Nearly two-thirds of U.S. voters (63%) say Barack Obama is more likely than John McCain to restrict an individual’s right to own a gun, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Just 16% believe McCain is more likely to do so, and 22% are undecided.
A plurality of Democrats (42%) agree that Obama is more likely to restrict gun rights, as do 84% of Republicans and 64% of unaffiliated voters.
When asked about whether a general ban on carrying loaded guns in national parks should be eliminated, the answers were sharply different and somewhat predictable.
McCain, who is against gun control, stated: "I believe the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service should remove their prohibitions against law-abiding citizens transporting and carrying firearms to lands managed by those agencies."
Obama, who is against assault weapons and a gun show loophole that allows trading of weapons between private individuals, stated: "I believe in Second Amendment rights and the rights of hunters and sportsmen to bear arms and use them in a responsible way. But I am concerned about allowing loaded firearms into family-oriented spaces."
WATERLOO --- Gun sales have shot through the roof as the presidential election looms.
Fears of tighter control were mutual Saturday among shoppers at the Gun & Knife Show, which ends today at the National Cattle Congress' McElroy Auditorium. It offers a buffet of rare guns and hard-to-find accessories.
According to the Associated Press, Republican candidate John McCain supports background checks for buyers at gun shows and has his name on a law restricting special-interest group advertising, two positions strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association. Democratic challenger Barack Obama has been accused of wanting to put the firearms industry out of business.
But both campaigns' running mates, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, own guns.
It's no surprise, then, why uncertainty has pushed sales up 30 to 40 percent from show to show, said Dennis Pearson, show manager with On Target Promotions, which hosts about 14 shows a year in Iowa and Missouri.
To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.
For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.
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We're back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut -- all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he'll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!
Former Washington Redskin and president of the American Hunters and Shooters Association Ray Schoenke stopped in Clarksburg Wednesday to shoot a couple clay pigeons and talk about how the Second Amendment comes into play in the presidential campaign.
"As a gun rights organization, we believe gun rights should be protected, and it's a right we feel strongly about," Schoenke said, adding he doesn't believe an administration under Barack Obama would decrease gun ownership rights.
"The Supreme Court has ruled the government can't take your guns away," he said. "Neither party is going to take your guns away."
There are differences of opinion on whether Obama's stance on gun ownership actually supports gun owners.
Schoenke said he believes Obama supports Second Amendment rights, including the right to bear arms, in the same manner as his opponent, John McCain. As a hunter, however, he thinks Obama would do a better job preserving land.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Forget spring, summer, fall and winter. In Minnesota, the seasons go by fishing, boating, hunting and snowmobiling.
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With a fresh poll showing a deadlocked race in Minnesota, McCain was bringing his Republican campaign back to the state Friday along with his new weapon: moose-hunting running mate Sarah Palin. McCain's selection of the Alaska governor has fired up some outdoors enthusiasts.
"She's probably the most pro-hunting and pro-gun candidate that we've ever had," said dentist Don McMillan, a member of Minnesota's Sportsmen for McCain. "She hunts. She fishes. She snowmobiles. She's an outdoors person. Outdoors people can relate to someone like that."
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's hopes for carrying Montana have diminished over the past few months, and Montanans say it comes down to one word: guns.
"In Montana, we like our guns. We like big guns. We like little guns. We like shotguns. We like pistols. Most of us own two or three guns. Gun control is hitting what you shoot at," the state's Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer told the New York Times in April. When asked why he thought the Democratic nominee would not win his state, he replied, "guns."
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This year, Mr. Obama's voting record, coupled with that of running mate Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, has resurrected the gun issue, and John McCain's campaign sees it as a major wedge issue to win over gun-owning swing Democrats and working-class union members in key Democratic bastions.
"Absolutely, we're going to emphasize guns and the Second Amendment. They're fundamental issues for Democrats, independents and Republicans in the battleground states that will decide this election," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.
Mr. McCain has compiled a largely pro-gun voting record in the Senate, but he has had some differences with the National Rifle Association on his support for background checks at gun shows and his campaign finance reform law, which restricts certain campaign TV ads among advocacy groups such as the NRA. More recently, though, his selection of running-mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a hunter and NRA member, has boosted his standing.
... the returns show that the Bidens have been amazingly tight-fisted when it comes to their charitable giving. Despite income ranging from $210,432 - $321,379 over the ten-year period, the Bidens have given only $120 - $995 per year to charity, which amounts to 0.06% - 0.31% of their income[.]
[chart omitted]
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It is jarring that a couple earning over $200,000 per year would give as little as $2 per week to charity. This giving compares very unfavorably to John McCain, whose tax returns show that he gave 27.3% - 28.6% of his income to charity in 2006-2007. During the same period, the Obamas' tax returns show that they gave 5.8% - 6.1% of their income to charity. [emphasis added]
Obama’s commitment to federally mandated pay equity stretches from the Rockies to Wall Street and beyond. And yet it seems to have eluded his United States Senate office. Compensation figures for his legislative staff reveal that Obama pays women just 83 cents for every dollar his men make.
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On average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama’s campaign website condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.
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On average, according to these data, women in John McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, ceteris paribus, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart — while adding $10,726 to her annual income — by leaving Barack Obama’s office and going to work for John McCain.
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In short, these statistics suggest that John McCain is more than fair with his female employees, while Barack Obama — at the expense of the women who work for him — quietly perpetuates the very same pay-equity divide that he loudly denounces. Of all people, the Democratic standard bearer should understand that equal pay begins at home.
