Barack Obama Elected President!

[Greg's GL]

This video on MSNBC's Hardball is good. Conservative radio host Michael Smerconish (I've never heard of him) endorsing Obama and discussing the Powell endorsement. Interesting stuff.

Hardball - Smerconish endorses Barack Obama

It appears to me that in contrast to the last two presidential elections, the smear and fear tactics are not working for the Republicans. The comments Bachmann made on Hardball are biting her in the ass and deservedly so.

"Anti-American" comments hurts Bachmann's campaign

[cct]

Kansas isn't going for Obama, though, according to polls. I don't think I was aware he was born in Kansas.

I don't doubt your lines will be long, though. I think this election is going to see the largest turnout in recent history.

P.S. My Obama sign was stolen from my yard last night. I despise this Republican enclave. Sigh...Back to HQ...

[Greg's GL]

My local HQ told me that it was a problem around here (with yard signs disappearing). I have two of them, and so far (knock on wood), no one has taken them.

Here's a report of early voting in Florida. Evidently, the panhandle area had high turnouts and that's a Republican stronghold. However, in Palm Beach and SE Florida (Dem country), there were large turnouts as well. It' interesting what they say about Crist encountering people wearing Obama T-Shirts.

Early voting in Florida

[marceline]

Everytime I hear about that, I really want to grab a paintball gun, hide in the bushes and unload on those freaks. Do they make paintballs filled with permanent dye?

[Roman]

MS is a conservative who chooses candidates based on what job he feels thatperson can do, regardless of party. I think he, as with many conservatives, may have been turned off by the capaigning of late.

[Greg's GL]

I was impressed with what I saw of him on Hardball. I've never listened to his radio show, but he comes across as a moderate and that's a very good thing in today's political climate.

I just read online that Obama is holding a "jobs summit" here in Florida with the governors of Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico and Colorado along with a few advisors. This shows how concerned he is for everyday Americans but I hope that it doesn't come off as a stunt. If it does, that could hurt him.

[Wales2004]

Obama was born in Hawaii. This was part of the "evidence" that he is exotic and not a real American. When he spent his vacation week in Hawaii, some of the Republicans were talking as if he went to the other side of the world....this was further evidence of his being an elititst. It turns out that it gave him an opportunity to visit his grandmother. I was kind of bothered by the whole discussion of how visiting his ailing grandmother for a couple of days is going to affect his bid since he won't be campaigning. Politics clearly trumps compassion.

Good for Charlie Crist. I heard this morning that Arnold has now decided to campaign with McCain on Halloween at a rally in Ohio. I guess he's tired of using the budget as an excuse.....and he must think California is a lost cause....or maybe some people aren't happy with him now because there was a group pushing for a recall (which is so stupid and wasteful when they can let him run out his term and save the money).

I got a kick out of the woman from Cuba talking about leaving a left wing government and not wanting Obama for that reason. I thought that country was a dictatorship and she thinks even the most liberal of presidents would abolish democracy. I'll chalk that rationale up to age and the inundation of too much rhetoric. I laugh at that "socialist" talk because look who's in office now getting taxpayers to take over banks and all.

Smerconish seemed to be really contemplating Obama early on. I used to see him on David Gregory's show (I hardly ever watch it now), and he would hint that he was seriously considering Obama.

Yesterday, one county here offered drive thru voting. I like voting by absentee ballot.

The only yard sign I've seen so far has been in support of a proposition. I'm almost surprised that I haven't seen a bunch of McCain signs around but now that I've said that, I'll go out and see some.

[Wales2004]

I read about this too. The Republicans can easily call it a stunt and if they get the media to go along with it....then it's a stunt. For his part, as long as he doesn't hold a press conference announcing it then it's not that big of a deal. The reasons McCain's campaign suspension came across as a stunt include the big announcement and the lack of follow through. He would have been better off trying to do something and taking credit after the fact but to have people anticipating made him talk loud while saying nothing.

[miche]

Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President

By Boris Johnson

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/10/2008

There are all sorts of reasons for hoping that Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States. He seems highly intelligent. He has an air of courtesy and sincerity. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, he has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb.

Unlike his opponent, he visibly incarnates change and hope, at a time when America desperately needs both.

It is no disrespect to John McCain - a brave and principled man - to observe that he has chosen a difficult time to stand on the Republican ticket.

Barack Obama: Why he should be US President

An Obama win could signify the end of race-based politics

The legacy of George Bush may take years, if not decades, to determine.

But at present he seems to have pulled off an astonishing double whammy.

However well-intentioned it was, the catastrophic and unpopular intervention in Iraq has served in some parts of the world to discredit the very idea of western democracy.

The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in some people's eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism.

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea.

To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune.

To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.

It would be tough for any candidate to receive the Republican baton from Dubya, and McCain can be proud of doing as well as he is.

His chief problem is that he does not seem to offer any hope of repair to those American ideals.

