Gee, thanks for all the updates RR. I just read about the Keating letter. Very interesting.

I am surprised at the VA polls JL posted, and although things are definitely looking up for Obama and his supporters, I still am cautiously optimistic. Then again, damn, he is doing well.

I kind of think should McCain stay on this "destroy" mission of his (and sounds like he will), that in the long run it will make him look worse and worse. IMHO it is "mostly" his base that's eating it up. We'll see. As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to the polls within the next few day, because I suspect another small bounce for BHO. Maybe wishful thinking, but I kind of think that will be the case.

As far as this 30 minute primetime ad, I just am reading about that as well. Do we know exactly what that half hour will consist of? I mean, I'm sure it'll be to promote his campaign, but what will they cover in a half hour?



TIS

Probably be 30 minutes highlighting, to use propaganda language, "the issues that are facing us at this most critical time in our history," the campaign would probably give their talking points in solving the following domestic and foreign policy problems like:

(1) Trying to stabilize and rebound in our current stalled economy, i.e. with that "tax cut for 95% of the Working Class" (which is pure rhetoric, but accuracy/reality are no place in propaganda, but only to highlight the narrative that a campaign wants to paint.)
(2) Stop American jobs from outsourcing overseas
(3) 30-40+ million Americans without healthcare
(4) The resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
(5) The emergence of a more powerful, and possibly nuclear, Iran
(6) Iraq Iraq Iraq, and us getting the fuck out of there in 2010.
(7) Russia too perhaps?


Now all this I assume won't be presented as simply a speech. IF anything, I assume it will be done in a "conversationalist" fashion, with Obama talking to the viewers out there in Prime Time America, much like that 2 minute ad of his on the economy done some time ago.

Also assume that the campaign will try to make the case that Obama represents an "America United for Change," and have people from various backgrounds across the country, blue and red states, to give testimony of their support for the candidate. From Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans to unemployed blue collar Workers to gun-owning Sportsmen to financially struggling male Southerners/Westerners to Women (At-Home Suburban Moms) to minorities (black, Latino, Asian, White, etc.) to religious piety people (Evangelicals? Catholics? Jews?), Rural Farmers and Urban Dwellers, disgruntled Republicans/Conservatives (so-called "Obamacons") and so forth.

Don't expect to see people that would/may offend other interests, like Muslim-Americans (may taint Obama further as a "foreign terrorist spy") to Gays (don't wanna offend Virgina, North Carolina, Indiana, etc.) and so on.

I would also expect for the campaign to highlight in personalizing the candidate in contrast with his opponent: Young, Dynamic, Charismatic, Sexy* and most of all NEW. This will be done by several ways, but assuredly they'll deploy one of the oldest prop image cliches in politics....the family.

Worked for Kennedy, didn't it? Plus notice how JFK had several photo-ops of playing football, in contrast with his predecessor Eisenhower's legendary love for golf. And make a point that Obama has been shown a few times playing BASKETBALL**, which like football, is synomonous with energy and stamina and durability.

I might be right or wrong, but don't be shocked if alot of that stuff I've just mentioned do appear in that 30 minute commercial.

Perhaps the Obama campaign is hoping that this would be the club that would smash the skull of the McCain campaign once and for all, blood and brains all over the wall.

*=Don't look at me. Betty White on Craig Ferguson's late night program said she wanted to jump him and give him some "experience." Yuck!
**=About time we had a President who played an American-invented sport.

All good suggestions RR. I can imagine he'll absolutely cover the economy, since that has to be the number one issue. Boy, talk about paying a pretty price or that half hour. He's at a definite advantage there. I am curious what his campaign took for September.

Listening to NPR just this afternoon (I have a long drive to/from work), the were talking to people from a swing state. I can't remember which one, FLA or OH I think. Anyway, the guy on the phone said that there were tons of BHO commercials.
Me, not living in a swing state, see them, but I can't say I've felt bombarded with them. I can imagine how FL/MI/OH/CO/PA and all the other swing states must feel.

TIS

Someone at a blog wrote this, speculating the strategy:

"Obama has alot of money; McCain does not. This is how he gets him to spend it all. Either McCain spends it and his slime commercial money dries up OR he allows Obama to have 30 minutes with minimal response. This is a strategy move. Obama's campaign is unconventional to say the least."

