Rhe End is Near / Just the Facts

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Rondo of Doom

Start:
The politics of divide and conquer really got started with Lee Atwater in 1988 - but it was perfected by Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Trent Lott, Bill Frist, Dick Armey and host of other sociopaths in 1994, perfectly cloned specimens of arrogance, vile and poison straight from the Reagan era, wrapped up in old time religion. It was man the torpedoes and full speed ahead - destroy all targets.
These villains promised the world to their constituents, but their real focus was the demonization of their enemies (e.g. The Democrats). While they delivered practically nothing on their promises (but of course said they did), the demonizing part succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. We began 12 years of a complete us vs. them method of governance. There was no big tent -- just a big cesspit.
All campaigns are nasty - that is part just part of the SOP. But for some reason 2008 seems particularly more mean spirited and vitriolic that the norm. Partly because we quickly forget how bad the past ones were. But more because we see the nastiness every day -- sometimes 20 times per day - on the countless news and information outlets that are clamoring to air this crap in the hope of selling more commercials for a few more bucks. The word "news" just doesn't exist anymore -- the Making of the President 2008 is pure soap opera - a really bad version of Peyton Place.
The name calling and character assassination from the right is at an all time high - Democrats are not tax and spend anymore - those would be kind words. To the Republican party anyone on the left is a socialist, a communist, is godless or just plain old anti-American. The GOP does hatred with such aplomb, it is as if they all went to the Lee Strasberg School of Method Acting - they are their characters. Rest assured there is not one iota of guilt in their collective brains - the hate and lies are spewed as if there are no repercussions to this kind of talk. Neither Michele Bachmann nor Sarah Palin have absolutely one shred of guilt in their conscience after labeling half of this nation as traitors. In fact, they are proud of it. Liddy Dole thinks it is just fine to call Kay Hagan godless. And when any of them are caught in their own words - they just lie to deflect all responsibility. Even if they are called on their lies -- they just lie some more.
The Republican party - which has proven to be nothing more than a bunch of fascist brown-shirts - will not go gently into the night - win or lose. The current crop of GOP leaders and loyalists are not driven by love of their country, they do not desire a better life for our society as a whole and they have a deep-seated hate towards intellectual progress. These 21st century Republicans are completely driven by the base emotions of power, greed and evil. Look at how people like Michele Bachmann, Liddy Dole, Norm Coleman and Scott Garrett have been talking to their constituents - saying that electing anyone other than themselves is tantamount to putting enemies of the state in office. And in this season political kabuki, they are ready to pull down the whole country if they slip from the reins of power.
This is more than governing by fear, it is brainwashing. We are the Manchurian Nation. Only it is not Angela Lansbury showing the Queen of Diamonds to Laurence Harvey. We have Sarah Palin winking to Rich Lowry and millions of other hard-up Republicans on national television giving them their cue to begin the "plan of action."
Where did this country go wrong? Even under Nixon and Reagan - two pretty loathsome characters - it was not this bad. Yes they cheated and lied and stole - but I don't remember the country being so split as it is now. I don't remember people hating each other so much because of their President.
The politics of divide and conquer really got started with… (go to Start to continue)

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James Kotecky: "Remix the Wealth!"

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Elizabeth Dole links Kay Hagan to godlessness, and Joe the Plumber is going Hollywood – or at least Nashville.

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What Does Voting Intimidation Look Like?

The ACLU's Voting Rights Project has been working to ensure that anyone who wants to vote can. The project's director, Laughlin McDonald, discusses what some people are doing to try and keep people from casting their ballot.

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Video Your Vote and Fight Voting Suppression: Acts & Rules

You can fight voter suppression and here is how

You can upload your recorded voting issues here


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Palin Talks 2012, McCain Aide "Speechless"

Transcript of CNN's response:

Wolf Blitzer: And this just coming into the "Situation Room," the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin now speaking out openly about her intentions in 2012 if, if she and John McCain were to lose this contest next Tuesday. In an interview with ABC News, Sarah Palin is now saying, she would be interested in remaining a serious national political figure, going ahead to 2012. She was asked what happens in 2012 if you lose on Tuesday, would you simply go back to Alaska? Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News asked her and Palin said this, and I will read it to you verbatim according to an ABC News transcript: "Absolutely not," Sarah Palin says. "I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we've taken, that ... that would ... bring this whole ... I'm not doin' this for naught," and that is a direct quote from Sarah Palin. Clearly, leaving open the possibility that she would be interested in leading the Republican Party in 2012 if she and John McCain were to lose this presidential contest right now. Let's go to Dana Bash. She has been covering the McCain campaign reaction from the rather blunt statement from Sarah Palin that she would in fact be interested in leading the Republican Party going forward after Tuesday if they lose?

Dana Bash: I just got off of the phone, Wolf, with a senior McCain adviser and I read this person the quote and I think it is fair to say that this person was speechless. There was a long pause and I just heard a "huh" on the other end of the phone. This is certainly not a surprise to anybody who has watched Sarah Palin that she is interested in potentially future national runs, and she is being urged to by a lot of people inside of the Republican Party if they do lose, but it is an "if" and people inside of the McCain campaign do not want any discussion that has an "if" in front of it six days before the election, they don't want any discussion at all, any kind of hypothetical talk about running for the next time around. So certainly, this is not at least initially being received well inside of the McCain campaign.

Wolf Blitzer: I am not surprised, not surprised at all. It is one of those "wow, she is talking about 2012 if we lose," that is not supposed to be something that you say. You are supposed to say, "well, I'm not looking ahead, I'm not looking ahead only to Tuesday," and those are the talking points she's supposed to be saying, but she is obviously blunt and she is looking ahead if something were to happen on Tuesday that she wouldn't be happy with.

