Month: September 2008

Poll: The Early Line for 9/24

Buck Banks

Diageo/Hotline Tracking Poll

Obama/Biden 48%
McCain/Palin 42%
Undec 8%

– Obama/Biden’s 6% lead is their largest in the Diageo/Hotline tracking poll yet.

– Obama/Biden are moving ahead among white women. The Dems now hold a 1% edge, 46-45%; in the poll completed one week earlier (on 9/16), McCain/Palin led 53-37%.

– Among the 56% of RVs who say the economy is their #1 issue, Obama/Biden are up 51-39%. Last week they led the group, which at the time only represented two-fifths of RVs, 49-40%. Among all RVs, 45% say Obama can best handle the economy, while 39% say McCain; Obama held just a 1% lead the previous two surveys.

Poll: Obama Is Tied with McCain in NC – Without Support of 20% of Tar Heel Dems

Jon Ponder

As an expatriated North Carolinian, this is both heartening and discouraging — in other words, normal for Tar Heel politics:
If Obama gained support of just 6% of these North Carolina Dems, he would be leading in current state polls.

In North Carolina, Public Policy has Obama pulling into a tie with McCain (they had McCain up 4 percent last week) while Rasmussen has McCain’s lead down to just 3 percent (they had McCain up 6 percent last month). Some figured that North Carolina was off the table once McCain picked Palin, but that is clearly not the case.

The Public Policy poll is the first one to show Obama tied in the state since April. Public Policy also has Bob Barr doing relatively well in North Carolina, getting 5percent of the vote. They are attributing Obama’s improvement in the state to economic concerns.

One major potential sign for concern for McCain is that both of these polls have Obama getting less than 80 percent of the Democratic vote. If he improves his support among Democrats by just 6 percent or so, he would be leading both of these polls. Obama has yet to lead in any North Carolina poll. This certainly explains why McCain is now shifting resources into North Carolina, as the state is very much in play.

A recent CNN poll suggested “that 40 percent of white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, including more than a third of white Democrats and independents. A small percentage of voters — 2.5 percent of those surveyed — said they may turn away from Obama because of his race.”

GOP Homophobes Take Note: McCain’s Chief of Staff Is Gay

Jon Ponder

John McCain can’t win without the homophobic base of the Republican Party, but it may come as surprise to many of these benighted souls that McCain knowingly employs a gay man to run his staff:
Buse is also one of 19 McCain advisers who lobbied for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s chief of staff was outed Monday after radio host Michelangelo Signorile quoted additional sources to confirm the long-blogged-about rumors. Mark Buse, 44, previously served as a lobbyist for several large corporations including AT&T and ExxonMobil, the only Fortune 10 company without a nondiscrimination policy covering sexual orientation, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Signorile said on his blog that he had previously been contacted by three sources, all wishing to remain anonymous, claiming Buse is gay. The radio host says he was then contacted by 46-year-old Brian Davis, who claims to have had a past intimate relationship with the McCain staffer.

Davis claims he first met Buse at a Phoenix bar called Connections in 1986, around the same time Buse started work as a McCain intern during the presidential hopeful’s tenure in the House of Representatives. Davis said Buse asked him to move to Washington, D.C., with him after a long-distance courtship taking place over several months. A year after moving to Washington, Buse left Davis for his current partner.

Buse is also one of 19 McCain advisers who lobbied for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

Troopergate: Palin To Cooperate with Board That Reports to Her

Jon Ponder

Sarah Palin refused to cooperate with a Republican-dominated legislative panel investigating her allegedly improper firing of the Public Safety commissioner — even after it was revealed that she lied on the record about the matter — but now says she will meet with the Personnel Board, all of whom report to her:

Less than a week after balking at the Alaska Legislature’s investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire.

The State Personnel Board is “a three-member panel appointed by the governor. Panel members can be fired by the governor for cause. Two members are holdovers from the previous [Republican] governor and Palin reappointed the third.”

You can sure tell that Bush operatives are running Palin’s campaign.

Press Revolts When McCain Campaign Tries to Shield Palin at U.N.

Trish

Now remember, this is the woman McCain says is ready on Day One to be president.

What are they hiding? Here’s ABC’s Kate Snow on what happened when Gov. Sarah Palin hit the United Nations today.

The networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox… voted today to not use any video coming out of Palin’s meeting as a protest.

Palin is scheduled to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai shortly, followed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and then with McCain advisor, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

The networks had arranged for a “pool” camera- one camera to cover the first few seconds of the meetings, whose video would be pooled or shared with all networks.

Such arrangements are standard when dealing with intimate high-level meetings between leaders and candidates.

But typically, along with cameras, there is an editorial presence– at least one print reporter, one television reporter, and one radio reporter is standard.

However today the McCain campaign told media covering Palin’s trip to New York that they would allow only one editorial person inside.

Then the campaign scaled back further, saying it will only allow a camera and no editorial presence.

In other words, they allowed only a camera operator without anyone to make the raw footage into a news story.

But the press finally stood up on its hind legs and barked back, refusing to cover the story if McCain, Etc. wouldn’t let them cover the story.

The networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox fiercely objected to the McCain campaign’s apparent effort to try to shield Palin from questions. Networks voted today to not use any video coming out of Palin’s meeting as a protest.

Palin has not held a news conference since being selected as McCain’s running-mate, nor taken questions from her traveling press corps…

…the McCain campaign finally allowed one CNN pool camera and one pool producer into the meeting room.

