How could you guys miss the fact that Nader was campaigning in Wisconsin all weekend??!? He's my hero!
/snark

so they can just lie in their ads? is that the game plan now?

what was the poll for "likely voters" in the obama usa/today poll? stop comparing different cross tabs.

From:

Head of State

http://tinyurl.com/5mbefu

Sunday, September 07, 2008

"Actual Responsibilities": If You Can't Manage a Hockey Rink, Can You Manage Economic Policy and National Security?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Palin's Hockey Rink Leads
To Legal Trouble in Town She Led >

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

September 6, 2008; Page A5

WASILLA, Alaska -- The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.

"It's too bad that the city of Wasilla didn't do their homework and secure the land before they began construction," said Kathy Wells, a longtime activist here. "She was not your ceremonial mayor; she was in charge of running the city. So it was her job to make sure things were done correctly."

Ms. Palin, now Alaska's governor and Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate, has pointed to her two terms as Wasilla's mayor, from 1996 to 2002, as evidence that she has enough executive experience to take on the presidency, should the need arise -- more than Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who touts his own background as a community organizer in Chicago.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Ms. Palin said Wednesday in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention.

Litigation resulting from the dispute over Ms. Palin's sports-complex project is still in the courts, with the land's former owner seeking hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from the city.

Palin likes to say "Good judgment can make the difference between avoiding a crisis and managing a catastrophe."

Indeed.

Cite:

Head of State

http://tinyurl.com/5mbefu

How about an ad that points out that, while Palin pulled the plug on the bridge to nowhere after it became a national embarassment, she kept the hundreds of millions anyway, and spent it on other things, including a big bribe, er, rebate to the people of Alaska?

PEACE

In other news:

New Ras poll says 68% think the media is pushing the candidate they personally want to win. And only 14% think that's McCain/Palin.

Good insight.

I wish Josh Marshall and other "friends" of Obama knew.

It's clear that this is going to be close. I've been hoping that it wouldn't be close, because I'm a lazy ass.

But since it's looking close, I'm going to vote early, so I can free up my schedule for GOTV on Nov. 4th. This election is too important to lose.

The best post-convention analysis I've yet read is by Spengler, over at AsiaTimes.com:

"Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. However reluctantly, Clinton would have had to accept. McCain's choice of vice presidential candidate made obvious after the fact what the party professionals felt in their fingertips at the stadium extravaganza yesterday: rejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

"That is why McCain will win in November, and by a landslide, barring some unforeseen event. Obama is the most talented and persuasive politician of his generation, the intellectual superior of all his competitors, but a fatally insecure personality. American voters are not intellectual, but they are shrewd, like animals. They can smell insecurity, and the convention stank of it. Obama's prospective defeat is entirely of its own making. No one is more surprised than Republican strategists, who were convinced just weeks ago that a weakening economy ensured a Democratic victory.

"Biden, who won 3% of the popular vote in the Democratic presidential primary in his home state of Delaware, and 1% or less in every other contest he entered, is ballot-box poison. Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics' claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place. He had a winning alternative, which was to pick Clinton. That would have sent a double message: first, that Obama is tough enough to make the slippery Clintons into his subordinates, and second, that he is generous enough to extend a hand to his toughest adversary in the cause of unity.

"Why didn't Obama choose Hillary? The most credible explanation came from veteran columnist Robert Novak May 10, who reports that Michelle Obama vetoed Hillary's candidacy. "The Democratic front-runner's wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party's nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility," Novak wrote.

"Alternately, Obama might have chosen a rising Democratic star like Virginia's 50-year-old governor Tim Kaine. A weaker choice than Hillary, Kaine (or someone like him) would have made a bold statement of self-confidence. Obama could have said with credibility that he would bring to Washington a new generation of outsiders who would change the old system. Instead, Obama saddled an old and unpopular Washington warhorse.

"Curiously, Obama ignored the rising stars of his own party, offering the prime time speaking slots to familiar faces, including Senator Edward Kennedy and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his own wife, the first prospective First Lady to take the keynote spot in the history of American party conventions.

"McCain doesn't have a tenth of Obama's synaptic fire-power, but he is a nasty old sailor who knows when to come about for a broadside. Given Obama's defensive, even wimpy selection of a running-mate, McCain's choice was obvious. He picked the available candidate most like himself: a maverick with impeccable reform credentials, a risk-seeking commercial fisherwoman and huntress married to a marathon snowmobile racer who carries a steelworkers union card. The Democratic order of battle was to tie McCain to the Bush administration and attack McCain by attacking Bush. With Palin on the ticket, McCain has re-emerged as the maverick he really is.

"The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn't any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.

"McCain has certified his authenticity for the voters. He's now the outsider, the reformer, the maverick, the war hero running next to the Alaskan amazon with a union steelworker spouse. Obama, who styled himself an agent of change, took his image for granted, and attempted to ensure himself victory by doing the cautious thing. He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it.