I don't blame Palin. Maybe she should have her aides call McCain a 'codger' and 'unhinged'.

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Early voting started a week ago, already there are problems

Huffington Post
"We've already had reports that people don't understand the ballot instructions," a Democratic Campaign official in North Carolina told OffTheBus. Speaking off the record, he said that the Board of Elections is "supposed to be educating voters at the polls, but so far the results are uneven. The word's not getting out consistently. Simply handing out a blue piece of paper isn't all that effective."

Adding to voter confusion, the GOP intends to challenge the legality of certain new voter registrations on Election Day, something they are already doing in Ohio. "This year I think we're going to see more first-time voters -- young people and minorities -- than ever before, and as first-time voters, they are likely to be challenged," sociologist Wayne Baker, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, told OffTheBus. Baker blogs the election at OurValues.org.

If two percent or more of North Carolina voters unknowingly "skip" the presidential contest, it may very well have an impact on the outcome. In 1992, George H.W. Bush narrowly defeated Bill Clinton in North Carolina by getting 43.34 percent of the vote versus 42.65 percent for Clinton. Polls indicate that this year the presidential race in North Carolina might be similarly close.

The Brennan Center recently rated North Carolina among the six best prepared states for voting system failures such as machine breakdowns and programming errors. The state's preparedness for hardware and software problems improved dramatically after their touch-screen machines failed in Carteret County in 2004 and more than 4,000 votes were lost. "I've been telling less-prepared states they don't want to become another North Carolina, waiting for a meltdown to improve their practices. And I don't want North Carolina to be another North Carolina. I hope the ballot design flaw doesn't throw the results of its presidential contest into doubt," said Norden.

McCain and Milwaukee

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Joe Biden in Florida: "GET UP "

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American Stories

Comments from Leah McElrath Renna
Although only time will tell, it appears that the Obama infomercial accomplished exactly what it needed to do: soothing skittish white undecided voters without alienating current supporters.

1. With a set evocative of the Oval Office, Obama's presence in the piece served as a preview to what it would look like if he were to be elected as President. By providing a chance for the still uneasy undecideds to envision this future, it will likely work to move some of those voters out of their reluctance. Despite the McCain campaign's increasingly strident assertions to the contrary, Obama gave every appearance of being more than "ready" to step into the role of a world leader.

2. By showing numerous photos of Obama interacting with white working class Americans of different ages (in addition to black and Latino Americans), the infomercial leveraged the power of visual imagery to contextualize Obama as "one of us" within the minds of those voters. This is a welcome and much-needed change from advertisements by the campaign that have, up until now, sometimes focused too much on words alone to convey their messages. In addition, the narratives within the piece evoked emotional response and connection -- again, very welcome and somewhat different than the frequently more conceptual and cognitive appeal of previous Obama campaign advertising.

3. For those who resonate to the cognitive, the infomercial also clearly presented (again) specifics of Obama's plans to address the most pressing issues on the minds of many voters. If you believe their words, undecided voters tend to respond well to specifics and to talk about "needing more information" when asked about why they continue to be undecided.

4. If, however, you do not believe the words of the undecided voters tell the whole story, the piece was still effective. By any objective measure, Obama came across as reasonable, knowledgeable and -- most importantly for the sake of television -- likeable. As anyone who is familiar with media knows, that is the primary goal of any television appearance. People seldom remember more than one point someone makes (if they even recall one) when they appear on television, but they are strongly affected by how the person comes across.

5. Within the biographical parts of the piece, Obama's life story was reiterated as epitomizing the American dream. Certainly it can be said that it would take someone very determined to continue to characterize Obama as a "terrorist" within their own minds after watching the infomercial -- and those people would never vote for him anyway. Additionally, when Obama talked about his mother's death and about his own lack of perfection -- saying even "I will not be a perfect president" -- his humanity came through powerfully.

The Obama infomercial was a risk -- but the piece will likely go down in history as yet another way that the Obama campaign has forever changed the face of political campaigning through its creative use of media.

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Early Voting in Contested Colorado

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Palin hits fruit fly research but it has helped autism

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? […] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.
Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.
This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.
Sarah Palin Greatest Hits

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What the West Needs to Know About Islam

Obama assassination plot

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What's Palin doing?

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Flashback: In 2000, McCain said there is ‘nothing wrong’ with the wealthy paying ’somewhat more’ taxes.»

At an October 2000 town hall on MSNBC’s Hardball, an audience member asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about why the rich pay higher taxes than the middle class. McCain defended progressive taxation, stating, “I think it’s to some degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford more”:

[T]he very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do when you just look at the percentages. […]
So, look, here’s what I really believe, that when you are — reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more. … And frankly, I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children, and they’re the ones that I would support tax cuts for first.

Watch it:

McCain’s tax plan delivers almost half its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, and gives the top 0.1 percent a $1 million tax cut. “Oh, yes, sure, the wealthy, the wealthy. Always be interested in when people talk about who the, quote, ‘wealthy’ are in America,” mocked McCain in February when asked about his pro-rich tax plan.

Transcript:

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. Since I’ve been studying politics, I’ve had
this question that I’ve never fully understand. Why is it that someone
like my father, who goes to school for 13 years, gets penalized in a
huge tax bracket because he’s a doctor? Why is that — why does he
have to pay higher taxes than everybody else, just because he makes
more money? Why — how is that fair?

MATTHEWS: You mean…

MCCAIN: I think your question — questioning the fundamentals of a
progressive tax system where people who make more money pay more in
taxes than a flat, across-the-board percentage. I think it’s to some
degree because we feel, obviously, that wealthy people can afford
more. We have over the years, beginning with John F. Kennedy, reduced
some of those marginal tax rates to make them less onerous.