Mr. McCain certainly uses his bully pulpit to proselytize Americans about public service. But he more or less stops there, even repeatedly cautioning during the Columbia forum against federalizing public service, although that doesn't mean that he wouldn't throw taxpayer money at some of his pet service projects. However, his Web site offers nothing near what Mr. Obama is proposing.
Mr. Obama has laid out a 10-page vision statement that includes virtually every program proposed by the left and the right in recent memory and then some. President Bush's controversial faith-based initiative? He'll keep it. President Kennedy's Peace Corps? He'll double it. Even Mr. McCain's seven-year-old plan to raise a domestic civilian force to fight terrorism and triple enrollment in AmeriCorps gets a plug.
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By Mr. Obama's account, he will make federal education aid conditional on schools requiring that high-school and even middle-school students perform 50 hours of service each year. He will also offer college students $4,000 every year for doing 100 hours of public service. That works out to $40 an hour -- a deal that only the very wealthy could refuse. (The Obama campaign puts the price tag for this alone at $10 billion.) He promises to provide older Americans who perform civic service with "additional income security, including assistance with retirement and family-related costs, and continuation of health-care coverage." But a government that links benefits to service can take away benefits for nonservice. ...
John McCain is a “hero” to U.S. taxpayers for his lifetime record of resisting earmarks, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden are “hostile” and “unfriendly,” a government spending watchdog group has concluded.
In its new report, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste gave the Republican presidential nominee a 100 percent rating for his votes in the Senate last year, and a lifetime score of 88 percent.
By comparison, the nonpartisan, nonprofit group, which is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, gave the Democratic presidential nominee a 10 percent score last year and a lifetime score of 18 percent. Biden, Obama’s running mate, scored 0 percent last year and an overall score of 22 percent.
Higher scores mean stronger resistance to federal earmarks. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was not included because the ratings only evaluate members of Congress.
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball. [emphasis added]
This Internet-driven decentralization meant that the McCain campaign could organize down to a virtually block-by-block level for little cost. It allowed a thin organization to compete against the heavily financed and well-organized Bush machine, and it gave McCain campaign dollars an estimated 4-to-1 advantage over Bush greenbacks.
McCain himself was convinced early on that the Internet had to play a critical role in the campaign. Time and again it allowed him to leverage his money and his organization. "In the Virginia primary," McCain told me, "we needed a lot of petitions signed to get on the ballot. We had the form available to download off the Internet and got 17,000 signatures with very little trouble."
Ultimately, McCain realized he couldn't go the distance, but the message was clear to any political organization with hopes for the future. His Web team had played the Internet like a Stradivari. Ballot petitioning was simplified. Local email brought out large crowds on a few hours' notice. The Web was used to enlist phone bankers from all over the country to download voter lists in upcoming primary states and then to make calls from their homes. Hundreds of thousands were reached at virtually no cost, compared to the going rate of 50 cents for every call from a professional phone bank. The Web became a virtual political print shop enabling thousands of volunteers to download and reproduce millions of pieces of campaign literature and signs on their home printers. The various pages on McCain's Web site were used to put out key registration information and to douse political fires.
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The campaign's innovative use of the Internet could turn out to be the most important single factor of this year's election. And woe unto the future candidate who doesn't study the McCain 2000 Internet campaign strategy carefully. "The Web was only an electronic billboard in the last two elections," Max Fose says, "but this is the first time anyone ran a truly interactive campaign." It certainly will not be the last.
In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits. [emphasis added]
As he accepts the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, some of those past battles could linger on the campaign trail with political repercussions. But in McCain's case, one stance in a high-profile fight will not cause significant electoral damage, while others will play more of marginal role.
One of the biggest battles McCain has had was with the National Rifle Association. He sponsored legislation requiring background checks at guns shows and a bill to tighten campaign finance laws, including restrictions on issue ads by third-party groups in the waning days of an election.
Those stances earned McCain a "C+" rating from the group in his 2004 re-election race after previously consistent 'A' grades in past races.
But in his race against Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, such positions are treated as mild aberrations rather than heresies against the Second Amendment by the NRA's nearly 3 million members. The simple reason is that the NRA considers Obama much, much worse on gun rights with an "F" rating. ...
Coverage of day three of the GOP convention drew a large female audience (19.5 million) — 5.2 million more women than tuned in for day two of the Democratic convention, when Hillary Clinton addressed the delegates, and 6.9 million more women than watched Joe Biden accept the Democrats’ vice presidential nomination last Wednesday night.
Combined, McCain and Palin, who is Alaska's first-term governor, drew 76.2 million viewers, compared with the 62.4 million who tuned in to see Obama and running mate Joe Biden, the Democratic senator from Delaware. Biden drew 24 million viewers to his Aug. 27 speech.Sarah Palin's entry into the race on the Republican ticket looks like a game-changer. She's smart, down to earth, and poised under pressure. The Republican base is clearly thrilled with her bona fide conservative credentials, and her presence on the ticket will draw a lot of conservative-leaning women Independents to the McCain-Palin camp. If McCain wins in November, he'll owe a big chunk of the credit to his running mate.
First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.
... Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. ...
At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska's relatively brief history as a state. She's also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.
This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness.
Two years later, when she won the "Miss Wasilla" beauty pageant, she was also voted "Miss Congeniality" by the other contestants.
Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is still drop dead gorgeous. And smart to boot.
But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.
Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Sen. McCain has been accused of rounding. Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she's staunchly pro-life.
Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated. Mr. McCain said, "with all due respect" the four most liberal sitting Justices because of his different judicial philosophy.
Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that "that's a good one," and then adding that "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he, I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution." The Democrat added that he also wouldn't have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.
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