Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he'd be casting his vote for Barack Obama come election day. 

The endorsement from the secretary of state who served under George W. Bush for five years, crosses party lines and has been highly anticipated.

The Republican general, who is more moderate than many in his party, said he would wait until after the presidential debates and go into the final weeks of the campaign to make his endorsement. 

"Both of [the candidates] are distinguished Americans, who are patriotic and dedicated to the welfare of this country." Powell said on Meet the Press. "Either one of them would be a good president." 

Powell has spent time with both candidates, but has been particularly engaging in conversations with Obama on foreign policy and domestic issues in recent months.

Leading up to his endorsement of the Democratic senator, Powell cited concern for his own party. 

"I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years," he said. " It has moved more to the right than I would like to see it." 

Beyond the dismay he feels about the Republican Party, Powell said he believes Obama is ready for the job and displays a fervor requisite of the next president who will need "to fix the reputation that we've left with the rest of the world." 

"I watched Mr. Obama, during this seven week period," Powell said. "He displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge, and an approach to looking at problems like [the economic crisis] and picking a vice president that is ready to be president on day one.

Powell praised Obama for exhibiting "intellectual vigor," and giving "us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people." 

"He is crossing lines: ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines," Powell said of the candidate, while denouncing the Republican Party's "narrow" campaign tactics. 

The endorsement from Powell is a a major success for the Democratic Party as the general is the most prominent Republican to throw his support behind Obama. 

McCain said the Powell's endorsement "doesn't come as a surprise," and also noting he has the support of four other former Republican secretaries of state: Kissinger, Baker, Eagleburger and Haig. 

"I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage," Powell said in closing. "And for that reason, I'll be voting for Senator Barack Obama." 

Getting it Right: Second presidential debate fact checker

In matters of truth, both candidates have had squabbles along the road. Following the vice-presidential debate, in which Gov. Sarah Palin had more than her fair share of factual slip-ups, and to be fair, Sen. Joe Bided did, too, the presidential candidates took the stage in there second of a series of three presidential debates.

Below are a few of the candidate's embroidered meanderings and slip-ups from the town hall-style debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.

• Responding to a question about what the recent $700 billion bailout package will do to help ordinary Americans, McCain boasted about his résumé and the suspension of his campaign to deal with drafting the bill, while citing Obama as "the second highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in history." Yeah, and in case you didn't hear him the first time, the contributions were the biggest, in, underscore, "... history." Too bad McCain made such a fuss over this alligation because, according to Free Republic, a grassroots, independent organization, Obama was not the second largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributions, but the third.
  

• Addressing the hot-button topic of energy use, Obama advocated for new sources of oil and alternative energy, meanwhile he got stuck on the number. "I believe in the need for increased oil production," Obama said. "We're going to have to explore new ways to get more oil, and that includes offshore drilling. It includes telling the oil companies, that currently have 68 million acres that they're not using, that either you use them or you lose them." According Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan website devoted to politcal fact-checking, however. "those 68 million leased acres are not producing oil, but they are not necessarily untouch ... In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, there were more than 15,000 holes that were being proposed, started or finished, according to the Bureau of Land Management ... these acres of land that these holes sit on are not counted as being 'producing,' but they are far from untouched."

• We heard both the candidates talk themselves silly when it comes to earmarks and the role they play in terms of the federal budget. In the midst of all the facts and figures the candidates cited, some were, thankfully, correct, while others were just taken out of context.

Obama, explaining how he would get the U.S. out of debt, said we would need to look at the country's spending and revenue. He mentioned McCain's concern when it comes to earmarks, which Obama said account for $18 billion of the national budget. When it comes to how much we're spending on earmarks, Obama was indeed correct, according to an article on Forbes.com.

The Washington Post criticized McCain's continuous remarks on its fact checker. "McCain continues to make an issue out of earmarks, which are only a small part of the overall federal budget," Glenn Kessler wrote. "Earmarks are just $16 billion out of a more than a $2 trillion budget," indicating that McCain gave the issue of earmarks unnecessary attention.

• Politicians seem to have a knack for creating technology; first Al Gore created the Internet, McCain was the brain the BlackBerry and, now, Obama is crediting the government for creating the computer as a way to communicate. Speaking about American innovation, the Democratic presidential nominee said, "The computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate." What Obama probably meant was the Internet. Communication had nothing to do with the first computers, which had nothing to do with making contact — in fact, they were a way for academics to isolate themselves further in their studies. And neither did the government: Apple and IBM were the pioneering companies when it came to the production of PC's, according to Wikipedia.
  

A litany of other fact checkers will pop up in the days and hours following the debates, so be sure to check them out.

The third and final presidential debate will take place Oct. 15 at Hofstra University.

'Why wait?'

There's always something special about the first.  The first steps are pivotal, the first kiss is special,  the first cut is the deepest and the list goes on. And there's the pure glory that comes with being the first. There are those, such as George Washington the first president of the United States, who will be remembered just because they were the first (and ergo be the only president who has state named after him). And then there were thousands, who, on Monday, became the first to cast their votes for the 2008 presidential election.  

Those first voters didn't wait; they wanted to be first, and took part in what is called early voting. Early voting is a system that allows registered voters, in some states (click here for a state-by-state breakdown), to cast their votes prior to election day, either in person at their local county clerk's office or by mail. The latter, is synonymous with absentee voting, which allows people to send their ballots through the mail. 

Several states — such as Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia, which opened up the early voting polls this week — allow its constituents to cast their ballots early without an excuse. Other states, however, require an excuse from those wishing to vote early. 

In the coming weeks, more than half of the states and the District of Columbia, will allow their registered voters to make their pick for president well before election day, according to MSNBC. 

Paul Gronke of the Early Voting Information Center told MSNBC that as many as one-third of those registered will vote early this year. 

The drive for early voting, Pedro Cortés, the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said in USAToday, is to increase voter turnout and make the experience all the more convenient. 

"The operative word is options," he said. 

People like options, and when it comes to voting, we've got them. Vote by mail, stop by your county clerk's office and be the first. After all, who doesn't want to come in first? 

poll by twiigs.com