Bub was here: Now what?

President-elect Obama showed up unannounced in Blue Grass late Wednesday afternoon as I was pulling in with a load of split firewood. He wore old jeans and work boots. I tossed him a spare pair of leather work gloves, and we started pitching sticks on the pile behind my back gate.

He didn’t say anything for a while.

Lucy and Sophie, our two Yellow Labs, sniffed him up, decided he wasn’t edible and wandered off to shampoo themselves in fresh cow flops. The results of good breeding always amaze me.

“Ever live out here?” I asked.

“Nope. Big cities. Honolulu. New York, Boston, Chicago.”

“Aren’t too many Obamas in Blue Grass,” I admitted. “Baracks are scarce, too. You’d get a nickname pretty fast. Something like Goose or Tater.” Read more

Here’s the scoop: There was a fourth debate

Senators McCain and Obama came to Blue Grass this week for a fourth debate, because they recognized that my vote might decide the 2008 election.

We sat at my kitchen table. They came dressed for farm work, both in new bib overalls and ironed flannel shirts.

Me: Senator Obama, say some good things about Senator McCain.

Obama: Well, let’s be clear. For a man his age and considering the dreadful things he’s been through over many decades, like skin cancer and five years of torture, yes, for a man his age, I think he’s doing okay. I hope I’m as chipper at 72.

Me: Senator McCain, same question about Senator Obama.

McCain: That one gives a great speech, which he learned how to do at those Ivy League schools that Bill Ayers and other terrorists might have attended while they were making bombs. I dropped bombs on Hanoi, but I sure didn’t make them in my college dormitory room. Senator Obama has yet to deny that he associated with all the terrorists, socialists and Woodstockists that he could have associated with back then. America doesn’t know the real Barack Obama, and neither do I. Read more

Real-estate tax policies: What would McCain and Obama do?

What are the real-estate tax policies of Senators McCain and Obama?

I’m not sure reliable answers are available. Campaign promises are preferences, not contractual obligations. Circumstances — the economy, control of Congress, competing demands — will shape what either wants to do as President as well as what is feasible. But mostly neither has said.

On fiscal policy, they share some positions. Both appear to like balanced budgets, pay as you go and deficit reduction, but both have proposed policy packages that would increase the national debt—McCain more than Obama.

Both urge tax cuts and spending as part of a post-election stimulus package now being worked up in Washington, but with different components and orientations.

McCain now supports continuing the Bush tax cuts that he opposed when they were enacted. Obama supports tax cuts for the majority of taxpayers and tax increases for the top five percent.

The tax positions that both candidates have taken in their stump speeches differ from the positions their campaign staffs and economic advisers advance. Read more

Obama and McCain on real estate and rural issues

Since I write a weekly column on country real estate, I decided to visit the websites of Senators Barack Obama (www.barackobama.com) and John McCain (www.johnmccain.com) to learn what they thought about my special interest.

Candidate issue positions are not promissory notes. They’re more like inclinations, subject to whatever. Still, they suggest the direction in which a candidate prefers to fall.

First, however, I looked into what property each candidate owns.

Senator McCain, in a sense, “owns” the most real estate, which fell in his lap because he married a beer distributor’s daughter who took over the business and has money to invest. Mrs. McCain or her trusts own their real estate, which includes at least seven properties. Mrs. McCain bought three Phoenix condos and two in San Diego for $11 million over the last four years.

Newsweek recently disclosed that Mrs. McCain failed to pay property taxes for four years on her La Jolla, Calif., condo where an elderly aunt lives. The back taxes were paid last week. This seems to be nothing more than a failure to receive the bill. Read more