Considering how Obama is the first American presidential candidate in history to have over a million campaign donors, and how before it was retracted, the campaign flied the idea that the number had grown to 4 million!

Now they say that it is "Under 4 million donors."

That's right. I can imagine McCain will want his half hour too.

And, not only that, with Obama doing well in swing states, it likely will force McCain to spend money in states (I think Indiana is one) that he didn't think he'd have to spend money on. Who would have thought it'd be so close in some of these states.

We won't know til it's over, but I am very curious to see what voter turnout is, considering how man people O had on the ground.

Btw, just got my ballot today.


TIS

Anyway TIS, I realized something else after posting my speculation on that 30 minute commercial.

Every candidate's campaign pushes the myth of the politician, their life narrative, which has a mixture of truth, half-truths, and outright bullshit.

For instance, Bob Dole/George H.W. Bush/JFK/McCain/Kerry were all war heroes who suffered with valor for their nation.

Eisenhower/Grant/Washington/Jackson/Zach Taylor were all Victorious War Generals.

Clinton/Nixon/Lincoln were both from impoverished homes, who rose to become President, the American Dream in real life. You get the picture.

With Obama, its that he was born to a white mother and a black father, who left that family permanently shortly after his birth. Growing up in places around the world from Kansas(her origin) to Hawaii (where he was born) to Indonesia, he did go to Ivy League elite schools in Columbia and Harvard, where he was elected the first black President of the school's prestigious Law Review.

He had the most prestigious options available to him after law school, including clerking in the U.S. Supreme Court, but he decided instead to go to Chicago to work as a community activist for the struggling low-income/working class residents.

But the propaganda beginnings of his "Change" campaign slogan began in 2004 at the DNC, where in his keynote address, he said: "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America." In fact, he announced his presidential campaign in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the site where Abraham Lincoln in 1858 gave his "House Divided" speech.

Symbolism is forever vital in politics. Notice how his "A More Perfect Union" speech on race (in response to the Jeremiah Wright scandal earlier this spring) was given at the Constitutional Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, just a stone's throw away from Independence Hall (where of course the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were both signed.)

But more than anything else, that ad may play up the narrative of his bi-racial family, how he's got "...relatives that look like Bernie Mac and Margaret Thatcher,", his white grandfather who fought in General Patton's Army during World War 2, his Asian Buddhist half-sister, his (supposed) ironic distant relations to Jefferson Davis, the President of the rebellious southern Confederate States of America, you get the picture.

Now this aint a love letter or a sloppy kiss. I'm just speculating on the political image crafted so far by the campaign, how much of all those factors will be pounded possibly, if they go that far on the topic, in the 30 minute commercial.

Apparently from Missouri...



Then again, am I hypocritical?

I mean I've made fun of McCain being old here and there. Am I being one-sided here?

Strategic Vision (R)
10/6-8/2008;
Mode: Live Telephone Interviews

Florida
1,200 Likely Voters, +/-3
Obama 52, McCain 44
(9/23: Obama 45, McCain 48)

Ohio
1,200 Likely Voters, +/-3
Obama 48, McCain 46
(9/9: Obama 44, McCain 48)

A couple of weeks ago, I believe it was MSNBC that ran McCain's biography one night and Obama's the other. They both have completely different yet interesting backgrounds. Needless to say, I was more familiar with McCain's, as most are. It would be good for Obama to add that personal story in the half hour. With all the spin implying he's scary or a terrorist or whatever, people can see a personal side of his story.


Btw, where do you get those poll results? CNN use to have their Daily poll at the bottom of their political page. I'd check it daily. Ever since Obama took a decent lead, they took it down.

TIS

These polls need citing, BUT -

North Carolina

Obama 48, McCain 43, Barr 2
(9/20: McCain 45, Obama 45, Barr 1)

Gov: Perdue (D) 43, McCrory (R) 41, Munger (L) 2
(9/20: Perdue 41, McCrory 43, Munger 3)

There are many sites, but this site lists just about every poll there is. It also updates them as they are released, and has a link to the source.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html

I think when someone starts pulling too far ahead the media does its best to keep it competitive. No one wants a story about how someone is running away with it.

