The name calling from the McCain camp has reached fever pitch as more polls are released showing his damaged posture while we march toward Tuesday's climactic presidential election.

A study of the electoral college map is staggering in terms of current trends.  A current Arizona State University shows that McCain with a scant 2-point edge in his own state, one that had been conceded to him from the outset.

Meanwhile in the south McCain has more than Virginia and North Carolina to be worried  about as Georgia looms interestingly close, sparked by a large early voting turnout by African Americans.  Even in a stalwart Republican state such as Mississippi the numbers have narrowed.

So what does McCain do as he becomes increasingly desperate?  He dusts off an ancient right wing Republican scare tactic that has pushed beyond the re-dristibutionist charge to accusations of socialism.  McCain's "I'll say anything" Caribou Barbie running mate has upped the ante by linking Barack Obama to Marxism.

Now that the U.S.A. has discovered that only Mexico and Turkey had poverty rates higher than the 30-country study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, what if anything will be done to help the U.S. poor obtain health care?

Politicians, during campaigns, loudly proclaim "The U.S.A. is the greatest nation on earth and the richest."

With the largest, almost incomprehensible national debt in the world, exceeding all prior national debts combined since the U.S. was founded, recent political rants have avoided claiming the U.S.A. to be the richest nation in the world!  However, the persistent claim to greatness has been much used in the current election campaigns (rest assured).

Mary Reynolds-Gilmore of Northport, N.Y. in her October 24 Letter to the Editors of the New York Times hit the problem of U.S. health care precisely, stating:

Figure it as a manifestation of human psychology.  About the time that you feel obliged to name your campaign bus the "straight talk express" figure on fraud being an active agent in that individual's operating process.

From the time that "Joe the Plumber" surged on the scene many of us were extremely skeptical.  

One got the feeling from watching Barack Obama with patient courtesy responding to the inquiry from a man who, as it turned out, is not a licensed plumber, is not in a position to buy his employer's business, would not be anywhere close to the threshold of any federal tax hike even if he did, has donated campaign money to McCain and has a federal tax lien against him, that the alleged "man on the street" was a plant.

The body language was unconvincing.  Joe seemed tenuous and his performance appeared stagy as in managed.  After monopolizing a significant amount of Obama's time, an impatient hush could be heard coming over the group of Obama supporters.  One got the distinct feeling that many were skeptical of Joe.

Mary Beth Sheridan of the Washington Post writing an article appearing in the Seattle Times October 28 and datelined from Baghdad stated the following:

"A deal to authorize the presence of American forces in Iraq beyond 2008 is forcing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to choose between two influential powers in this country, the United States and Iran.

"U.S. officials had hoped Iraq would quickly approve the accord which would give American troops legal authority to remain in Iraq after December 31, when the mandate from the United Nations expires.  But Iraqi political leaders have balked, in a sign that American political capital is waning as Iraq grows.

"'Maliki is in a dilemma.  He cannot antagonize the Americans,' said Ghassan al-Attiyah, a prominent Iraqi intellectual and political analyst based at the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy in London.

The Republican right proceeds at a blinding speed to commit political suicide.

During an era when things so frequently went their way within the national political power structure, aided in no small part by a mainstream media that so often looked the other way or approved of atrocious electioneering and policymaking, right wing Republicans began to believe that power should be theirs, particularly the presidency, for the eternal taking.

How furious they became and how quickly already loose springs shattered from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly when Bill Clinton had the rank audacity to not only run for president, but actually win it twice.  He countered the relentless bully machine with an effective instrument of his own in 1992 called the rapid response team, which met smear attacks with carefully crafted rebuttals.

McCain, after achieving the 2008 Republican nomination by pleasing the right by proudly asserting that he had voted with George Bush "90 percent of the time" ended up cornered by his own strategy when a differently structured general election beckoned.

What are credit default swaps?

Tanya Carlina Hsu in her article "Death of the American Empire" writing on Global Research October 23 explained that, "America is self-destructing and bringing the rest of the world down with it.

"Propped up by false hope, America is now falling like a house of cards."

Tanya Carlina Hsu sounds a warning call to politicians and Wall Street that can only be ignored at high risk.  The great empire of ancient Greece lasted approximately 400 years and the powerful Roman Empire approximately 600 years.  The American empire's history stretches back 232 years.

John McCain has taken to once more demagoging the economic issue as the Republican right has traditionally done beginning in the modern era with the tactical and markedly unsuccessful propaganda front directed at Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Roosevelt's first reelection campaign in 1936 was fresh on the heels of congressional passage and the president's signature on the landmark 1935 Social Security Act.  There was much anger as well resulting from such sweeping legislation as the National Recovery Administration and the creation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 with disciplinary powers applicable to Wall Street.

Laissez faire was what the members of the American Liberty League, the vigilant opposition group to Roosevelt's economic policies, favored.  His comprehensive changes in U.S. economic policy during a critical Depression period prompted them to hurl charges of "socialism" while others went beyond that and asserted that FDR was a dictator of a Communist or Fascist model.

It was under Woodrow Wilson, another Democratic president known for comprehensive change, that the federal income tax became a reality.  Not only did those of the American Liberty League and their well heeled predecessors not wish to pay federal income tax; they feared and were incensed by the national government using taxation as a leveling tool.

What a thorough reversal America is seeing with the Republican retreat on the part of John McCain and others from programs and a presidency which they thoroughly supported before national polling numbers were eviscerated.

