Category: Blogroll

I was pulling my car into the driveway last night just as John McCain mentioned autism and said it was something about which Sarah Palin would have special knowledge. As I turned off the motor, I thought, “Surely this idiot isn’t confusing autism and Down syndrome. I mean, he wouldn’t, right?

Yes. He did.

In case John McCain reads Pensito Review, I thought I could be helpful to him by visiting the Mayo Clinic web site and pulling definitions of autism and Down syndrome.

Autism:

Autism is one of a group of serious developmental problems called autism spectrum disorders (ASD) that appear in early childhood — usually before age 3. Though symptoms and severity vary, all autism disorders affect a child’s ability to communicate and interact with others.

Down Syndrome:

Down syndrome is a genetic disorder that causes mental retardation and other problems. The condition varies in severity, so developmental problems may range from mild to serious. Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause of severe learning disabilities in children, occurring in one in every 700 infants.

Let’s review. Autism — communication and interaction. Down syndrome — Mental retardation and severe learning disabilities.

As I’ve watched the three debates, it’s repeatedly flashed through my mind that one of the differences between Obama and McCain is that Obama is such a dad and McCain is such an authoritarian jerk. You can easily picture Obama cavorting with a group of kids, or listening solemnly to their concerns, or helping his preschooler pick what she thinks is the right t-shirt to go with her pants, as he describes in his second book.

McCain, on the other hand, strikes me as practicing fatherhood from afar, turning all childcare over to someone else. In his first wife’s case, to her, and in his second, to whatever nannies or private boarding schools they employed. The difference is not trivial. The fact that only thing we can picture McCain doing with kids is ordering them off his grass says a lot about the kind of leader he would be. A man who doesn’t bother to understand the difference between a child with one type of special need and another seems to me a pretty cold fish.

From the Way Cool Department, GigaOm is reporting that Barack Obama’s campaign has taken out a billboard ad inside the online Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise:

“I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout,” Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, told [GigOm] via email, noting that EA regularly allows ad placements in their online games. “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” she continued. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

A weekly survey of Ohio voters by Rasmussen Reports shows Obama taking his first small lead in that state.

The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone poll in the state finds Obama leading 49% to 47%.

This is the first poll where Obama has been ahead since tracking of the race began in February. McCain has led by a single percentage points for the past three weeks…

The crashing of the Bush unregulated, deficit-based economy is one factor in Obama’s positioning, along with the candidates’ debate performances and vice presidential selections. Ohioans just aren’t that into Sarah Palin.

Just 29% of voters say they would not be at all comfortable with Biden as VP, compared to 42% who say the same about Palin. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Ohio voters say they would be at least somewhat comfortable with Joe Biden as Vice President, while only 54% say that about Sarah Palin.

Republican consultant Ed Rollins notices similarities in Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful run against Barack Obama, and John McCain’s lurching strategies.

Clinton’s campaign had several different groups setting and implementing strategy. They include the first campaign team led by pollster Mark Penn, her loyalists from the White House days led by eventual campaign manager Maggie Williams and campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, and a rump group led by her husband. Prior to this year and his efforts on his wife’s behalf, President Clinton was viewed as one of the best political strategists around.

All that brain power couldn’t come together and agree on a consistent strategy to beat a young inexperienced outsider. There will be second guessing and finger pointing for years to come.

Rollins then lists the dizzying succession of McCain advisors.

In the end, it’s not relevant who holds what title in the McCain operation, because it is not being run by campaign professionals, but by the Washington lobbying class.

And no one seems to be in charge, least of all the candidate. The end result is a campaign suffering from “schizophrenia.”

John McCain is saying one thing on the stump, his running mate another. But the worst sin is that his advertising campaign is incoherent and putting out multiple and inconsistent messages.

It’s probably too late for McCain at this point, Rollins says, but he offers a plan anyway.

All I can advise is “Engage us, John!” You are an honorable man who has dedicated your life to serving this country. Quit the name calling and make the last weeks about leadership and solutions.

Accept Obama’s challenge issued last week: “The American people aren’t looking for someone who can divide this country. They’re looking for somebody who will lead this country.”

But if Obama is right about pretty much everything, and has run a sure and steady campaign, you have to ask, “Why do we need McCain to change?” We know enough now to make our decision. It’s Obama, Obama, Obama.

The good news is being odious is really dragging down John McCain and Sarah Palin. The bad news is they might stop.

After more than a week of pitbull Palin’s assertion that Barack Obama pals around with “terr’ists,” some polls put Obama/Biden up as much as 10 points overall, with one ABC/Washington Post survey showing little doubt about who being negative is hurting.

Registered voters by a 24-point margin, 59-35 percent, now say McCain is more focused on attacking his opponent rather than addressing the issues. That’s grown from a roughly even 48-45 percent split on this question in late August.

There’s far less criticism of the tone of Obama’s campaign: Registered voters by 68-26 percent say he’s mainly addressing the issues…

In an almost unheard of circumstance these days, when people perceive everything through a filter of political affiliation, McCain’s and Palin’s behavior registers the same, regardless of party registration.

Republicans, despite their general antipathy toward Obama, don’t broadly see him as running a negative campaign; they divide essentially evenly on the question, 44-46 percent. Democrats, by contrast, overwhelmingly say McCain’s going negative, 80-16 percent.

The deciding factor, as ever in presidential politics, is independents. They see McCain as mainly attacking his opponent, by 61-33 percent, but Obama as mainly addressing the issues, by 68-26 percent.

After John McCain had to personally face the lynch mob he and Palin have fired up, his campaign is said to have had a change of heart.

The Arizona senator and Palin changed their tactics again this weekend, toning down their rhetoric and insisting to their supporters that they will battle Obama but with “respect.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. I had to endure the following piece of excrescence at least three times each during Extreme Makeover Home Edition and Brothers and Sisters last night. Doesn’t sound too respectful to me, nor does it give me much of an idea about what McCain’s plan is for the economy.

For the first time in its 75-year existence, Esquire magazine has endorsed a presidential candidate. Why did the publication choose to endorse Barack Obama for president?

We thought this election would be a serious fight over the future of this country, but only one candidate showed up.

In what at times reads like a back-handed endorsement — perhaps because they are utterly unpracticed in the endorsement game — Esquire’s editors finally get to the point in a really long paragraph:

In truth, though, Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things — be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska — that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that “government,” as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose. It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for. After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama’s promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.

Yep, more than enough.