But I believe that when you really look at the tax code today, the
very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of
loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do when
you just look at the percentages. And I think middle-income Americans,
working Americans, when the account and payroll taxes, sales taxes,
mortgage pay — all of the taxes that working Americans pay, I think
they — you would think that they also deserve significant relief, in
my view…

MATTHEWS: How many — how many people here believe that the people who
made the highest level of incomes in this country should pay a higher
percentage of their income in taxes?

Miss, do you want to follow up? Miss, do you want to follow up, do you
want to follow up, do you want to follow up? Go ahead.

MCCAIN: Do you want to follow up? Please…

MATTHEWS: Go ahead, please, go ahead.

MCCAIN: … you were dissatisfied with Chris’s comment, I could tell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I still don’t see how the — how that’s fair.
Isn’t the definition of slavery basically where you work and all your
money goes? I’m not saying this is slavery, I’m saying that isn’t the
defin — are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and
stuff, when you have — you have some people paying 60 percent overall
in a year of their money to taxes. That’s their money, not the
government’s. How is that fair? I haven’t understood it.

MCCAIN: Could I point out, one of the fundamentals of a town hall
meeting is, we respect the views of others, and let them speak. So,
look, here’s what I really believe, that when you are — reach a
certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat
more. But at the same time, that shouldn’t be totally out of
proportion. There’s some countries such as Sweden where it doesn’t pay
anything to work more than six months a year. That’s probably the
extreme.

But I think the debate in this country is more about tax cuts rather
than anything else. And frankly, I think the first people who deserve
a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate
their children, and they’re the ones that I would support tax cuts for
first.
That's exactly the idea of Barack Obama which is now called socialism.
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Palin hysterical lying that Obama wants communism like in the European Union.

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you."

To prevent that we should think that with "other countries" is meant countries like Cuba or China, McCain has repeatedly named some, the UK, Germany, France and so on. He even does not want to talk with the Spanish government, as he does not want to talk with Iran or North-Korea. It's all communism abroad and "Europe is the arch fiend of America."
But to return to American domestic politics, we know that Obama does not want higher taxes for everyone and also no big government. Why should he follow the lines of Bush43 with the largest growth of government in history, supported by McCain?
Huffington Post writes:

Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama's tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country "where the people are not free."
That yarn goes well beyond what Palin and McCain have, to this point, been comfortable asserting: mainly that Obama is proposing economic socialism. But there are a few things to keep in mind here: the McCain-Palin ticket does not oppose a progressive tax system. In fact, back in 2000, the Arizona Republican said rich people paid more in taxes because they could afford to do so.

"I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children," he said, "and they're the ones that I would support tax cuts for first."

More importantly, Obama's tax plans are less progressive than those in place during the Clinton years. In fact, the rates that people making over $250,000 would have to pay would be the same as during the 1990s -- a time definitely not marked by the absence of freedoms.

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Krauthammer Bashes Wishy-Washy Conservatives Defecting from McCain

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet
It's all about more war for Dr. Strangelove.
Charles Krauthammer's pissed today (this being a day with the letter "Y" in it).
Surrounding him are all these wishy-washy "conservatives" abandoning the sinking McCain ship. But the Hammer's having none of it …

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

See, it's not because the GOP could run a lump of human excrement and Krauthammer would vote for it -- it's because he's a contrarian, and that means that he's not going to be swayed by the wisdom of the crowd. And, principled conservative that he is, he just doesn't give a damn if that stance means he never gets invited to another rubber-chicken dinner anywhere within the Beltway.
Here he expands on this contrarian streak of his …
He continues ...

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

That, my friends, is why Krauthammer gets the big bucks. Seriously -- a beautiful single-sentence paragraph. He stands athwart those losers, damnit!
And, apparently, he has no truck …

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

He sure talks pretty, but does any of that make sense?
Sharing the WaPo's real estate today is former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson blabbering about how the "surge" in Iraq, which most Washington Post columnists insist worked, was McCain's undoing, and Kathleen Parker of the National Review writing about how it was the selection of Sarah Palin that's causing her to (possibly) bolt from the fold. Chris Hitchens didn't say anything about McCain being "erratic" -- he wrote that McCain is "someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical" and that Palin is "a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience." And Buckley, while mentioning that McCain had become "irascible and snarly," focused his criticism on matters of substance: "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?" he wrote.
But Krauthammer's having none of it -- he knows what's really important ...

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Kind of sad to see the venerable Hammer reach for such a lame talking-point. Ayers, of course, has for decades been a tweedy education professor who served as an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and won the city's "Citizen of the Year" award in 1997 for his advocacy for schools. Krauthammer knows all that, but election season brings out the stupid in people, and here he doesn't bother "standing athwart" the worst nonsense of the Rush Limbaugh crowd.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was.

Yes, because we never heard a word from any of McCain's surrogates about …

Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

Never heard of him.
Towards the end, as he often does, Chuck let's you know what the real deal is …

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism.

That's it. McCain won the Krauthammer vote when he sang Bomb, Bomb Iran, and nothing -- not his senior moments, his cluelessness on economic matters, his choice of running mate -- can shake the bloodlust from Chuck's loins. For you and I -- and most of America -- election 08 may be about the financial crisis, health care, energy and America's relationship to the rest of the world, but for Krauthammer it's always been all about killing brown people. Politics in general boils down to that -- even Chris Hitchens isn't that devoted.

Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Wow. Those nutty Islamofascists and Putin rearing his ugly head over Alaska apparently don't offer enough threat-sex for the Hammer -- he's actually invoking those terrible days of the Falkland Islands conflict.
Vote McCain, or Grenada may well slip into the hands of those dirty damn Cubans.

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Obama is Back on the Trail

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Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists

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Questions and Polls

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Al-Qaeda Supporters Endorse McCain

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.
The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.
"If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American interests," the message said, "this act will be support of McCain because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it."

Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, said he had heard about the Web site chatter but had no immediate comment.
The message is credited to a frequent and apparently respected contributor named Muhammad Haafid. However, Haafid is not believed to have a direct affiliation with al-Qaida plans or knowledge of its operations, according to SITE.

SITE senior analyst Adam Raisman said this message caught SITE's attention because there has been little other chatter on the forums about the U.S. election.

SITE was struck by the message's detailed analysis _ and apparent jubilation _ about American financial woes.
"What we try to do is get the pulse of the jihadist community," Raisman said. "And it's about the financial crisis."
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden issued a videotape just four days before the 2004 U.S. presidential election directly addressing the American people.

Palin allies report rising campaign tension

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.
Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.
"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.
Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks.
"I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there."
But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for, for instance, not attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Palin has in fact performed fairly well in the moments thought to be key for a vice presidential nominee: She made a good impression in her surprise rollout in Ohio and her speech to the Republican National Convention went better than the campaign could have imagined. She turned in an adequate performance at a debate against the Democratic Party's foremost debater.
But other elements of her image-making went catastrophically awry. Her dodging of the press and her nervous reliance on tight scripts in her first interview, with ABC News, became a national joke — driven home to devastating effect by "Saturday Night Live" comic Tina Fey. The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was "water torture," as one internal ally put it.
Read more:

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A criminal racist hoax from the mcCain-Palin campaign

It had drawn wide local and national -- even political attention, with the McCain and Obama campaigns weighing in -- but now the Ashley Todd story has fallen apart. Police in Pittsburgh have now declared the tale a hoax and the woman, who has confessed, now faces charges for her deed.

Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

He titled his posting: "Moment of Truth." Indeed.

It started yesterday afternoon with Matt Drudge screaming at the top of his site this afternoon in red type -- but no siren -- that a Pittsburgh campaign worker for McCain, age 20, had been viciously attacked and the letter "B" carved into her face, presumably by a Barack Obama fan. Her name, it soon emerged, was Ashley Todd and she had come to Pittsburgh from College Station, Texas, to help out.
It started to appear overblown (Drudge downgraded it to smaller, black type) as the police noted that it seemed to be a robbery ($60) and she did not seek medical attention. But later press reports said she would visit a hospital, Sarah Palin and maybe John McCain had reportedly called her and Obama has condemned the alleged assault, although McCain/Obama angle to story not yet confirmed.
Still later, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, and some others, grew skeptical. For one thing, the "B" was carved a little too lightly and perfectly -- and backward, as if done using a mirror. Smoking Gun probed a too-pat "Twitter" angle and Gawker and Wonkette looked at her MySpace page.
Now police say that evidence from the ATM that she reportedly visited did not match her account. And it turns out she changed her story, admitting that her assailant did not see a McCain bumper sticker and adding to her account a sexual assault and losing consciousness. Liberal bloggers poked all sorts of holes in the story, including the fact that the attack allegedly took place in a very public place. Drudge added a link titled "B...or B.S."?
Finally, early this afternoon, came word that she had made it all up. Here is full update.

Pitsburghlive.com writes:

Todd, who is white, told Detectives J.R. Smith and Scott Evans varying stories about how she ended up with black eyes and a backward letter "B" etched onto her right cheek late Wednesday. Her initial tales involved a black, knife-wielding man robbing her at a Bloomfield ATM before beating, fondling and cutting her because he was enraged by her McCain bumper sticker, police said.
"All of our radars went off from the beginning," Bryant said. "We had some serious cases going on elsewhere, and this has wasted so much time, so much time. This could have blown up into an international incident, and there were racial implications."
During interviews yesterday, Todd told detectives she remembers being in her car, driving around the city and seeing the letter on her cheek when she looked into the rearview mirror. She said she immediately thought of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama when she saw the "B," Bryant said.
"She said she doesn't remember doing it but knows it must have been her who did it," Bryant said.
Todd drove to the Bloomfield home of her friend, Dan Garcia, and told him the attack story. Garcia said he called 911.
"I believed she was telling the truth," said Garcia, 32, a first-year University of Pittsburgh law student. "This seemed like the real deal."
Bryant said the eye injuries are real but police don't know how Todd got them because she won't tell investigators.

The Hoax:



the Truth:



and the Aftermath:



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The New York Times Endorsement

Barack Obama for President
Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.
The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable.
As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.

•

Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.
In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress.
Given the particularly ugly nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates offer. The differences are profound.
Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities.
In his convention speech in Denver, Mr. Obama said, “Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”
Since the financial crisis, he has correctly identified the abject failure of government regulation that has brought the markets to the brink of collapse.

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Just the Facts; 11 days to go

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GOP furious angry about Obama's visiting his serious ill grandmother

Pointer is speechless (for about an hour)
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Brian Williams about the controll over Sarah Palin and the release of her medical records

prediction of Pointer: She will not release her medical records. Betcha!



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Richard Holbrook: Focus on the Issues

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Big Ten Battle-ground Poll

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Blame Game

click



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messages from my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog

Phillip in North Carolina:

As of now, my mother, brother, and a cousin are Obama supporters. They had fears based on the lies and fabrications circulating through e-mail and word of mouth. But once the facts were laid down for them, they felt more comfortable about Obama. They already did not like where eight years of Bush have gotten us, but they needed someone to make them feel comfortable about Obama. They needed a reason to trust him. I have one aunt that I am still working on, though. Most people just need information. Keep it factual, and they will listen.