You're probably right. The cable news networks' entire evening programming is now dedicated to the elections.

McCain faces conservative backlash over mortgage plan

By Alexander Mooney
CNN

(CNN) -- John McCain is facing a fresh round of anger from members of his own party deeply opposed to the Arizona senator's proposal for the federal government to purchase troubled mortgage loans.

The pointed backlash from several economic conservatives -- many of whom already distrust McCain's commitment to free-market principles -- couldn't come at a worse time for the Republican presidential nominee less than four weeks before Election Day as he stares at a significant deficit in national and state polls.

But at a time when McCain can't afford to worry about a lack of support from his party's base, several conservatives are openly criticizing the plan as a flagrant reward for reckless behavior among lenders.

In a sharply worded editorial on its Web site Thursday, the editors of The National Review -- an influential bastion of conservative thought -- derided the plan as "creating a level of moral hazard that is unacceptable" and called it a "gift to lenders who abandoned any sense of prudence during the boom years." VideoWatch the candidates' plans get the 'no bull' test »

Prominent conservative blogger Michelle Malkin went one step further, calling the plan "rotten" and declaring on her blog, "We're Screwed '08."

Matt Lewis, a contributing writer for the conservative Web site Townhall.com, told CNN the plan only further riles conservatives upset with McCain's backing of the massive government bailout plan passed last week.

"Fundamentally, the problem is John McCain accepts a lot of liberal notions, unfortunately. There is somewhat of a populist streak," he said. "Most conservatives really did not like the bailout to begin with, and this was really kind of picking at the scab."

It's not just the plan conservatives are unhappy with, but how it was first unveiled as well -- out of the blue at Tuesday's town-hall debate during which Republicans were instead hoping McCain would present a spirited attack on what they view as Obama's overly liberal positions.

"Here we are watching the debate hoping this is a good format for John McCain to excel at, and the first thing he does is spring this on us," Lewis said. "This is not a good way to win friends and influence people."

"He spent the entire debate assailing massive government spending -- while his featured proposal of the right was to heap on more massive government spending to pursue home ownership retention at all costs," Malkin said.

It's a proposal that is fundamentally at odds with the conservative principle of individual responsibility, and is the latest in a string of public spats conservatives have had over the years and in this election with their party's standard bearer.

But for McCain, the move is another gamble for a candidate in need of a game-changer and one that lends credence to the self-proclaimed maverick's repeated claim that he's unafraid of bucking his own party.

Under the plan, the government would buy up bad mortgage loans, converting them into low-interest, FHA-insured loans. To qualify, homeowners would have to be delinquent in their payments or be likely to fall behind in the near future.

They also would have to live in the home in question -- no investment properties would be eligible. They would need to have demonstrated their creditworthiness when they purchased the property by making a substantial down payment and by providing documentation of their income and other assets.

McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said on a conference call Wednesday that the McCain plan could start quickly because the authority was granted by last week's passage of the $700 billion economic bailout bill. The plan could also fall under the umbrella of the Hope for Homeowners program authorized by the housing rescue bill passed in July and the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But the plan, which the McCain campaign appeared to be finalizing even after the candidate announced it, significantly departs from the Arizona senator's original proposal and has left many conservatives scratching their heads:

"The original plan relied on lenders taking the hit," Holtz-Eakin said on the conference call. "This bypasses that step."

Instead, the estimated $300 billion tab essentially gets transferred to taxpayers, among the funding already provided by the bailout bill -- a proposal that may rile not only fiscal conservatives, but also struggling homeowners who have worked to keep up their mortgage payments.

"The guy who works two jobs and struggles to actually pay his mortgage is penalized. He would be better off under this plan to just quit paying his mortgage," Lewis said. "And this fundamentally goes against a lot of conservative principles and individual responsibility."

Barack Obama is counting on McCain's proposal not playing well with a broad swath of middle-class voters. Obama said at a rally Thursday morning it guarantees "the taxpayers would lose," and banks and lenders would be rewarded.

But McCain is hoping the plan will resonate with moderate and undecided voters, many of whom viewed the bailout as a giveaway to Wall Street CEOs. This plan, the McCain campaign argues, better steers the money to Main Street, where struggling homeowners need immediate relief.

