CHESSNOID

Obama paid $3 million for a half hour infomercial on prime time on a few stations. According to the NYTimes:

The program is to be shown on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC and two cable networks that cater to African-Americans, BET and TV One. Ross Perot, the last presidential candidate to run similar programming, broadcast eight long infomercials to an average of 13 million viewers, with one of them getting 16.5 million viewers.

Costing the campaign more than $3 million, the infomercial is the ultimate reflection of Mr. Obama’s spending flexibility. Mr. McCain, with far less money in the bank, has been unable to produce a similar commercial.

I chose not to watch it. I was actually put off by it. Normally, I will watch debates and speeches, but an infomercial was just too much for me. When I think of infomercials, i think of those that they show in wee hours of the morning. Selling things you normally wouldn’t buy. If you are “sold” into buying it, then there is often buyer’s remorse after you get the product.

I did read the different articles to see what the analysts thought. I also read the comments too. I was actually surprised what I read. I even found this article on CBS which actually just focused on the money issues. I actually appreciate seeing some truth vs the media just pushing a candidate as the chosen one. I actually get sick of hearing it so I try to read up on my own research.

CBS:

Without question, the Barack Obama infomercial served as a very slick and powerful recitation of the biggest promises he’s made as a presidential candidate. But the very bigness of his ideas is the problem: he seems blind to the concept his numbers don’t add up.

Let’s start with his highly suspect, and widely discredited, claim that he can find federal “spending cuts beyond the costs” of his promises. Very few independent economists believe he has identified the savings needed to offset his remarkable list of tax credits, tax cuts and spending pledges.

Fact: Even if you believe Obama intends to fix health care, most independent analysts say the cost is massive – $1.2 trillion over ten years, according to the highly respected Lewin Group. When the new Congress wakes up next year to a $1 trillion deficit, and answers the overwhelming new demands for another stimulus package, will the leadership really bite on a health care reform package that digs the deficit hole so much deeper?

And that’s just the beginning of what Obama would spend.

Fact: The tax cuts he promises, which are mostly refundable tax credits (code for cash back), will cost $60 billion just in year one, according the National Taxpayers Union, though the Obama campaign’s own estimates in July put that figure at $130 billion.

Fact: His new promise to give businesses a $3,000 tax credit for each new job created will cost $40 billion. But economists say this credit is far more likely to benefit companies already planning to expand and will likely not be enough to help companies create new jobs or forestall layoffs.

Fact: Obama’s claim he will lower health care premiums by $2,500 is: 1.) guesswork, which is 2.) based on health care savings that might, in a perfect world, happen over 10 years – a fact Obama neatly glosses over.

Fact: Obama, when referring to savings he can make by leaving Iraq ($90 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates), has spent these savings several times over, across several different promises depending on the crowd he’s addressing.

Most of the time he spends the Iraq savings in the context of the roads he wants to build; sometimes it’s for the teachers he wants to hire. Tonight, he riffed rhetorically on the savings, asking how many scholarships could be funded, or how many schools could be built. In the end though, presuming he really saves $90 billion, he can only spend it once.

Remember he also mentioned rebuilding the military ($7 billion/yr); his education initiative ($18 billion/yr); and his energy initiative ($15 billion/yr). He did not mention the $188 billion that he would spend on the brand new stimulus package he has proposed.

If he closes every loophole as promised, saves every dime from Iraq, raises taxes on the rich and trims the federal budget as he’s promised to do “line by line,” he still doesn’t pay for his list. If he’s elected, the first fact hitting his desk will be the figure projecting how much less of a budget he has to work with – thanks to the recession. He gave us a very compelling vision with his ad buy tonight. What he did not give us was any hint of the cold reality he’s facing or a sense of how he might prioritize his promises if voters trust him with the White House.

This is actually one of the first major media articles that explore the facts about what is being proposed. Most of ABC,NBC, CBS news outlet seem to love Obama this election cycle like they loved Bush that last 2 elections. It wasn’t that long ago when Bush came onto the scene, and the media really loved him. This was obviously before he was exposed as being an idiot.

I just get irritated that the media usually only focuses on McCain being bad for the economy.  I am not sold on either of them.  Apparently, the media is sold on Obama and his rhetoric.  Anyways, both Obama and McCain will make the economy worse than where it is now.

There will many broken promises if Obama takes office.  Remember he has already flip flopped on literally every issue that has come up since being given the Democratic nominee by the DNC.  I also do think if he doesn’t get elected there will be many mad people because the media has idolized him so much that he is now a celebrity that even other real celebrities want to hang out with.

One thing that has bothered me and continues to do so is his past associations and the way he handles it.  Instead of getting truthful answers of his relationships, we get lies that he was just acquainted with these people or he claims that ihe doesn’t share the same belief.  It is a long list. From Real Clear Politics:

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright’s angry racism or Ayers’ unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with — let alone serve on two boards with — an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the “old politics” — of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs. He doesn’t share Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’ views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright’s pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.

Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.