Barack Obama Elected President!

[Greg's GL]

This [!@#$%^&*] just pisses me off. I'm not sure if it's on any of the candidate's radars or not, but IMHO, this shouldn't be allowed and it's very offensive. The old argument of "heritage" is just an excuse to hide behind. This "flag" is a symbol of oppression and hatred, not to mention that it conjures up the most reprehensible time in American history.

Giant Confederate Flag near Tampa gets bigger

[Darcy]

It was Republicans who initiated the investigation before she was picked by McCain. And the panel which made up the board who made the decision was very partisan in that there were 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats. I don't know how they can say it was partisan AGAINST her.

It was a good thing he was trying to do but I thought he went about it the wrong way for several reasons. First of all, I wonder how Arab-Americans felt about what he said? It implies that Arabs are not decent people or family people. It's sad that many people seem to think that all Arabs and all Muslims are bad and dangerous people (i.e., terrorists). Also, he and his campaign have been trying to imply (or are saying in commercials) for months that Obama is a liar who can't be trusted (is that his definition of decent?) and that Americans would be in danger if he were President (whether due to his lack of experience or "palling around with terrorists") ... and then he stated the exact opposite. It made him look like he and his campaign didn't know what they were trying to say. IMO, he should have just said that it is not true that Obama is an Arab or a terrorist. He was born in the United States and he is an American and a Christian.

I hate to say it because it could sound like blaming the victim, but I've heard people say that those five years in captivity could have taken something out of him (e.g., his lifespan).

[Greg's GL]

Good point, Darcy. IA. But this is the same party that found Palin guilty of unethical behavior and then she holds a press conference saying that she's happy to be "exonerated". It doesn't make sense.

This reminds me of a song from the radio several years ago. The artist escapes me now, but the lyrics went something like "It wasn't me" when his girlfriend caught him cheating with her own eyes. This could be McCain's new "strategy" that I'm reading about this morning. Claim the exact opposite of what is being reported and accepted as fact.

I could understand Arab-Americans feeling put off by his statements. It does imply that they are not family-oriented. And here's a couple of latest "WTF" moments from the Republican campaign trail:

VA GOP Cheif compares Obama to Bin Laden

And it that wasn't bad enough. Look at this incredible bullshit:

Obama heckled with monkey doll at Palin rally

I wonder, how could a true moderate, someone that hasn't made up their mind on the election, look at these events and think "Gee, I'm gonna vote for the party that promotes scare tactics and hate"???

[Jess]

The Alaska investigation was initiated by the GOP, the majority of the panel investigating Palin was R.

As far as Palin/McCain tuning down their rhetoric, they have toned it down on the campaign, but it is still on television. The only reason they toned it down on the campaign is because it was backfiring on them. It is a lot easier to have surrogates and ads say the words than having them come out of the candidates' own mouth.

As far as not talking about Wright, give me a break. He says I'm not talking about Rev. Wright, which is talking about Rev. Wright. After that the media talks about it for days and days.

[Wales2004]

GGL it sounds like the song by Shaggy...it wasn't me.

I don't think there is that much to discuss because most of the media coverage focuses on McCain's negative campaign and Palin's denial. They present a real moral dilemma for me in that this desire to win (where they claim to put country first), but are clearly not thinking of the consequences of their actions. They perpetuate divisiveness which in addition to riling up some unbalanced people can also lead to more dangerous situations if those people turn against people who "aren't one of us" in a violent manner. And they've also made Obama even more of a target of the unhinged which extends to his family.

[Wales2004]

October 12, 2008McCain's closing argument: A push for divided government?Posted: 12:18 PM ET

From CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand

[Wales2004]

This is one of those speeches that screams that the speaker believes the listeners must not think at all.

October 13, 2008New McCain stump: 'We've got them just where we want them'Posted: 08:17 AM ET

[Wales2004]

Can anyone decipher the bolded portion of McCain's quote for me at the bottom of the article?

October 13, 2008

McCain says he'll 'whip' Obama's 'you-know-what' at debate

Posted: 05:18 AM ET

From CNN's Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand

[Roman]

October 13, 2008

The Bradley Effect – Selective Memory

By V. Lance Tarrance, Jr.

Now that polls indicate Senator Barack Obama is the favorite to win, some analysts predict a racially biased “Bradley Effect” could prevent Obama from winning a majority on November 4th. That is a pernicious canard and is unworthy of 21st century political narratives. I should know. I was there in 1982 at “ground zero” in California when I served George Deukmejian as his general election pollster and as a member of his strategy team when he defeated African-American Democratic California gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley, not once but twice, in 1982 and again in 1986.

