to afford that kind of influence, the MAFIAA has contributed over 26 million dollars to politicians so far this year.

Keep in mind about California that their legislature voted unanimously for that "deregulation" plan.

A unanimous vote like that in a public body like that on anything should be (as least for US'ians) the first sign that you (as a citizen) are about to be screwed. With a system as corrupt as ours, it's a fairly safe assumption that a unanimous vote just indicates all the lobbyists agree on the vote. Extreme public scrutiny should ensue immediately and persistently.

Based on our own history here in the US we should be able to watch out for these things and to see them coming. Sometimes we do, but usually it seems we don't. Memory hole?

-Matt

Political contributions are not the same as "bribing judges". Perhaps you'd like to make the same assertions about Google and IBM. Or any other corporation for that matter.

doesn't mean we're all idiots

If you are indeed trying to convince someone that Microsoft is "bribing" judges or politicians based on what's in that link of yours, as opposed to playing the lobbying game the same way everybody else does, then I'd have to disagree with that.

Political contributions are not the same as "bribing judges". Perhaps you'd like to make the same assertions about Google and IBM. Or any other corporation for that matter.

doesn't mean we're all idiots

If you are indeed trying to convince someone that Microsoft is "bribing" judges or politicians based on what's in that link of yours, as opposed to playing the lobbying game the same way everybody else does, then I'd have to disagree with that.

Cite please?

Here is a list and commentary on MS's campaign contributions. Notice what happens in 98 when they go on trial and then, again, the huge increase in the 2000 election year, just before all the people who successfully convicted MS were replaced by new appointees who let MS off the hook with no punishment and without being broken up.

Just because no one can prove these contributions resulted in favorable treatment doesn't mean we're all idiots and can't put two and two together. American politicians have been for sale for many years and these big companies aren't giving this money away as a charity. They do it because it works to get whatever it is they want, be it legislation that gives them and advantage over the competition or allows them to make money at the people's expense or they want out of their legal troubles.

The entire DNC can no longer take money from lobbys or special interest groups, as per his request after Hillary's withdrawal.

Really? I could've sworn that PACs from companies like Microsoft, Time Warner, etc. might come under the heading of "special interest groups."

I'm not suggesting that he's necessarily bad for doing it, but come on - this "sun shines out of his backside" worship of Obama is getting really tedious.

It is available, but it is obtuse. A nice place to find such information is OpenSecrets.org

And the accountability? It's with you. With me. With our neighbors and fellow slashdotters. We are a Democratic Republic, we are supposed to keep our elected officials in check by removing them or not re-electing them when they become corrupt or simply stop representing our interests, which means one of two things is in play here:

1) The American people, generally, support wiretapping without oversight and don't want to see telecoms punished even if their support of the program was illegal

or, more likely:

2) The American people do not fully educate themselves on these sorts of matters and don't have a full grasp of the implications involved in allowing it. They have abdicated their responsibility of oversight of the government.

We are a lazy and selfish people, my friend. It's going to take some serious suffering on our parts to change that.

Ok, fear and doubt I'll give you, but money? Obama is a cash cow!

The best predictor of who will win the election is to see where the corporate money is going.

Traditionally the Republicans have been corporate America's favorite party—they unabashedly push right-wing policies favorable to corporations and the wealthy. However, when the Republicans overreach and become discredited (as now) then they're all too happy to switch to the "B" team, the Democrats. They know that the Democrats can be counted on to push the same pro-corporate agenda, only they're better at packaging it in a way that workers are willing to swallow it (eg: NAFTA).

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have raised nearly half a billion dollars combined, while poor li'l McCain hasn't even raised $100 million. Oh sure, Obama has received lots of little contributions, but he's swimming in money from Wall Street, lobbyists and other fat cats.

The US ruling class recognizes that the Republican party has blown it and they're switching to the Democrats (for now), which is the safe bet. The money doesn't lie. Another indicator is that nearly one in seven Republican incumbents are retiring.