"Obama, in short, is long on brains and short on guts. A Shibboleth of American politics holds that different tactics are required to win the party primaries as opposed to the general election, that is, by pandering to fringe groups with disproportionate influence in the primaries. But Obama did not compromise himself with extreme positions. He did not have to, for younger voters who greeted him with near-religious fervor did not require that he take any position other than his promise to change everything. Obama could have allied with the old guard, through an Obama-Clinton ticket, or he could have rejected the old guard by choosing the closest thing the Democrats had to a Sarah Palin. But fear paralyzed him, and he did neither."

You know what bugs me? The Obama campaign has run some of the most lackluster, uninspiring ads that I have even seen on TV. They ignored inspiring convention speeches and one-liners from politicians and ordinary American's alike that should have been worked into campaign ads. Instead they are running the same old messages and themes. Most Americans have already heard them. Now they need to hear what the networks cut out of their convention coverage. I expected that from a GOP-controlled media. I did not expect it from the Obama camp.

I think the Dems -- in unison, with surrogates and Biden at least as much as Obama -- need to point out that the McCain-Palin campaign is built on lies and it is premised on the notion that American voters will never learn the truth.

Lies about themselves: the "maverick" who couldn't even stand up to the American Taliban wing of his party, "reformers" who will continue every one of Bush's policies that have sent the country down the tubes, the unqualified corrupt earmarker McSame named as his running mate, the flip-flops on everything from Bush's tax cuts to the bridge to nowhere, etc. etc.

And lies about Obama: charges that he would raise taxes when of course he'll cut them for 95 percent of Americans, etc. etc.

The MSM isn't going to call the McSame-PaleImitation strategy of lying over and over again on it without being goaded and shamed into it, and the American people will never learn the truth unless the Democrats continually tell it.

So, Obama rejected the old guard, establishment candidate (Clinton) as VP, and yet he's short on guts? Please explain that one.

Here's a scholarly study on the inaccuracy of Gallup's LV calculation.

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/68/4/588?ijkey=053EosjdTO0oc&keytype=ref

Only in recent years has the "likely voter" technology been extended to polls well in advance of an election. In the case of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, CNN/USA Today/Gallup tracking polls indicated considerable fluctuations in likely voter preferences, greater than among the larger pool of registered voters surveyed. This article explores how Gallup’s likely voter model exaggerates the reported volatility of voter preferences during the campaign. Much of the reported variation in candidate preference reported by Gallup in that election is not due to actual voter shifts in preference but rather to changes in the composition of Gallup’s likely voter pool. The findings highlight dangers of relying on samples of likely voters when polling well before Election Day.

What is so interesting visually in this ad is that at the end, Palin is in the number one spot, on the left, with McSame on the right, as though she's on the top of the ticket.

I can't wait until this bright (in the visual, not intellectual sense) shiny object fads. (Although, I'm still loving the drama!)

Bulldog Biden had better get going. He was supposed to be an attack dog, not a panting puppy praising McCain. Meanwhile Pitbull Palin is getting away with hiding from reporters.

McCain picked a wind-up toy for VP and said "change" 3 times.

If that is enough to win the election, I am never leaving the Northeast again.

If McCain/Palin pull off this swindle, we'll never see the end of Rovian politics.
Rick "The Prick" Davis sees press access not as a healthy part of the electoral process but only what the press will do for his candidates. It's not the voters' right to know, it's whether the press will help John and Sarah. And he'll only allow access if the media are "deferential". In other words, no tough questions. Only questions that can be answered with talking points written by former Bush speechwriters.
And he's getting away with it.

Regarding "http://aAC360 Exclusive: The trooper who worried Sarah Palin" c360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/05/exclusive-the-trooper-behind-trooper-gate/

I left a comment on 9/6 asking many of the questions that the reporter did not ask, and on 9/8 it is still "Your comment is awaiting moderation", and comments are closed.

I've never had a comment on CNN actually make it thru their censorship, and I am beginning to wonder if comments get selected to present the impression of reader responses they want rather than what readers actually say.

Well, that didn't work as planned! Another try...

NOPE
http://www.barrystock.com/clients/palin_NOPE.pdf

HOPELESS
http://www.barrystock.com/clients/McCain_Hopeless.pdf

Would someone please teach Obama how to smartly sidestep uncomfortablly loaded questions during interviews... like the 'tax cut for the rich', 'above my pay-grade' and 'surge' questions. I watched Gulianni and even Mccain during the GOP primaries and saw how they played the interviewers with words.
Please, why can't Obama beat the journalists in their own game?
Its frustrating!!!

Im sick and tired of these "reactions from the Obama camp" by some "spokesman". Hey, the McCain people have lied consistently about Obama, and now about themselves. It's time for the Dems...
to take the gloves off, to clip two or three of these excerpts from McCAin's Ads, and label them "What they want you to believe".
What the TRUTH is". I'd openly avoid the LIE word, only strongly suggest it. Then let BIDEN use it in the VP debate. But if the Obama camp think that putting out press releases does any good, who are they kidding?