Category: Blogroll

Donna Brazille Tells the Right Reasons Not to Vote for Obama

Trish

Nice job, Donna.

Now we can relitigate all these fights on race and gender and sexual orientation til the cows come home. But at a time when we’re in crisis, I want the best, I want the brightest. I want somebody to take me where we’ve never been as a country. Perhaps we’ve too stuck in the past — that’s why we can’t go forward. So let the next 31 days be about ideas, about inspiration, and about strength of character. Let it be about something that brings up together, not tears us apart.

Obama Wins the Halloween Mask Poll

Trish

Trick or treat!

Obama can cancel the third debate and declare victory, according to an ABC report that uses Halloween mask sales in a presidential election year to predict a winner. Two major national Halloween retailers are selling Obama masks by at least 60 percent to McCain’s 40.

In the last seven elections, this method accurately called the winner.

One caveat: Chinese suppliers are having a hard time turning out Sarah Palin masks quickly enough, so costume shops are just selling wigs and glasses to Palin wannabes, which could skew the results. No word on how many trick-or-treaters will be going as Joe Biden.

Plenty of Rules, But Where’s the Debate?

Buck Banks

debate, vi, to discuss opposing reasons; argue. (from Webster’s New World College Dictionary — you know, the one the Associated Press uses)

If you’re expecting a debate tonight from the presidential candidates’ town hall-style meeting, you’ve got another think coming. The Chicago Sun-Times lays out the ground rules:

Tuesday’s match-up at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., will be moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, with the questions to be culled from a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the audience and another one-third to come via the Internet. The Gallup Organization — as in past debates like this — has the job of making sure the questioners reflect the demographic makeup of the nation.

Brokaw selects the questions to ask from written queries submitted prior to the debate, according to the “contract.”

An audience member will not be allowed to switch questions. Under the deal, the moderator may not ask followups or make comments. The person who asks the question will not be allowed a follow-up either, and his or her microphone will be turned off after the question is read. A camera shot will only be shown of the person asking — not reacting.

While there will be director’s chairs (with backs and foot rests), McCain and Obama will be allowed to stand — but they can’t roam past their “designated area” to be marked on the stage. McCain and Obama are not supposed to ask each other direct questions.

I suppose I’ll watch the thing, but I don’t expect much, certainly not something that I would call a “debate.”

Palin Appeals to Mob Instincts During Her Rallies

Trish
Palin’s next rally?

Sarah Palin continues to voice her life-threatening talking points on the trail in Florida, apparently unconcerned that she could be inciting an attack on Barack Obama.

“I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America, as the greatest source for good in this world,” she told thousands of supporters gathered at Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater. “There’s a pattern here of a left-wing agenda that is packaged and prettied up to look like mainstream policies.”

We read this stuff and roll our eyes, but some in Palin’s crowds have been heard to yell, “Kill him!” when Sarah talks about her fear of Obama. Such cries are met with quiet acceptance by the candidate. To Palin, it’s just another day of whoring for McCain. But for Obama and his family, it could be much more.

Painting Obama as a terrorist to be vanquished is exactly what McCain has in mind, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

To Palin, it’s just another day of whoring for McCain. But for Obama and his family, it could be much more.

The campaign encouraged reporters to focus on the part of her speech where she hit Obama for associating with ’60s radical Will Ayers, a founder of the organization Weather Underground that bombed buildings in the 1970s.

Palin raised the Ayers subject immediately after saying she wished the media would focus on substantive issues that matter to average Americans: Obama “is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country,” said Palin, citing a New York Times article this weekend that concluded Obama and Ayers “do not appear to have been close” though their paths crossed several times.

With recent polls showing Obama opening leads in battleground states including Florida, the McCain campaign is ramping up its attacks to make the election a referendum on Obama.

Palin signaled there is more to come.

“Florida, you know that you’re going to have to hang on to your hats because from now until Election Day, it may get kind of rough,” Palin said.

What next? Dousing a big cross on the stage with gasoline, tossing on a match, and claiming Obama raped her?

Obama is Turning Florida Blue

Trish

A Fox News/Rasmussen Reports survey taken Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008 shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Florida with 52%, over Sen. John McCain with only 45%.

