election resources

so I'm supporting barack obama for president.  some of my friends are supporting mccain.  i respect their opinions and i think that there are many substantive differences between the candidates.  i believe the policy distinctions along with some basic character judgements are enough for most people to make a decision.  i tend to get frustrated when anyone misrepresent candidate positions or history of either side, because given the previous point about substantive distinctions being so clear, it's really unnecessary to make stuff up.  so what ever side you are on, please, just get the facts.
one thing i've heard a lot about (conservative emails, pundits, candidates, etc) is how obama wants to raise taxes in an extreme way.  i think there is a pretty simple way to illustrate the positions here.  just look at this chart - click it to enlarge it.  i believe it was from the washington post originally.  it's pretty clear that mccain gives the biggest tax cuts to the wealthiest and the smallest tax cuts to the poorest.  it's pretty clear that obama's plan favors the poorest americans over the wealthiest.  just look at it, it's easy to visually process.  no need to jump into nuance here.   you've got to be making over $600K per year to see a tax increase under obama's plan.

more tax policy detail: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/
you'll also get emails claiming all kinds of things like obama is a muslim, or obama wants to tax home sales, etc.  whenever you hear something hard to believe, just look it up on a non-partisan website like factcheck.org.  and if you find out it is incorrect, you should consider the trustworthiness of the source in the future and confront them with the facts.