Bradley Effect believers assume that there is an undetectable tendency in the behavior of some white voters who tell pollsters that they are “undecided” when in fact their true preference is to vote against the black candidate. This so-called effect suggests the power or advantage to alter an outcome – a pretty serious charge. This would render poll projections inaccurate (overstating both the number of undecided voters and the African-American candidate’s margin over a white opponent) and create an unaccounted for different outcome. However, it is indeed a “theory in search of data.”

The hype surrounding the Bradley Effect has evolved to where some political pundits believe in 2008 that Obama must win in the national pre-election polls by 6-9 points before he can be assured a victory. That’s absurd. There won’t be a 6-9 point Bradley Effect –- there can’t be, since few national polls show a large enough amount of undecided voters and it's in the undecided column where racism supposedly hides.

The other reason I reject the Bradley Effect in 2008 is because there was not a Bradley Effect in the 1982 California Governor’s race, either. Even though Tom Bradley had been slightly ahead in the polls in 1982, due to sampling error, it was statistically too close to call. For example, the daily Tarrance and Associates tracking polls for the Deukmejian campaign showed the following weekly summations (N=1000 each) during the month of October:

Week of:

Oct.7th Oct. 14th Oct. 21st Oct. 28 Nov. 1

Bradley 49 45 46 45 45

Deukmejian 37 41 41 42 44

It is obvious that this election was closing fast. Yet, Bradley's win was projected by the most prominent public pollster in the state, Mervin Field, who boasted on Election Day that Tom Bradley would defeat George Deukmejian, “making the Los Angeles mayor the first elected black governor in American history” (UPI 11-3-82). The reason for Field's enthusiasm was that his last weekend polling showed a 7-point margin for Bradley, but this was totally at variance from the Tarrance and Associates internal tracking results. Field's own exit polls, on Election Day itself, where voters were questioned after they left the polling places, also predicted a Bradley win. This caused the San Fransisco Chronicle, ignoring the closeness of the election and mixed polling results, to print 170,000 copies of its early morning Wednesday edition under the headline “Bradley Win Projected.”

Also at variance with the Mervin Field exit polls were the NBC and the CBS networks, using both exit polls and actual returns from key precincts, when they declared George Deukmejian the winner and not Tom Bradley the winner. In an AP report, a KNBC newscaster told viewers on Election Night “...half of the polls are wrong and I don't know who's right.” The only thing we know for sure is the election was too close to call, and some of the Election Day projections were right and others (notably Mervin Fields’ projections) were wrong and, unfortunately, most of this explanation because of selective memory has not been carried forward to this day.

The Field Poll inaugurated the speculation that led to the baseless Bradley Effect theory when, after the 1982 election, Field said “race was a factor in the Bradley loss” (AP 11-4-82). Mervin Field cited no data, but only speculated that white conservative voters of both parties were more undecided and that he may have over-represented minority voters in his polling. Thus, the Bradley Effect was born amidst some major polling errors and a confusing array of mixed predictions, hardly a firm foundation to construct a theory.

Even later analysis of the 1982 election revealed the weakness in the Bradley Effect theory as Bradley actually won on election day turnout, but lost the absentee vote so badly that Deukmejian pulled ahead to win. That Bradley won the vote on Election Day would hardly seem to suggest a hidden or last minute anti-black backlash—on the contrary, it suggests how easy it would have been for weekend polls and Election Day exit polls to get it wrong, since the decisive group of voters had largely already voted before the final weekend and never showed up at the polls to answer the questions of exit pollsters.

When Barack Obama lost the 2008 New Hampshire primary after all seven pre-election polls had Obama projected as the winner, the Bradley Effect got a second wind, blown along by a lot of misinformed press speculation asserting that our nation was still suffering from latent racism. A few weeks later, after much analysis of election demographics, and with a more thoughtful examination, it is clear that race was not the determinant that gave Hillary Clinton a surprising victory. In fact, it was a combination of an older brand of feminism, the open party system that encouraged independents to vote in the primary and some Obama campaign hubris that caused the result.

The New Hampshire polling debacle was also eerily familiar to those of us who witnessed first-hand the 1982 California election day errors. A lesson learned from 1982 campaign, but not remembered in 2008, was what a San Francisco Chronicle editor said the day after the 1982 election, “It seemed logical...to project a continued gain for Bradley.” There was never a consensus of data to support this logic. The 2008 New Hampshire update on the so-called Bradley Effect also falls short of proving this false theory of latent racism. Instead, the New Hampshire debacle should be labeled for what it is, the worst polling disaster since “Dewey Beats Truman.”

