A report from Britain’s Sky News on hunger and extreme endemic poverty in Haïti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

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¿POR QUÉ VOY A VOTAR EN BLANCO?
The above video is from the Voto en Blanco (None of the Above — NOTA) campaign in the October 2007 elections for the Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. If I had comedic talent, I might run a sketch of why none of the five main candidates for President of the United States will earn my vote.

Senator Obama — Lacks experience and I am concerned that his view of the world is not rooted in realism. He is bright and has demonstrated a capacity over the course of this campaign to offer more nuanced and polished answers but at the same time I find him hard to trust given a series of hard to comprehend reversals from cornerstone Democratic policies and positions. Some political observers believe he is another John F. Kennedy and others are expecting perhaps a new FDR. My sense is that Senator Obama is another Grover Cleveland, the sole Democrat to occupy the White House during the Gilded Age and who did nothing to reverse the nation’s growing income inequality.

Senator McCain — A good man with bad policies on the domestic front. His health care proposals were a deal breaker for me but in truth the selection of Governor Palin has proved an embarrassment overall. She clearly does not have full command of a large number of issues. While I largely share many of McCain’s foreign policy and international trade goals, I share little of his domestic agenda. Nor can I reward the Republicans with another four years in power after the last eight years of incompetence.

Bob Barr — I do not share the view that government is the problem. Libertarianism is simply a recipe for more income inequality and uneven growth.

Ralph Nader — He is for a single payer system, he recognizes that the system is broken with corporations running the show and controlling both major political parties. But I think Nader largely divorced from reality when it comes to international affairs.

Cynthia McKinney — Absolutely not. Erratic and bombastic, she does not even have the skill set required to be President.

None of the above. Best of luck with your decision.

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As in many other battleground states, Senator Obama seems to be opening up a landslide margin lead in the land of enchantment. In New Mexico (link is to US Census demographic data), the latest poll from Rasmussen Reports shows Senator Obama leading Senator McCain 55% to 42%, a 13 point margin. Two weeks ago, Obama led by just five points. A month ago, McCain held a narrow edge.

I am removing New Mexico from my list of battleground states and assigning the Land of Enchantment to the Obama column.

Barack Obama has opened his largest lead of the year over John McCain in New Mexico, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.

Obama attracts 55% of the vote while McCain earns 42%. That’s a sizable improvement for the Democrat who led two weeks ago by a 49% to 44% margin.

Forty-nine percent (49%) believe Obama has run a generally positive campaign. Just 14% say the same of McCain. Thirty-five percent (35%) say this year’s campaign is more negative than most, but 51% say it’s about the same.

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I have been working 14 hour days at my day job so I have been unable to do much but observe the doom and gloom because I have been to busy to post but I thought I had to do something so I decided to just pass on some stuff others are posting that I think may mitigate it a bit.  Let’s start with Jim Treacher who says most of what I wanted to say:

Note to everybody who can’t stop moaning that it’s all over and we’re going to end up in Room 101 with rat-cages strapped to our faces

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Here are six articles from both the US and international media about the US Presidential race. Highlights of each article provided with a link to the full article.

Obama Makes Inroads into America’s Wealthiest
By Jason Szep for Reuters.

Despite plans to boost tax rates for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, Sen. Barack Obama is making the deepest inroads into wealthy voters in more than a decade for any Democratic presidential nominee, suggesting the November 4 election could mark a fundamental shift in voting patterns.

Running out of time to reshape a White House race that appears on the verge of tipping decisively toward Obama, Republican Sen. John McCain also faces a drop in support from a once-reliably Republican segment of society: the wealthy.

Obama Drowning Out McCain in TV ads
By Jeanne Cummings writing for Politico.

As of close of business last week, Obama had spent approximately $195 million on primary and general election ads compared with $99 million by the Arizona Republican and the Republican National Committee, according to the Competitive Media Analysis Group.

And the gap is widening in the final weeks. As McCain constricted his Virginia ad campaign to cable stations and smaller, downstate media markets, Obama doubled down on Northern Virginia.

The Democrat’s average weekly broadcast buy of about $700,000 in Washington jumped last week by nearly threefold to about $2 million, according to station public records.

The spending figures are significant because they demonstrate how Obama’s fundraising advantage has helped him drown out his opponent and maintain a longer — and more positive — presence in the living rooms of voters in critical swing states.

“Obama is spending $3.5 million a day on television ads,” said Evan Tracey, CMAG’s chief operating officer. “If he does that through Election Day, it will be more than McCain got from the government for his entire general election campaign.”

Gray Vote No Longer Reliably Red
By Anne Hull in the Washington Post.

Sun City Center is in the hard-fought electoral quadrant in Florida known as the I-4 corridor, home to 43 percent of the state’s voters. The Republican Party has always counted on the retirees here to deliver in bulk, but this year a more severe calculation is at play. To win Florida, McCain needs to capture a bigger slice of older voters than President Bush won in 2004 to offset the high numbers of young voters supporting Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

“I’m ready for a change,” says Ed Bearer, a retired public school teacher from Delaware who recently received a letter saying his wife’s medical expenses may no longer be covered under his pension plan. “McCain turns me off. I can’t explain it,” he says. He’s voting for Obama.

That leaves Jerry Decker. Last week, during the second presidential debate, Decker kept waiting for McCain to come out swinging. “What he should have said was ‘We’re going to prosecute AIG to the fullest extent,’ ” Decker says. Instead, only vague promises to clean up corruption.

It’s easy to see why Decker wants more heat from a candidate when his own steady discipline is compared with the reckless indulgence of Wall Street. For years, Decker brown-bagged his lunch, even when he went over to the corporate tower as a director of human resources for Formica Corp. His wife, Jeannie, was his barber. The Deckers had one son and the family lived fully but frugally: They were the ones on the side of the ski mountain with their lunch and cans of soda packed from home. Jeannie watched the budget, and for more than two decades she gave her husband $25 each Friday for his weekly spending money.

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