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.

On Tuesday, the very day that Barack Obama's campaign announced he would be taking a 36-hour respite from campaigning to visit his seriously ill grandmother in Hawaii, CNN  reported that John McCain's campaign was giving up on Colorado just one day after a blitz in the state by running mate Sarah Palin.

The flurry of activity in Colorado followed by a decision to concede the state is reminiscent of what happened recently in Wisconsin.  It was in Wisconsin that a man attending the rally sizzled with rage when he asked what America could do about turning the federal government over to "socialists" in a certain reference to a prospective Obama administration.

The correlative proposition one strategically ponders following the Colorado move is the curious McCain strategy to intensify efforts in Pennsylvania, a state carried by the Democrats not only by John Kerry in 2004 but extending back all the way to the last Republican victory in the Keystone State by George Bush the Elder in 1988.

It appears that the "wing and a prayer" strategy devolves heavily on Sarah Palin and her ability to generate enthusiastic crowds in rural areas.

That is the question!  The Seattle Times on October 21 carried the news brief in its regular column "Across the Nation."  The article datelined from Little Rock, Arkansas, read:

"A popular local TV anchorwoman who had a small part in the Bush bio-pic "W", was in critical condition Monday after being beaten in her home.  Police question whether she had been targeted.

"KATV anchor Anne Presley, 26, was found early Monday -- a half hour before she was to appear on the station "Daybreak" program.  Little Rock Police spokeswoman Cassandra Davis said Presley's purse was gone and robbery may have been a motive.  Presley appeared briefly in Oliver Stone's new movie about President Bush that opened over the weekend."

The film "W" is a depiction of the life of George Bush beginning mostly with a sharp focus on his college challenges and the expectations of his father, the Elder Bush, also, a president who went to war against Iraq but stopped before invading Baghdad.  The Elder Bush's Gulf War had been accomplished in a record time, and was considered a resounding success.

Oliver Stone didn't got into the details of what had triggered the Gulf War.  The event that triggered the rage of Saddam Hussein was the slant-drilling theft of Iraqi oil by neighbor Kuwait.

Zealous right wing ideologues of the Bush administration insulted some of America's most trusted allies during the buildup to the Iraq War as on Air Force One the words "French fries" were eliminated from the menu in place of "freedom fries."

Any expression concerning cool reflection rather than rush to "shock and awe" from the international community was greeted with insults compatible with the prejudicial slams from a Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage as Germany became a nation of "kraut eaters" and Swedes "quiche eating sissies."

A parade being led by an administration featuring Vietnam War draft dodgers spouted an insulting barrage of epithets at sophisticated nations and their people.  It sickened the stomachs of Americans of intellect and conscience.

A recent poll conducted by London's Guardian reflects what people from leading nations throughout the world think in turn of George W. Bush along with the clones who seek to replace him with similar policies while lacking the intellectual courage to admit as much.

Joe Klein the October 27 Time Magazine accurately descried where th Republican Party is now:

"It wouldn't be fair to blame McCain for the bilious mess his party has become.  The most vehement of the Republican faithful lives in an alternate universe, fermented by decades of Rush Limbaugh's brilliant meretricious baloney and Sean Hannity's low-rent bullying.

"As Mr. McCain's audiences went out of control Hannity stoked the rage with a documentary about Obama that featured without qualification, a poisonously flaky anti-Semite who claimed to know Obama was a Muslim.

"But McCain had consistently stoked the rage as well, with nonstop negative advertising and questioning Obama's patriotism trying to make an Everest out of Obama's association -- passive at best -- with the former terrorist William Ayers."

Since the Republican right is seemingly incapable of looking forward and only looks backward, meaning backwards to America's most cruel political and economic past, it is interesting to examine the antecedents of the current robo calls being made in important battleground states by the forces of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Richard Nixon made his first foray into national politics after being discharged from the Navy after answering an ad placed by a committee of right wing professionals seeking a candidate to run for the seat of 10-year veteran Congressman Jerry Voorhis.

Nixon was intrigued.  The district included Nixon's hometown of Whittier.  The young lawyer demonstrated himself to be politically active as he ran successfully for student body president at Whittier College.  

He would also prove adaptable at serving the needs of his professional benefactors, as was later exemplified by the secret fund established by them for his personal use after he was elected.  

This gave rise to the teary-eyed Checkers Speech when he denounced that he was not giving up the Cocker Spaniel that his daughters had been given by a citizen admirer, hardly on point, but then again when the facts are clearly against you, what do you do if you are Nixon?

Ted Miller of Oakland, California in his Letter to the Editors of the New York Times October 15 is placing the blame for the economic meltdown right where it belongs:

"Thomas L. Friedman should not blame the Americans who opposed laissez-faire capitalism, starting with the Reagan revolution, for the current financial mess, nor its innocent victims for accepting houses they could not afford given to them by the un-regulated Ponzi scheme capitalism.

"The blame lies with those still in the White House, and those trying to get there, who foster the belief that government regulation is not necessary because the market will take of itself."

This letter explained the economic destruction de-regulation has brought about.  However, I would never classify all of the 2 ½ million people who went along with buying these foreclosure homes as buying something they couldn't afford at the point in time they made their purchases.  But they are not necessarily all innocent victims.

Some observers of the current presidential campaign have expressed surprise and asked why so many forces of hate have shouted angry epithets of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at emotionally tinged Sarah Palin rallies.

The real question to ask is "Why would these hateful elements not be there?"

Republican operatives realize that there is a far right, kook element of their party that they make fun of in private, with such documentation currently existing, but pander to in the saddest, most debasing way at political crunch time.

If in place of Palin a Candidate X were to address Republican rallies arguing strongly for a different economic plan to bring the U.S. economy out of its doldrums this would call for thinking rather than vicious shouts.  Appeal to the narrowest base of the party and the fringe element angrily converges.

Wasn't it George Bush who, when asked if he consulted his father, the Elder Bush, regarding the Iraq War, answered no, explaining that he did consult with his other Father, meaning God?

Of course it is blasphemy to suggest God advised Bush to launch the Iraq War.  The logical reason is that we now know that the Iraq War was launched on a well orchestrated media blitz of lies.

This week on Turner Classic Movies I saw the Alexander Korda move "The Jungle Book" starring Sabu.  One powerful scene of an individual being designated as a witch and being run out of town aroused my interest.

My mind flashed back to a Keith Olbermann MSNBC television scene of an Alaskan Pentecostal preacher with his hands held over Sarah Palin's head as he performed some unspecified religious rite.  It was mentioned that this same preacher had visited a Kenya village, where the natives invited him to help due to the fact that villagers were having so many accidents.