lol... somebody's been watching Fox news.  I enjoy tuning in from time to time just for the giggles, but seriously man, it will rot your brains if you watch too long.

As far as Fannie and Freddie, neither campaign is clean. 

"More: "Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was president of the Homeownership Alliance, which advocates the expansion of homeownership through low-interest mortgages funded by Fannie and Freddie. Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., who is heading McCain's vice presidential vetting panel, was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae. Mark Buse, a longtime McCain aide, lobbied for Freddie Mac before returning to McCain's Senate staff."

Moreover: "Obama also has ties to the firms. James A. Johnson, the former head of his vice presidential vetting panel, was a chief executive of Fannie Mae, as was Franklin D. Raines, who said this week that he has been consulting with the campaign on housing issues. Maria Echaveste, a top Clinton White House official whose husband, Christopher Edley Jr., is a close Obama friend and adviser, has lobbied for Freddie Mac, and former commerce secretary William M. Daley, a top Obama backer, was an in-house lobbyist."

McCain co-sponsored a bill in 2005 to impose new oversite on F&F, Obama introduced his own bill in 2006 to stop abusive lending.  Both campaigns have money ties and lobbyist ties to this entire mess.  Pretty much everyone in politics do.  Both presidential candidates also proposed reform, and both were shot down.

From my experience, state polls generally lag behind national polls because they are not done so regularly.  However, there have been a lot of state polls recently, which makes the discrepancy less severe.

That has been a democratic party complaint.

The electoral college gives slightly more per capita voting power to the smaller states to make sure they  don't get bullied by the states with more people.  Well that and because of the whole slaves thing... but i mean we don't have slavery anymore.

It also hurts independents.  I mean Ross Perot got 12% of the vote or something crazy like that... yet no electoral votes.  If he got electoral votes his party could of really stuck around as a real third option.

There are advantages to it as well and a lot of problems with a direct popular vote format.  So it's an interesting conudrum.

Yes, In fact even worse. They HAD to bail out F & F, it would have been really bad. The problem is the corruption that led to the collapse. F & F can be linked to the root of the housing woes. It all started with their corruption and it trickled down.

My whole point was McCain noticed it and tried to do something. It is only speculation as to why Obama recieved so much money from them. It could be something like because he is a Minority (which would not be that bad) or it could be bad, and he was helping F & F escape regulation and oversight.

McCain is not an advocate of heavy regulation. He prefers strict oversight. (which is similiar except it is more hands off). Any of the 2 might have saved F & F. Heavy regulation is bad because it makes everything(cept certain things, like public works) less effcient. Oversight allows the Gov to keep an eye on corruption without interfering with the markets. George Bush might have been slightly Lasse Fare (spelling?), McCain is a classic liberal.

Yeah, that's how i like my government too... All Teddy Roosevelt style.  You don't restrict anybody from doing what they're doing.... but you keep a big stick to whack em on the fingers anytime you see them reaching into the cookie jar.

 That is what happened in 2000.

Gore Won NY, CA, Mas, Maryland, Vermont, Illinois and a few others by a HUGE margin, Bush won Ohio, Florida in a VERY close race. Texas was the only big state bush won handily in.

As for Akuma mention of lagging state polls. The battle ground state polls are kept up much better. They are done several times a week.

why are we wasting our time for on stupid polls. the media think these polls are so accurate and they waste a lot of time discussing these stupid polls when they the media should be talking about real problems that we are dealing with. mccain is running a real smart campaign and him getting palin on the ticket helped his base a lot and gave a lot of air time remember their is never any bad publicity. obama should be leading a whole lot and obama campaign is getting very desperate obama is attacking like a lipstick pittbull and that will hurt him in the long run why, because he ain't change he is more of the same. people will not vote for a black guy i know it is sad but it is the truth i know a lot of hillary supporters that will not vote and may have switched. i have a gut feeling that nj, ny, and cali could become red states.

Also, the electoral vote is redistrubted once every 10 years, so every 10 years California is way behind in electoral power.  The population (and thus % of popular vote) here grows insanely fast, but our % of electoral vote grows super slow in big steps decades apart.  At any given election, your vote in Ohio is worth more than my vote in California.  Not to mention that the Electoral College mandates that campaigns only care about swing states.

And Ross Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992!!!  Then 8.8% in 1996.  Either way, the electoral college has become a scam that keeps us stuck with a 2 party system and makes the popular vote meaningless.  It's a good way to distribute Congressmen and Senators, sure, but they don't need to re-calculate votes based on those numbers anymore.

Yes you are correct. States like CA, Florida, S.C., Texas, Arizona, Neveda, and N.M. would be a bit higher now than they were last census, and states like Illinois, Mich, Wis, P.A., NY, and such would be a tad lower. But I do not think it affect the election too much. Since some are red states and some are blue. Maybe 2-4 points overall.

About state polls, many of the electoral college polls do an average. Today a batch of polls done before the major bailouts came out, messing with the averages.