One of numerous incumbents said to be in trouble, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, said on the October 26 edition of Face the Nation that Republicans will need to re-establish themselves and find their identity.  

Actually they already had, except for now when the "chickens have come home to roost" and it is time to pay the ultimate consequences for actions deceitful and irresponsible both militarily and fiscally as they now, as Chris Matthews put it a few weeks back, "take off their uniforms and flee the battlefield."

It is both outrageous and outrageously hilarious to see John McCain, who while competing for the Republican presidential nomination proudly proclaimed that he had supported Bush via his senatorial votes "90 percent of the time" and added that this exceeded the support level of his rivals, now sounds more like John F. Kennedy running against Richard Nixon in 1960.

The Seattle Times October 22 reported a 30-country study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development:

"The percentage of individuals earning less than 50 percent of the population's median-income.  The selected organization for economic cooperation and development scored as follows:

"Sweden 5%, Czech Rep., 6%, France 7%, Germany 11%, Australia 12%, Canada 12%, Japan 15%, S. Korea 15%, U.S. 17%, Mexico 18%, Turkey 18%."

This statistical breakdown may come as a shock as during many recent election campaigns, the contenders for political office mouthed the mantra "the greatest nation in the world and the richest nation in the world."

Two factors are in current play in the dash to the finishing line in the 2008 presidential race and both are favorable to Obama and unfavorable for McCain.

McCain and his campaign team frantically scramble, constantly changing strategy on the components to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes and a victory on November 4.  

Last week, after abandoning heavy ground efforts in former battleground states Michigan and Wisconsin, CNN announced that McCain was shifting forces away from  crucial Colorado, which under virtually all perceived analyses the Republicans need to prevail.

Yesterday McCain held what some campaign observers called one of his best rallies in Denver.  All available polling evidence at this point, despite McCain's effort, shows Obama in front in Colorado.  Colorado's Democratic Senator Ken Salazar asserted yesterday that, while he expects the result to be close, that Obama's superior ground effort will prevail and that the Illinois senator is currently ahead.

How the realtors, along with the Wall Street vultures, cheered when their idol Alan Greenspan lowered the interest rate to a 40-year low when he acted in the role of Fed chief.

Did the Wall Street titans or the real estate moguls from Beverly Hills to Long Island realize as they pocketed their millions with Greenspan's assistance of low interest rates that they represented the largest legalized cheating scam perhaps in U.S. history?

Currency represents concretized energy.  It represents the reward for work done by citizens of each country.  It represents the price U.S. exports will sell for.

When the 40-year low was put in place for the rate of interest on the U.S. dollar it devalued the currency.

John McCain stated that a major reason for selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was because she is a "maverick" in the reformist way that he sees himself.

In her acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Palin exclaimed, "I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau when I stood up to the special interests and the lobbyists and the big oil companies and the good old boys."  She further stated that as a new governor she "shook things up, and in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people."

While midway through her first term Alaska's governor had signed an ethics reform bill, increased oil profit taxes and stunned major oil interests by awarding a gas pipeline contract to a Canadian company, there is another side of Palin that stands out -- her role as a staunch patronage advocate operating very much in the tradition of the "good old boys" style she claims to abhor.

For one thing there is that symbolic point about displaying herself as a typical "soccer mom" alongside the reality of an astounding $150,000 from a Republican National Committee hard-pressed during a tough election year to assist dollar-needy candidates for the kind of expensive Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue attire traditionally worn by the "elitists" that she scoffs at in her campaign stump speeches.

The New York Times on October 23 ran a revealing article concerning the U.S. economy by Louise Story headlined: HEDGE FUNDS' STEEP FALL SENDS INVESTORS FLEEING.  

Louise Story writes about the toppling of the new Gilded Age of American economics:

"The Gilded Age of hedge funds is losing its luster.  The funds, pools of fast money that defined the era of Wall Street hyper wealthy are in the throes of an unprecedented shakeout.  Even some industry stars are falling back to earth.

"This unregulated, at times volatile corner of finance -- which is supposed to make money in bull and bear markets -- lost $180 billion during the last three months.  Investors, particularly wealthy individuals, are heading for the exits.

The part of Senator John McCain's life story that his campaign has not wanted to talk about while his Naval career and prisoner of war status were accelerated was how he came into possession of the money and influence that enabled him to start his political career culminating with the Republican presidential nomination.

It was John McCain who launched an extra-marital affair with a woman linked to a leading American fortune.  After John married Cindy his political career was given a rocket thrust by his father in law, a multimillionaire brewery distribution heir.  He left his first wife following her serious injury in an automobile accident.

So now it is John McCain along with his "do anything that I'm asked to do" running mate wearing Neiman Marcus and leading designer labels characteristically unlike her "Soccer Mom" self-cultivated image who endlessly shriek about Barack Obama and his roaring pursuit of socialism.

The generous Republican National Committee lavishing $150,000 on your stunning wardrobe, make up and hairstyle so you can rant on about your political opposition being "elitist" represents the height of hypocrisy.

Certainly we are not saying anything disparaging concerning the stylish attire you parade around in at your campaign rallies, complaining about Barack Obama being a socialist.  Furthermore, you tell your audiences that Obama wants to have their wealth spread around.  And, he'll do it through taxation as part of fulfilling his socialist agenda.

But Sarah, when you give this Joe McCarthy type smear you reveal your ignorance.  You are either putting your ignorance on display or deliberately misinforming your audience.

Are your listeners unaware of how socialism is part of America's fabric.  Apparently some of your listeners fear someone will take something away from them, to give to someone else.