Obama's Home Stretch Strategy

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Bachmann's Unforced Error and the Blame Game

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McCain's Support of Terrorism and Genocide in Africa

In 1987, John McCain cast several votes in an attempt to force the Reagan administration to meet with RENAMO (1), a guerrilla organization in Mozambique that State Department officials at the time described as a "terrorist group," (2) without requiring that the group meet any preconditions.
McCain's support for RENAMO directly contradicts his attacks on opponent Barack Obama for having "worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers" and having "pledged to meet, without preconditions, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea." Senator Obama has made it clear that this policy does not extend to non-governmental organizations. In response to questions about the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Obama specified that "we should not be dealing with them until they ... renounce terrorism."
According to a Congressional Research Service report in 1988, the initially doctrinaire Marxist FRELIMO government of Mozambique began moving towards privatization and progress on human rights in the early 1980s, signing a non-aggression treaty with neighboring South Africa in 1984. Due to this progress, the Reagan administration provided the FRELIMO government with non-lethal military aid in their fight against RENAMO -- until Reagan was stymied by a 1985 Congressional prohibition . Reagan himself hosted FRELIMO leader and Mozambican President Samora Machel at the White House in September of 1985.
The Reagan administration's embrace of the nominally Marxist Mozambican government, even as it funded anti-communist resistance in Angola(UNITA), Afghanistan(the mujahideen) and most famously Nicaragua (the Contras), had a lot to do with the nature of the anti-communist resistance forces in Mozambique. At a June 1987 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, testified that RENAMO was "created by the Rhodesian secret services in 1977" as a fake anti-communist black liberation movement, designed to "punish Mozambique for that country's assistance to the Zimbabwean liberation movements." After the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980, apartheid South Africa began sponsoring RENAMO, with their support becoming clandestine after the signing of the 1984 non-aggression treaty.
RENAMO's tactics combined those of the most brutal terrorist groups and regimes in recent history. While ostensibly opposing the FRELIMO government, their attacks focused mostly on civilians. During the 1980s, their actions ranged from attacks on buses (3), trains (4) and cars (5) to kidnapping American and other foreign missionaries (6). They "killed bedridden hospital patients and chanted political slogans while killing children" in July of 1987 in what was later found to be a typical attack on a village; an American aid worker witnessed these attacks and they were thus widely reported.7 RENAMO even accepted "compensations" from Moscow.(8)
However, since the group claimed to be "anti-communist," they had support from the far-right in the United States. The Heritage Foundation supplied office space to a RENAMO representative in Washington, and Grover Norquist of K Street Project fame lobbied for them and for the UNITA resistance group in Angola. The U.S. Council for World Freedom funded RENAMO (and other anti-communist organizations) directly between 1984 and 1986 while John McCain was on their advisory board. Though he claims to have left the organization in 1984, news articles from October of 1985 show that he attended a U.S. Council on World Freedom event honoring Wali Khan, an Islamic militant from Afghanistan, for his efforts in opposing the Soviet occupation.(9) Moreover, two former council members do not recall him having ever resigned from the group. It is unclear whether or not McCain ever donated money to RENAMO via the U.S. Council for World Freedom, though he is on record as having donated to the Contras. The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for a list of anti-communist organizations to which he has donated.
These RENAMO-backing organizations had friends in high places. Senator Jesse Helms and a faction of conservative Senators (a similar faction existed in the House, led by Representative Dan Burton) also wanted to shift U.S. policy from the Reagan administration's position to the support of RENAMO. Helms and the conservatives decided to make their stand on the nomination of Melissa Wells to be ambassador to Mozambique. Their only problem with Melissa Wells was that she supported the Reagan administration policy of supporting the FRELIMO government and not recognizing the RENAMO terrorists. From a July 20, 1986, United Press International article by Jim Anderson:

After eight months of silence, the State Department came to the public defense Wednesday of Melissa Wells, a career foreign service officer whose confirmation as ambassador to Mozambique has been held up by Senate conservatives.
The conservatives, led by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., made it clear in statements last week in the Senate that the nomination of Wells, who has been approved by the Foreign Relations Committee, is meant as an attack against the State Department and its policies in Africa.
[...]
Helms and the other conservatives attacked Wells because of her lack of support for Renamo, an insurgent group seeking to overthrow the central one-party government of Mozambique. Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.C., described Renamo as ''freedom fighters trying to topple a communist regime.''