As she arrived for her meeting with Karzai, Palin avoided reporters who were camped out at the main front entrance of the hotel, instead pulling up in a motorcade to a side entrance and quickly sneaking inside.

Palin’s dance with the press continued during her meeting with Karzai. After being told that an editorial presence would be permitted in Palin’s meetings, pool reporters were asked to leave after the first 30 seconds, according to the pool report. Print pool and wires were not permitted in.

“The decision was made for this to be a photo spray with still cameras and video cameras only,” Palin spokesperson Tracey Schmitt told reporters.

Reporters in the room for the brief period only heard Palin, who was accompanied by foreign policy advisers Steve Biegun and Randy Scheunemann, inquire about Karzai’s son.

The McCain-Palin campaign allowed a “full pool” into the meetings with Uribe and Kissinger but the sprays were even shorter, and reporters heard nothing more than pleasantries being exchanged.

The exchange of pleasantries was likely the most substantive part of the meetings. From there, Palin probably attempted to get Kissinger and Karzai to accept Jesus as their personal savior and filled in Uribe on the latest advances in the rhythm method.

Anti-Gay Activists Outraising Marriage Supporters in California

Jon Ponder

Tyne Daly, Amy Brenneman, Christine Lahti, Sally Kirkland and other stars speak in favor of keeping marriage legal in California

Anti-gay advocates of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution to make marriage illegal for gay men and women, are winning the funding race:

The campaigns for and against Proposition 8 have raised a combined $30 million, with donations given in support of the proposed ban on gay marriage running considerably ahead of those to the opposition.

So far, the main group promoting the Constitutional amendment, which would overturn a recent California Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, has raised $17.8 million. The main No-on-8 campaign has raised $12.4 million.

While much of the anti-gay funding comes from activists outside the state, a new Field poll shows that opposition to Prop 8 is growing, as support among California residents for keeping marriage legal increases:

Fifty-five percent of voters indicated they would say no to the proposed amendment, which would make same-sex marriage illegal in California. That is up from 51 percent opposing the measure, Proposition 8, in a previous poll conducted in July. In the sampling of more than 800 likely voters, only 38 percent said they would support the ban, down from 42 percent nearly three months ago.

“Initiatives that are trailing, either at the initial measurement or in subsequent measures, rarely pass,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, also noting that opinions on issues like same-sex marriage tend not to fluctuate dramatically. “History is working against passage.”

Two of the state’s highest profile residents, Brad Pitt and Stephen Speilberg, along with his wife Kate Capshaw, have each donated $100,000 to groups supporting marriage in the past few days. Also, stars of the one-hour drama, “Judging Amy,” which ran from 1999 to 2005, have participated in a web ad (see above) voicing support for marriage rights. “Amy” stars Amy Brenneman, Tyne Daly and openly gay Jillian Armenante and her wife are featured in the ad, along with Christine Lahti, Camryn Manheim, Sally Kirkland and others in speaking out against Prop 8.

A considerable amount of contributions from homophobes has come from Mormons. However, one very high profile ex-LDSer recently donated $1 million to the fight to keep marriage legal:

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Poll: The Early Line — Diageo/Hotline

Buck Banks

This is a new daily poll from Hotline and Diageo that provides a snapshot of the presidential race.

Obama/Biden 47%
McCain/Palin 43%
Undec 9%

– Obama/Biden lead 45-42% among RVs in the battleground states of CO, MI, NH, NM, FL, OH, PA, VA, WI and NV.

– Obama/Biden now lead Inds by just 3%; they led Inds by 10% in yesterday’s release.

– McCain/Palin lead GOPers 88-7%, but trail Dems 86-8%.

– Some new record lows and highs in the tracking poll: just 12% believe the U.S. is headed in the right direction, while 56% say the economy is the top issue facing the nation.

– For the second consecutive day, Obama leads McCain by 1% on the issue of who’d do a better job handling the economy, 43-42%.

Today’s poll, conducted 9/20-22 by FD, surveyed 906 RVs and has a margin of error of +/- 3.3%.

Is It Time to Just Say No to Bailouts?

Trish

Originally, the Treasury-written bailout package was going to include “troubled assets” from the mortgage meltdown, presumably to keep people in their homes. Now they’re tossing in SUVs and credit card debt that people would just as soon not pay too.

I like Chris Dodd but it’s hard to ignore the fact that as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, he received $516,000 this year from the banking industry

That’s right, Republican-Americans and all you other idiots who bought a McMansion with no money down and a five-year balloon, then parked your Lincoln Navigator and Nissan Armada outside while Best Buy delivered the home theater system you charged…you can walk away from all those bad decisions and the idiots who sold you that crap can too. No one’s out anything, unless you count the next few generations of Americans including my 10-year-old niece.

And best of all, we’ll be giving the Treasury, another wing of the executive branch, complete freedom to blow our future wealth with no oversight whatsoever. That will come as a relief to all those CEOs who worried that unlike McCain advisor Carly Fiorina —who was fired from Hewlett-Packard but took her $21 million golden parachute with her anyway — they might actually be held accountable for their poor performance.

Here’s the exact wording of the proposed legislation:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Kind of has the ring of Dick Cheney, doesn’t it?

Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) appeared on ABC’s This Week to tell us that we must act and act now to avert devastation and calamity. The only problem was no one could exactly explain what the impending doom we might avert looks like.

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