e White House Marauder on the Move Who will win the election?

4
Democrats
Barack Obama
Date of Birth: August 4th,
1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii
Education: Occidental College,
Columbia University,
and Harvard University
Where he stands:
War in Iraq: War was
flawed from the start, the
$12 billion per month spent
in Iraq is better spent in the
United States; opposed invasion
from the beginning;
opposed troop increase;
withdraw one or two brigades
a month to finish
within 16 months.
Immigration: Supports a
path to legalization for illegal
immigrants that includes
learning English
and paying fines; toughen
penalties for hiring illegal
immigrants; voted for fence
along Mexican border.
Economy: Said his plan
for tax relief to middle and
working classes would help
stabilize the economy; repeal
the Bush tax cuts for
households earning more
than $250,000.
Environment/Alternative
Energy: Drilling is a stopgap
measure, not a long
term solution, opposes gas
tax holiday; supports taxing
windfall profits; opposes
drilling in the Arctic and
offshore; supports ethanol
subsidies; not a “proponent”
of expanding nuclear
power.
Abortion: Supports woman’s
right to choose, believes
government has no
place in private lives.
“Obama. Um, yeah
Obama.”-Seniors Matt Carney
and Kevin Hutchinson
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette “Joe”
Biden, Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania
on November 20, 1945.
Biden first took office as Senator of
Delaware, as the fifth youngest Senator
in Congress, on January 3, 1973. As
Senator, Biden chairs the Congressional
Committee on Foreign Relations,
and chaired the Committee on the Judiciary.
He is currently the sixth-longest
serving Senator in Congress.
As Chairman on the Committee
on the Judiciary, Biden presided
over the two controversial Supreme
Court confirmation hearings: Robert
Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas
in 1991. He helped draft the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement
Act in 1994 (also known as the “Biden
crime law”) and the landmark Violence
Against Women Act that same
year, among other significant domestic
accomplishments. He also created
legislation that would permit families
to deduct on their annual income tax
returns up to $10,000 per year in higher
education expenses.
As Chairman on the Foreign
Relations Committee, Biden played a
critical role in defining President Bill
Clinton’s foreign policy. His 1993 “liftand-strike”
resolution influenced Clinton’s
later decision to decisively bomb
the Serbian Army.
On August 22, 2008, Barack
Obama announced that Biden
would be his running mate. Biden has
followed liberal policies consistently.
He supports many of his candidate’s
positions, but he opposes abortion
rights. He is against the privatization
of Social Security. He also opposes
oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge and strongly believes that
American policies should pursue alternative
sources of energy, citing energy
costs as being one of the two major
threats to the American economy (the
second being health care costs).
The Dedham Mirror • Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Special Election Coverage
Battle for the
<strong>Marauder</strong> on the Move
Who will win the election?
“McCain”-
Senior Allie Treanor
Obama ready to put country back on track
By Rani Aljondi
Mirror Staff
It is time, I think, to face
facts.
The eight years of Republican
misadministration has brought the
nation nothing but grief, terror, impoverishment,
and frightening excesses of
Presidential power, in a country whose
premises have been the opposite of
these.
Within the course of the recent
Republican presidency, the United
States has accumulated a greater
national debt than that of its entire history
combined, become embroiled in
an occupation whose initial premises
are lies, and whose immense death toll
can be traced directly to the administration’s
many mistakes; restricted the
liberties and privacy of the American
citizen through legislation that runs
against the grain of the Constitution.
Gas prices have soared more
in the past four years than they have in
an entire half-century, while the Oil
companies responsible for setting
those exorbitant prices have continued
to rip off the American public without
incurring a single iota of suspicion. The
American middle-class, the bulwark of
American democracy, has found itself
under a squeeze of commodity prices,
By Joe McIsaac
Mirror Staff
One of the biggest issues in
this historic presidential election is
the War in Iraq.
Both candidates have very
different views on the war. John Mc-
Cain wants to stay in Iraq until victory
is reached, even if it takes “100
years”. The Democratic nominee
Barack Obama plans to start removing
troops from Iraq, as soon as he
takes offi ce.
The War has been going
on for over fi ve years. Over 3,000
American men and women have
perished, and we have spent an exorbitant
amount funding the war. Most
Americans do not support this war.
“McCain”-Sophomore
Giovanna Guzman
a housing meltdown, and a collapsing
economy; while the super rich have enjoyed
tax-breaks, government pandering,
and now, a recent Federal bailout
that does nothing to address the issues
of a starving, bankrupt, debt-ridden
American people. In two months, we
must replace the administration that did
all this, with a new one. A better one.
There is the story of a successor,
who had gone from Party rebel to
Party tool within the course of a fortnight
of his campaign. He began with
the masthead of “Straight Talk”, was
once heralded as a political maverick,
but has publicly confessed now to have
a great deal in common with his potential
predecessor.
There is the story of an alternative.
While Barack Obama cannot
sympathize with those of us who cannot
remember what it was like to have
been held in a POW camp, to have
owned multiple houses, or to have married
into money, he has concrete solutions
that his detractors seem to ignore,
with an almost religious determination,
time and time again. He will suspend
the ethanol subsidy that has helped in
driving domestic food prices to an alltime
high.
He will put a new focus on
the American effort in Afghanistan,
where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have
They are fed up with the constant
deployment of men and women and
the enormous amounts of money that
has been feeding the war.
The public’s despair has
been a major advantage to the Democrats.
The Obama campaign has
been working hard to try to correlate
McCain to President George W.
Bush. (And we know George is such
a fan favorite.)
This makes sense. Both
McCain and Bush support staying
in Iraq until victory is reached. Both
have stated that they will never give
up in Iraq. McCain has even volunteered
to follow Osama Bin Laden
“to the gates of hell.” Translation: If
McCain is elected we will remain in
“Obama”-Freshmen James
Moses
regrouped anew, while pursuing a
more realistic foreign policy that does
not assume that the entire world revolves
around North America and Europe.
He will reasonably and seriously
confront Iran over its nuclear program,
and entrench Hamid Karzai’s regime
in Afghanistan against a resurgent fundamentalist
movement there that could
make our seven year war on terror a
complete waste of blood and money.
Fiscally, his platform
sounds more rational than the competition’s:
He will roll back the Bush
administration’s tax-cuts and cut taxes
for the other, neglected, 95 percent of
the population - the middle and lower
classes on whose domestic spending a
substantial amount of the United States
GNP depends. He will make a special
effort to keep American jobs from being
outsourced by removing George
Bush’s subsidies for such companies.
The crux of his fi scal theory is Iraq:
we lose over $10 billion fi ghting a war
that has been neither well funded nor
executed-valid, considering that most
government programs, including social
security, are being bled dry by this
diversion of federal revenues.
Essentially, the American
economy, society, and country rests on
the backs of its people: Barack Obama
understands this.
Straight talk on War in Iraq
Iraq for at least another four years.
The Republicans like to
spotlight that the casualties in Iraq
have decreased in recent months.
However it cannot be ignored that
over 30,662 American men and
woman have either died or have
been wounded since the war began
on March 19, 2003. Not to mention
the 1,267,401 Iraqi deaths, many of
which have been innocent civilians
including women and children.
Republicans need to get off
their capital high horses and realize
that this war is not winnable. In order
to withdraw and put this war behind
us, the only logical approach would
be to elect Obama. Let’s face it:
we’ve given the Republicans enough
unwarranted chances.
“Obama all the way.”-Junior
Jamir Benitez