They initially failed to block Majority Leader Byrd's motion in May to proceed to the consideration of her nomination (10) (McCain was absent for this vote). However, the threats of a filibuster allowed them to hold up further consideration of the nomination until September. During this time, the Reagan administration did not budge on its support for FRELIMO and opposition to recognizing and meeting with RENAMO. In fact, the administration's position was strengthened after the revelation of a RENAMO massacre of 408 people in the village of Homoine in July of 1987, witnessed by American citizen Mark van Koevering.
Despite this revelation, RENAMO retained support in the Senate when that body began consideration of the Wells nomination in September. In what Senator Alan Cranston referred to during debate on the nomination as "truly Orwellian fashion," conservative Senators claimed that the massacre was a set-up by the governing FRELIMO. Most Senators voted to confirm her, but John McCain was one of the 24 Senators who voted against cloture on her nomination and against confirming her as ambassador to Mozambique (11). Of the Republicans still in the Senate today, Richard Lugar, Pete Domenici and Arlen Specter voted for her nomination; Grassley, Bond, McCain, Hatch and McConnell voted against it; and Ted Stevens and John Warner missed the vote. A month after Wells was confirmed, Jesse Helms introduced an amendment to the State Department authorization bill that would have forced the Secretary of State to meet with RENAMO without requiring any pre-conditions (12). Senator McCain opposed the motion by fellow Republican Senator John Danforth to kill the Helms amendment.
In April of 1988, the State Department released a report which "conservatively estimated that 100,000 civilians may have been murdered by RENAMO." At a United Nations event later that month, Roy A. Stacy, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, described RENAMO as guilty of "one of the most brutal holocausts against ordinary human beings since World War II." The report's release silenced Congressional RENAMO supporters(13).
==================
Notes and Sources:
1 RENAMO is the acronym in Portugese for the group's full name, the Mozambican National Resistance.
2 Friedland, Jonathan. "MOZAMBIQUE: THE MNR CONFUSES WASHINGTON." IPS-Inter Press Service. 30 October, 1986.
3 "Report: Rebels Kill 60 Bus Passengers." The Associated Press, 3 January, 1984 (the attack itself was on Christmas Day)
4 "Anti-Marxist Rebels Blow Up Passenger Train." The Associated Press. 9 February, 1984
5 "Rebels Claim Maputo Car Bomb, Battlefield Success." The Associated Press 22 April, 1986.
6 "Rebels kidnap seven whites from farm mission" United Press International 15 May, 1987.
7 Keys, Laurinda. "Survivors Say Attackers Killed Bedridden Hospital Patients, Children." The Associated Press 24 July, 1987.
8 "Rebels in Mozambique Free 12 Soviet Captives." The New York Times. 26 January, 1984: A10.
9 "Congressmen and Doctor Call for Increased Aid to Afghan Resistance" States News Service. October 15, 1985. Wali Khan was later killed by the pro-Soviet forces. He has no relation to the similarly-named Wali Khan Amin Shah, another Afghan guerrilla who later worked with WTC I mastermind Ramzi Yousef in a plot to bomb airplanes.
10 Byrd, D-W. Va., motion to proceed to the consideration of President Reagan's nomination of Melissa Wells of New York to be ambassador to the People's Republic of Mozambique. Motion agreed to 56-28: R 13-25; D43-3 (ND 31-0, SD 12-3), May 1, 1987
11Senate Roll Call votes 234 and 237, September 9, 1987.
12 S 1934. State Department Authorization, Fiscal 1988/Official Residence; Mozambique Policy. Danforth, R-Mo., motion to table (kill) the Helms, R-N.C., amendment to prohibit any expenditures related to the acquisition of a permanent residence for the secretary of state or any other Cabinet member. The tabling vote also had the effect of killing a Helms second-degree amendment aimed at forcing the secretary of state to consult with both sides in the civil war in Mozambique. Motion agreed to 61-34: R 21-24; D 40-10 (ND 27-5, SD 13-5), Oct. 6, 1987
13 Wayne, E.A. "Washington woos Marxist government of Mozambique." Christian Science Monitor. 16 August, 1988.

Why McCain Has Lost Our Vote

By C.C.Goldwater
Being Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.
My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.
For a while, there were several candidates who aligned themselves with the Goldwater version of Conservative thought. My grandfather had undying respect for the U.S. Constitution, and an understanding of its true meanings.
There always have been a glimmer of hope that someday, someone would "race through the gate" full steam in Goldwater style. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe.
When you see the candidate's in political ads, you can't help but be reminded of the 1964 presidential campaign of Johnson/Goldwater, the 'origin of spin', that twists the truth and obscures what really matters. Nothing about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it's standing in the world, that's why we're going to support Barack Obama. I think that Obama has shown his ability and integrity.

After the last eight years, there's a lot of clean up do. Roll up your sleeves, Senators Obama and Biden, and we Goldwaters will roll ours up with you.

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Ron Howard's Call For Obama With Andy Griffith And Henry Winkler

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

This is the time to silently start preparing your victory party!

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America remains a center-right nation?