Or, to put it another way, it is not clear how America under McCain would recover her standing in the eyes of the world.

His chief selling-point is his grasp of foreign affairs, and his staunch belligerence in the pursuit of American interests.

He is certainly owed the respect due to a man who fought for his country, was captured and tortured.

But is this bellicosity really what the world is crying out for today?

When asked what his policy was towards Iran, Mr McCain sang - to the tune of the Beach Boys - "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran".

No doubt he was joking, but if I were an Iranian politician, those words would make me want a nuclear deterrent all the more.

McCain seems to stand for perpetual sabre-rattling against the terrors of abroad, and Obama wins because he seems to stand for hope, not fear.

Not that the Democratic candidate is a pushover.

He has shown terrific steel, beating off the Clintons, and defeating McCain in all three televised debates.

If elections were decided on the ruthless efficiency of campaigns, then Obama would already have it in the bag.

The defining image of the battle so far is of the two candidates leaving the stage after the last TV debate - Obama moving confidently off, after another grave and measured performance, and McCain gagging like a gargoyle, tongue out, as he realised he was about to walk over the edge.

I am not suggesting that McCain is a buffoon, or that Obama is quite as Messianic as some of his supporters seem to believe.

He gave a speech of unrivalled torpor in Germany, for instance. He needs to stick up more vigorously for free trade, and we must hope that any ill-considered new taxes will be thwarted by Congress.

But then again, he is patently not the Marxist subversive loony Lefty that some of his detractors allege.

I revere Melanie Phillips, and I have carefully studied her blog entries about Obama and the vote-stealers, or Obama and his association with a quondam terrorist called Ayers.

In the end I gave up, goggle-eyed and exhausted, having trolled the wilds of the Neocon internet without finding anything remotely approaching a smoking gun.

Obama's terrorist chum is now a professor, and his last act of terrorism took place when the candidate was eight, and it is not really clear that he and Obama are chums at all.

The entire set of allegations seem to be an attempt to smear him by association, and are about as damaging as pointing out that some of Tony Blair's colleagues used to be Stalinists, or that Tory party conferences used to feature people who advocated the hanging of Nelson Mandela.

Obama deserves to win because he seems talented, compassionate, and because he offers the hope of rejuvenating the greatest country on earth in the eyes of the rest of us. All those are sufficient reasons for desiring his victory.

And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.

After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they've had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

If Obama wins, then black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling.

If Obama wins, then it will be simply fatuous to claim that there are no black role models in politics or government, because there is no higher role model than the President of the United States.

If Barack Hussein Obama is successful next month, then we could even see the beginning of the end of race-based politics, with all the grievance-culture and special interest groups and political correctness that come with it.

If Obama wins, he will have established that being black is as relevant to your ability to do a hard job as being left-handed or ginger-haired, and he will have re-established America's claim to be the last, best hope of Earth.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...0/21/do2101.xml

[bandbfan]

I don't see a problem to call parts of Pennsylvania redneck. There's obvious a connotation to race in that word. And if it's true, then I don't know why it shouldn't be called that.

[Wales2004]

I'm kind of enjoying Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan arguing over Palin giving second graders misinformation over the role of the VP. PB is rolling out whatever Murtha said and comments made by other Democrats. I just like how he's defending Palin by saying she was talking down to second graders and CM said she was talking like a second grader.

It doesn't look like all this labeling of Democrats as socialist, communist and un-American is helping Republicans across the board.

[Wales2004]

Incoherence

October 20, 2008

Posted by Joe Klein (Time - Swampland)

[cct]

Is it me or is this campaign turning really really ugly...and I have to say mostly from supporters, not the candidates themselves. Some of the things I've heard lately, including the link I posted up thread, is far worse than even the stuff coming out of Palin's mouth.

The truth is, Obama should've known better than to say "spread the wealth" on national television. I personally thought he realized it the second it came out of his mouth; he almost cringed as much as I did; his eyes ducked from the camera, etc. If McCain had been in any better position, then that could've sealed the deal for him. Luckily, it has been distorted from so many sides that it's almost useless, although what I'm hearing from R supporters is keeping it going.

What kills me is we've been spreading the wealth for years...in favor of rich people.

What we have to look at here is not how much Obama is up by in the nationals. Nationals don't count. We are a representative republic. What matters are states. According to real clear, WV fell to McCain today. THis means we are Obama 286 to McCain's 160. Even if McCain wins all toss-ups, Obama takes the race. What Obama has to do is not lose any states he already has.

I'm sorry, GregGL, I still think this is a nail biter.

I'm waiting for my October Surprise....

[Tishy]

Here's an October surprise..

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-gener....Family.Travel/

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor's children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.

As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor's schedule.

But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.

Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.

"She said any event she can take her kids to is an event she tries to attend," said Jennifer McCarthy, who helped organize the June 2007 Family Day Celebration picnic in Ketchikan that Piper attended with her parents.