The Deukmejian campaign tracking polls did not confirm any Bradley Effect and to interject this type of speculation into the 2008 presidential election is not only folly, but insulting to the political maturity of our nation's voters. To allow this theory to continue to persist anymore than 25 years is to damage our democracy, no matter who wins.

[Roman]

Yes.

"My friends.......we're screwed."

[Greg's GL]

That's it! Shaggy! How could I have forgotten that?!?! Anyway..... Thanks!

Roman...you know what I have started to get concerned about? All over the place you see "Obama pulls ahead" or "Obama widens 10 point lead over McCain", etc. I wonder if we will see some Dems start taking their eye off the ball, get a little too comfortable in believing that Obama will win. And then stay home on Election Day.

See my point? The way the media is covering this poll situation could re-invigorate McCain supporters and perhaps cause some Dems to say "I don't have to vote. Obama's so far ahead, there's no way he can lose". Hmmm. Then the media will have a "shocking" outcome on Nov. 4th.

That's not to say the Bradley Effect couldn't still impact the election as well.

Polls Schmolls, I always say.

I did want to say that Jess has a good point. I never thought of it that way, but IA. By McCain saying "We're not mentioning Rev. Wright", the media does harp on it for days afterward. How brilliantly duplicitous, don't you think?

[Roman]

This is how I honestly feel this will go.

There will be a HUGE group of voters who will call Obama all kinds of things to their family and friends. Things that will just make people shake their heads. But......when they get in that booth, they will pull that lever for him, and take it with them to The Father. I honestly believe that. They will NEVER admit they voted for a black man, and will lie aboutit for the rest of their days.

Their are many Americans who have a huge question to ask themselves.........

Is one's bigotry and racism more important than the future and direction of this nation?

[Wales2004]

I got a kick out of his taking credit for the market....people thought of him and his experience and it fixed something.....I don't want to visit that place in his mind.

NP. I had mixed feelings about that song.

I don't really care about any of them and their ministers and if I were to be then it would be about the witch doctor. Anyone who says that these ministers are a great reflection of judgment should stop and think about the company they keep now or have kept and tell me if all of that company is an accurate reflection of who they are or hope to be. The traits we tend to admire in people generally tend to be the best part of them and not the worst.

The media has nothing new to say about Rev. Wright so allowing McCain to use them isn't shedding any new light on anything. If Obama is palling around with a terrorist then people need to be afraid of the government including McCain. How is it that they're allowing a terrorist to run around with Obama? How safe are we if McCain knows this and does nothing about it?

As for the polls.....I haven't changed my opinion about them. No matter how the election turns out the new term will be the Obama Effect. Either they will say he continued where they think Bradley left off.....or they'll say people that weren't expected to vote for Obama, threw in the towel over finances.

Los Angeles County as already mailed out its absentee ballots and some have probably been returned already. I don't think that many people will take the polls for granted and abstain.....especially here in California where there are propositions of interest on the ballot.

[Roman]

Vote for ObamaMcCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, at 10:44 AM ET

I used to nod wisely when people said: "Let's discuss issues rather than personalities." It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent's personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.

At my old English boarding school, we had a sporting saying that one should "tackle the ball and not the man." I carried on echoing this sort of unexamined nonsense for quite some time—in fact, until the New Hampshire primary of 1992, when it hit me very forcibly that the "personality" of one of the candidates was itself an "issue." In later years, I had little cause to revise my view that Bill Clinton's abysmal character was such as to be a "game changer" in itself, at least as important as his claim to be a "new Democrat." To summarize what little I learned from all this: A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.

On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be 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. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.

I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

And make sure you check out who wrote that article.

[Greg's GL]

Good point.

Perhaps. However, just the simple mention of his name is enough, in my mind, to have the single-minded, less educated voter casts doubt on a vote for Obama. The fact that the Republican's are calling Ayers a terrorist that they have not prosecuted is another good argument. But one that will surely fall silent for a voter that is just out for a sound bite to sway his/her vote one way or the other, don't you think?

Early voting is starting here in Florida as well. I know my boyfriend's Mom has already cast her vote. Like CA, FL has some nefarious propositions on the ballot that will help to intice voters to the polls on Election day, but my argument was primarily toward states that may not have these issues at stake.

Interesting read. I like his description of the Republican ticket. Hitchens is a rather ambiguous figure, I think. In some ways, he could be labeled a "liberal", but he has shown himself to be fairly critical of both parties at times (in particular President Clinton). I don't know if I'd consider him a true middle-of-the-roader, though.....