By Paul Waklman
We usually have to wait until after the Democrats emerge victorious at the polls for the Beltway finger-waggers to begin warning them not to be too ambitious, not to do too much, not to actually follow through on the proposals they presented to the voters. But this year, it's starting early: Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, penned a 3,300-word cover story warning that, as the subtitle says, "America remains a center-right nation -- a fact that a President Obama would forget at his peril." Because, God forbid, a progressive candidate who wins an election should actually keep the promises he made to the American people.
It's an interesting contrast to what happens when Republicans win. While Democratic victories are seen as signifying nothing about the electorate's fundamental beliefs, Republican victories are inevitably described as revealing profound sea changes in American ideology. When the GOP took over both houses of Congress in 1994, The New York Times wrote the next day, "[T]he country has unmistakably moved to the right." The Washington Post agreed, saying, "The huge Republican gains also marked a clear shift to the right in the country."
And after Election Day 2004, the Times intoned, "[I]t is impossible to read President Bush's re-election with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet that this is a center-right country -- divided yes, but with an undisputed majority united behind his leadership." The article was headlined, "An Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values." The Los Angeles Times agreed that the election proved voters "don't believe that the Democrats share their values." Chris Matthews wondered, "Can the Democrats ever connect with the country's cultural majority?"
Yet we heard nothing of the sort from elite media outlets in 2006, when Democrats retook both houses of Congress -- no grand proclamations that the country had moved left, no ruminations on whether conservatism was an electorally bankrupt ideology. Instead, the news media focused on a few conservative Democratic candidates who won seats in Republican areas, despite the fact that they were far outnumbered by the new Democratic members who held traditionally progressive positions.
In other words, when Republicans win, we're told that Democrats need to move to the center, because the country is too conservative for them. When Democrats win, on the other hand, we're told that... Democrats need to move to the center. Their victory must have been some kind of accident -- it couldn't have been because the public actually agreed with what they want to do.
So what kind of evidence does Meacham offer for his oh-so-familiar thesis? First off, he says, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton didn't accomplish everything they wanted to. Interesting -- but last time I checked, liberal programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Clinton's expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit remain pretty popular. And remind me how George Bush's 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security -- a longstanding conservative goal -- went.
Then Meacham gives us the oft-noted fact that when asked by pollsters, more people will call themselves "conservative" than "liberal." The problem with this is that people who know a lot about politics -- like journalists -- assume that ordinary people have the same interpretation of those terms as political junkies have. But the truth, as nearly a half-century of political science research has made clear, is that a significant portion of the public has little or no idea of what these terms mean in the political world. A third of the public can't even tell you which of the two major parties is the "conservative" one.
Meacham also argues that America is "center-right" because we're more conservative than most Western European countries, which is kind of like arguing that Kevin Garnett is a mediocre basketball player, because Kobe Bryant scores more points than he does. The American public is much more liberal than publics in almost every region of the world other than Western Europe. Does that tell us that we're fundamentally liberal, or does it tell us not much of anything?
Comparisons to our friends in Sweden aside, a look at the issue terrain at the moment shows a public firmly in the progressive camp. On foreign policy, on economic policy, on social policy, on just about everything, it's the progressive position that is more popular. The median voter in 2008 is pro-choice, supports civil unions for gay Americans (a position that seemed insanely radical only a decade ago), rejects the Bush foreign policy, supported the recent increase in the minimum wage, wants strong environmental protections, favors reasonable restrictions on gun sales, thinks the wealthy and corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes, and wants the government to guarantee universal health coverage. Does that sound conservative to you? And younger generations are more progressive than their elders -- in fact, it is the pre-baby-boom generation that is the most conservative on most issues. And they will only be around for so long.
There is another reason the country is likely to become more progressive over time: The presidency of George W. Bush has discredited conservatism for years to come.
With the exception of a reduction in the size of government -- something Republicans always promise but never deliver (consider that no one since Roosevelt spent more as a percentage of GDP than Ronald Reagan) -- conservatives got pretty much everything they wanted from George W. Bush. They got tax breaks for the wealthy, huge increases in defense spending, a bellicose foreign policy, two Supreme Court justices ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, a mania for deregulation of business, a Justice Department devoted to advancing the electoral interests of the Republican Party, a consolidation of power in the executive branch, lackadaisical enforcement of environmental regulations, constant efforts to undermine labor unions, and the list goes on and on. This administration has been conservatism in action, and the country couldn't be more disgusted with the results.
Conservatives are increasingly sounding like they're stuck in the 1980s, as they warn against the creeping tide of socialism and denounce Obama's tax plan as "welfare." You almost expect to hear John McCain take the stage to a pulsing Richard Marx tune, then start reciting lines from "Red Dawn." It may have reached its apogee when, in her debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan on the danger that if we're not careful, one day we'll be telling our children and grandchildren about a time when America was free. What was Reagan warning against in that quote? The passage of Medicare, one of the most successful and popular programs in U.S. history, brought to you courtesy of big-government liberals.
When conservatives take stands like these, so far from the American mainstream, the Beltway acolytes of the Church of Centrism never seem to mind. Will a GOP defeat be greeted with columns by Jon Meacham and his ilk instructing Republicans sternly that they need to abandon their ideology and move to the center, lest they permanently alienate themselves from the public?
Don't hold your breath.

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Democrats’ gloom deepens

The Democrats are poised on the brink of victory. And they cannot stand it. The news is too good. Something has to go wrong.
On Saturday, Charlie Cook, an independent analyst and author of the Cook Report, wrote: “This election isn’t over, but it is looking very bad for Republicans — and seems to be getting worse.”
This plunged the Democrats into a deep gloom. Good news is always bad news for them.
On Monday, CNN’s John King announced: “Most top [people] in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.”
Democratic pessimism deepened when, that same day, Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray wrote in The Washington Post: “In the 13 battleground states that require voters to register by party, there are nearly 1.5 million more Democrats than at this time in 2004. The comparable Republican numbers, by contrast, have fallen by 61,000 during that time. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by more than 3.3 million in these same 13 battleground states, roughly double the edge — 1.8 million — they enjoyed over the GOP four years ago.”
Can it get worse for the Democrats? Yes! On Tuesday, The Associated Press wrote: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent $87.5 million last month and began October with nearly $134 million in the bank. The numbers illustrate his vast financial advantage over John McCain, his Republican rival, in the final stretch of the contest. McCain ended September with $47 million in the bank.”
The story went on to note that Obama “spent $65 million in advertising in September to McCain’s $22 million. In October, he has outspent McCain 4-to-1 in advertising.”
Awful news. Obama has a money problem. And you know what it is? He might run out of time to spend all the money he has! Election Day might come and go before Obama can spend the $5 million a day he is now raising. (If this does happen, I suggest he borrow a page from Oprah and buy everyone in America a Pontiac. Just as a gesture.)
Obama himself has reacted to the dismal drumbeat of good news. At a fundraising concert in Manhattan last Thursday featuring Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Obama got up and said: “Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up.”
Which is the prevailing mood in the top echelons of the Democratic Party right now. The McCain campaign cannot possibly be as hapless as it looks, party leaders feel. It is lulling the Democrats into complacency. The Republicans have to have an October surprise, because the Republicans always have an October surprise.
Besides, the robocalls could work. Never underestimate the power of the robocalls. Because people really like getting robocalls, right?
You are at home, it is dinnertime (which is when they call you because they figure you are at home then), and you are either trying to relax or get the kids fed, and the phone rings and it is this recorded voice saying: “I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.”
And does that make you feel more or less positive about John McCain? Does it persuade you that McCain has a plan to save the economy? Or to help you pay your mortgage? Or that he has a steady hand on the tiller?
For the robocalls to be effective, the Republicans would need Bill Ayers to plant bombs today and not when Barack Obama was 8 years old. They need Ayers to plant bombs in key states right now with stickers on them that say: “I am Barack Obama, and I endorse this bomb.”
But McCain may have found his October surprise after all. In Bensalem, Pa., on Tuesday, McCain said: “Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states. But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Sen. Obama. It’s pretty simple, really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he ‘shows love’ to the Rays.”
And rumors are now flying that McCain has proof that when Obama was in the second grade he once ate paste.
The Democrats are fearful of all this. The Democrats are always fearful.
“We have been on the precipice of victory before,” Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama spokesman, told me. “You have never seen a more superstitious campaign than ours. We do not talk about victory.”
Talk about it, no. Plan for it, yes.