I like Rasmussen because I think it’s conservative, even though they weight responses (as do most major polling firms) to match voter statistics. That means that since there are more registered Democrats in Florida, Rasmussen includes the opinions of more registered Democrats in their polls. Even so, last week the two candidates were tied, both with 47%. The week before, McCain was ahead five percentage points. While these numbers show a certain volatility, they are in line with what seems to be the nationwide trend: people leaving the McCain/Palin ship in droves.

The rest of the poll presents both more hope and more horror. The respondents reported a 51% good or excellent rating for the performance of Gov. Charlie Crist (R) and 31% said the same of Pres. Bush. No doubt the latter group includes the ones who sent his brother to Tallahassee twice.

So if diehards like that are passing up seats on the Straight Talk Express, how much longer will it be before McCain throws in the towel on Florida, just like he did in Michigan?

Palin: “Let’s Not Talk About the Past” Unless It’s Obama’s

Trish

During her debate with Sen. Joseph Biden, Gov. Sarah Palin took an interesting stance: she claimed that any mention of Sen. John McCain’s record, particularly of supporting the Bush administration, was off topic, since the debate should be about the future.

Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.

Since then, both she and the McCain campaign seem to have had a change of heart. All they want to talk about is the past. More specifically, doggone it, their twisted, out of context version of Sen. Barack Obama’s past.

  • John McCain’s campaign released a new ad Monday that targets year-old comments from Barack Obama about the conflict in Afghanistan, calling them flat out “dishonorable.”
    Palin: “Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.”

    …The ad refers to an answer Obama gave at an August 2007 town hall meeting with New Hampshire voters, during which the Illinois senator was asked whether he had plans to shift U.S. troops out of Iraq to other terrorist hotspots like Afghanistan.

    “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there,” Obama said of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

    Those comments were immediately seized by GOP critics. The Republican National Committee sent out a press release shortly after the remarks calling them “offensive,” and demanding he apologize. The McCain campaign has also highlighted the comments several times this campaign season. An AP Fact Check later reported Western forces had been killing civilians at a higher rate than insurgents.

    • […]

Facts Were the First Victims at the Debate

Buck Banks

According to the Associated Press, neither veep candidate showed much reluctance to stretch the truth in last night’s debate:

PALIN: Said of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: “94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction.”

THE FACTS: The dubious count includes repetitive votes as well as votes to cut taxes for the middle class while raising them on the rich. An analysis by factcheck.org found that 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year.

BIDEN: Complained about “economic policies of the last eight years” that led to “excessive deregulation.”

THE FACTS: Biden voted for 1999 deregulation that liberal groups are blaming for part of the financial crisis today. The law allowed Wall Street investment banks to create the kind of mortgage-related securities at the core of the problem now. The law was widely backed by Republicans as well as by Democratic President Clinton, who argues it has stopped the crisis today from being worse.

PALIN: “Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.”

THE FACTS: Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska led an effort in 2005 to tighten regulation on the mortgage underwriters — McCain joined as a co-sponsor a year later. The legislation was never taken up by the full Senate, then under Republican control.

BIDEN: Warned that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s $5,000 tax credit to help families buy health coverage “will go straight to the insurance company.”

THE FACTS: Of course it would, because it’s meant to pay for insurance. That was like saying money for a car loan will go straight to the car dealer.

PALIN: Claimed she has taken on the oil industry as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Palin pushed to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and distributed the proceeds to the state’s citizens to offset rising energy costs. However, she has also sided with the industry on a number of issues. She sued the Interior Department over its designation of polar bears as an endangered species. That puts her on the same side as the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s chief trade association. She also supports the industry’s desire to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a position at odds with McCain.

BIDEN: Said McCain supports tax breaks for oil companies, and “wants to give them another $4 billion tax cut.”

THE FACTS: Biden is repeating a favorite saw of the Obama campaign, and it’s misleading. McCain supports a cut in income taxes for all corporations, and doesn’t single out any one industry for that benefit.

PALIN: Said the United States has reduced its troop level in Iraq to a number below where it was when the troop increase began in early 2007.

THE FACTS: Not correct. The Pentagon says there are currently 152,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about 17,000 more than there were before the 2007 military buildup began.