"John McCain's plan represents absolutely no new expense to the taxpayer, but simply refocuses priorities to more directly assist the homeowners who are hurting instead of greed on Wall Street," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

But it remains to be seen if the Arizona senator's latest roll of the dice will pay off.

"Liberals who might actually be inclined to support a welfare check such as this are already going to vote for Barack Obama, and conservatives, who view this as irresponsible and even apostasy, are turned off by it," Lewis said. "This is both bad policy and bad politics."

Now Things are getting even UGLIER...

http://justjared.buzznet.com/tags/sarah-palin/

Sarah Palin's SAT score: 841.

High school grades:
Foreign Language - D
Physical Sciences - C
Social Studies - C
Math - C
English - B
Biological Sciences - B

------------------------------

I wouldn't put much stock in grades. Shit, Kerry and Bush both had the same grade-range at Yale, and most of us have the perception that we've kicked buckets smarter than Dubya, right?

Also, I got a D in high school physics myself.

I don't know, Ronnie. Getting Cs in college is a little different. With grades like that in high school, what kind of college could one expect to get into in the first place?

But I'm sure some of the conservatives just don't know what the fuss is all about. I mean, who needs a President with all that fancy book learnin', right?

We don't need an elitist in power. Lower grades mean she relates to the common man

You know, so many posters on this Board use terms that they never define. What in the world is a common man and what is an elitist?

voter fraud

more fraud

common man = our candidate
elitist = their candidate

Fraud in a presidential election? I'm shocked SHOCKED shocked! And yes, I'm acting like the French police chief in CASABLANCA.

This poll has an absurd number of undecideds, but any candidate polling below 40 at this point in a presidential election has to be scared shitless:

FOX NEWS/OPINION DYNAMICS
Obama - 46
McCain - 39

WSOC-TV poll - North Carolina

MCCAIN - 48%
OBAMA - 46%

Civitas Poll - North Carolina

OBAMA - 48%
MCCAIN - 43%

Most GOP Insiders Think Obama Will Win

The National Journal's Political Insiders Poll finds that 80% of Republicans believe there's a high likelihood that Sen. Barack Obama will win the presidential election.

In addition, 67% of Republicans said Obama did more to help himself in the second presidential debate than did Sen. John McCain.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazin...p_20080418_6542

elitist = individual who can think a bit.
common man = the average dumb guy.

SVSG - one of the best posts EVER.

Honestly, though, I think it's completely irrelevant to post what Sarah Palin's high school grades were. She shouldn't be judged on who she was at 17. Nobody should be. She's obviously WAY smarter than those grades indicate. She may try to dumb herself down with her "hockey mom" and "Joe Six Pack" references (and my least favorite-"you betcha") to try and relate to the "average dumb guy", but the truth is that she's WAY WAY smarter than that.

Well, I hope so.

Were McCain/GOP that predictable?

Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama

by Christopher Buckley

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama

Barack 'Osama' on Rensselaer County ballots

TROY — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's last name is spelled "Osama" on hundreds of absentee ballots mailed out this week to voters in Rensselaer County.
The misspelling, which elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist was simply a typo, is causing embarrassment for the county.

''No question this is an honest mistake innocently done,'' said Edward McDonough, the Democratic commissioner. ''We catch almost everything.''

''This was a typo,'' said Republican Commissioner Larry Bugbee. ''We have three different staff members who proof these things and somehow the typo got by us.''

Officials say the flawed ballots were sent to approximately 300 voters. On row 1A Barack Obama's name is spelled Barack Osama.

Is it a Freudian slip, intentional act or a mistake? Voters are sure to have opinions, and one pol pointed out that the letters 's' and 'b' are not exactly keyboard neighbors.

But even the county Democratic election commissioner is apologizing for what he calls a terrible mistake.

McDonough said the absentee ballots went out to voters in Brunswick, Nassau, Sand Lake, Schaghticoke and Schodack with the error.

So far three people have called to point it out, he said. Those people will get new ballots sent to them.

One Sand Lake resident who caught the misspelling, and who asked to remain anonymous, was skeptical.

''It's a little suspicious and at least grossly incompetent,'' the voter said. "If I crossed out the name and wrote in the right spelling my ballot would be invalid."

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=728326