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Republicans claim: All critics of Obama will be killed, when Obama is in office.

You will never believe it, but a vast majority of Obama-enemies does not know how restricted the power of a President is and how protecting the Constitutional freedom of speech in America is by law, court and law-enforcement. There is no knowledge about how the American democracy works and the right-wing media use that ignorance shamelessly to monger fear against Barack Obama, an unknown Al-Caeda-member, who tries to become president of the United States of America.
This soundtrack is an example.

Conspiritists were not always that concerned. Saying of Obama:

"He is a ringer, folks. He's meant to take a dive for John McCain. So this is nonpartisan. The facts are in. He will be destroyed in this election."

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Voter Fraud: Ever heard that it favors a Democrat?

(try to) Vote For Change
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Barack Obama on BET

voteforchange.com
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Joe Biden & the Violence Against Women Act

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Interview Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in Oralando Fa.

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Barack Obama's rating numbers: Whow!

John McCain biggest problem: Sarah Palin

Why is McCain suddenly quiet on the voter registration fraud?

Palin still doesn't know what the VP has to do.

Obama's relations to ACORN

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Muslim McCain-Palin Campaigners Not Allowed to Speak in Favor of McCain.

You will never know why, but McCain-Palin campaign has also muslims in the rows to move their brothers and sisters from the left to the right-side of the ballot.
Protesters from christian fundamentalist groups demonstrate during a campaign rally for McCain-Palin to convince people that Obama is a communist with a muslim background, but they also find out the existence of McCain's muslim fans and turned against them.
After the incident the muslim member of the campaign staff is not allowed to speak with CNN. McCain wants to prevent the believe that muslims are welcome to endorse him.
If you are a muslim, you are allowed to vote for McCain, but it has to be a secret if you did so or planned to do so.


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Keith Olbermann: Divisive Politics is Anti-American

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California Republican Arrested for Registration Fraud

Long ago (think Nixon Southern strategy days) there was a fiendishly clever way to rob voters of their votes. It involved organizing a "voter registration drive" usually in a poor or minority areas. The drive's promoters would collect voter registration applications from the citizens in that area and assure them that the drive's organizers would see that they were properly filed with the correct Board of Elections.

Instead, they would throw them down some sewer.
The would be voter would show up on Election Day to find out that his name was not in the book and he was not eligible to vote. So, although the voter could later apply to vote, for THAT cycle at least, the voter's vote had been stolen from him.
This led to rules that require, sometimes upon pain of criminal prosecution, voter registration drives to turn in every single application it collects, even if it has a good faith reason to believe the application is defective--such as an application by Mickey Mouse.

Now you know why ACORN is turning in funky applications, because it is required to do so--but I digress.

Once again, persons of ill will have found a way to rob voters of their registrations. This time, it involves falsely registering people to the Republican party without their knowledge or consent.

Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.
Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

Why would they do that you ask?

The firm, which a Republican Party spokesman said is paid $7 to $12 for each registration it secures, has denied any wrongdoing and says it has never been charged with a crime.
The 70,000 voters YPM has registered for the Republican Party this year will help combat the public perception that it is struggling amid Democratic gains nationally, give a boost to fundraising efforts and bolster member support for party leaders, political strategists from both parties say.

Here's the scoop, enthusiasm for the Obama candidacy has caused overwhelming numbers of new Dems to register. My own beloved Nassau County, Long Island went from red to blue a week or so ago for the first time in a generation. The GOP has nothing to answer that, except cheating.

Another report of Republican-related voter registration problems surfaces in California.
Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported on the Republican voter registration outfit who had allegedly been illegally changing thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican.
Last night the head of that GOP backed group, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested by the California State Election Fraud Taskforce and the Oxnard Police.

According to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's press release, Jacoby himself had committed voter registration fraud and perjury by lying on his own voter registration form. (That's similar to what Ann Coulter did, though she not only committed felony voter registration fraud, she also committed actual voter fraud, as well, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare.)
It was my pleasure to break this story today on Fox "News" of all places! Thanks to VotersUnite! editor John Gideon for getting it posted as I was on the roll towards the studio. I'll have the video up of my appearance on Fox, and the "Fox News Alert" I was able to do, later tonight.
Please note, this isn't the first time there have been serious problems with GOP-gathered voter registrations in CA, as outlined recently at Alternet. Looks like the GOP's voter registration record for errors far outpaced ACORN!
Whaddaya know?

Ireland Says No Major Problems With Early Voting. True?
"There's no conspiracy here, absolutely none," according to Secretary of State Betty Ireland when it comes to reported early voting problems in Jackson and Putnam counties.
A few voters say the touch screen machines didn't correctly record their votes. They say they voted Democrat, but the machines said Republican. County clerks in both counties say hundreds of other voters have cast ballots with no problems and the situation could be due to voter error.
Ireland says the machines are not programmed by the clerks or by her office, but by the firm Casto & Harris, "who has been working with clerks for 35 years in West Virginia to handle our election matters," she said.
A representative of the machine vendor will visit both counties to check out the machines according to Ireland.
The secretary of state says there's heightened awareness and excitability with this election. "We just want folks to settle down and help be part of the solution," Ireland said.
She advises voters to ask for help if they get a machine that doesn't appear to be working correctly. She says it's also okay to cancel a ballot and switch machines.

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