State Finance Director Kim Garnero told The Associated Press she has not reviewed the Palins' travel expense forms, so she could not say whether the daughters' travel with their mother would meet the definition of official business.

On Aug. 6, three weeks before Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain chose Palin his running mate, and after Alaska reporters asked for the records, Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters' travel.

In the amended reports, Palin added phrases such as "First Family attending" and "First Family invited" to explain the girls' attendance.

"The governor said, 'I want the purpose and the reason for this travel to be clear,'" said Linda Perez, state director of administrative services.

When Palin released her family's tax records as part of her vice presidential campaign, some tax experts questioned why she did not report the children's state travel reimbursements as income.

The Palins released a review by a Washington attorney who said state law allows the children's travel expenses to be reimbursed and not taxed when they conduct official state business.

Taylor Griffin, a McCain-Palin campaign spokesman, said Palin followed state policy allowing governors to charge for their children's travel. He said the governor's office has invitations requesting the family to attend some events, but he said he did not have them to provide.

In October 2007, Palin brought daughter Bristol along on a trip to New York for a women's leadership conference. Plane tickets from Anchorage to La Guardia Airport for $1,385.11 were billed to the state, records show, and mother and daughter shared a room for four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House hotel, which overlooks Central Park.

The event's organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter.

Alexis Gelber, who organized Newsweek's Third Annual Women & Leadership Conference, said she does not know how Bristol ended up attending. Gelber said invitees usually attend alone, but some ask if they can bring a relative or friend.

Griffin, the campaign spokesman, said he believes someone with the event personally sent an e-mail to Bristol inviting her, but he did not have it to provide. Records show Palin also met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs representatives and visited the New York Stock Exchange.

In January, the governor, Willow and Piper showed up at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood Buffet, an Anchorage gala to announce winners of an earlier seafood competition.

"She was just there," said James Browning, executive director of Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, which runs the event. Griffin said the governor's office received an invitation that was not specifically addressed to anyone.

When Palin amended her children's expense reports, she listed a role for the two girls at the function — "to draw two separate raffle tickets."

In the original travel form, Palin listed a number of events that her children attended and said they were there "in official capacity helping." She did not identify any specific roles for the girls.

In July, the governor charged the state $2,741.26 to take Bristol and Piper to Philadelphia for a meeting of the National Governors Association. The girls had their own room for five nights at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for $215.46 a night, expense records show.

Expense forms describe the girls' official purpose as "NGA Governor's Youth Programs and family activities." But those programs were activities designed to keep children busy, a service provided by the NGA to accommodate governors and their families, NGA spokeswoman Jodi Omear said.

In addition to the commercial flights, the children have traveled dozens of times with Palin on a state plane. For these flights, the total cost of operating the plane, at $971 an hour, was about $55,000, according to state flight logs. The cost of operating the state plane does not increase when the children join their mother.

The organizer of an American Heart Association luncheon on Feb. 15 in Fairbanks said Palin asked to bring daughter Piper to the event, and the organizer said she was surprised when Palin showed up with daughters Willow and Bristol as well.

The three Palin daughters shared a room separate from their mother at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks for two nights, at a cost to the state of $129 per night.

The luncheon took place before Palin's husband, Todd, finished fourth in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, also in Fairbanks. The family greeted him at the finish line.

When Palin showed up at the luncheon with not just Piper but also Willow and Bristol, organizers had to scramble to make room at the main table, said Janet Bartels, who set up the event.

"When it's the governor, you just make it happen," she said.

The state is already reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for more than 300 nights she slept at her own home, 40 miles from her satellite office in Anchorage.

Tony Knowles, a Democratic former governor of Alaska who lost to Palin in a 2006 bid to reclaim the job, said he never charged the state for his three children's commercial flights or claimed their travel as official state business.

Knowles, who was governor from 1994 to 2002, is the only other recent Alaska governor who had school-age children while in office.

"There was no valid reason for the children to be along on state business," said Knowles, a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. "I cannot recall any instance during my eight years as governor where it would have been appropriate to claim they performed state business."

Knowles said he brought his children to one NGA event while in office but didn't charge the state for their trip.

In February 2007, the three girls flew from Juneau to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. Palin charged the state for the $519.30 round-trip ticket for each girl, and noted on the expense form that the daughters accompanied her to "open the start of the Iron Dog race."

The children and their mother then watched as Todd Palin and other racers started the competition, which Todd won that year. Palin later had the relevant expense forms changed to describe the girls' business as "First Family official starter for the start of the Iron Dog race."

The Palins began charging the state for commercial flights after the governor kept a 2006 campaign promise to sell a jet bought by her predecessor.

Palin put the jet up for sale on eBay, a move she later trumpeted in her star-making speech at the Republican National Convention, and it was ultimately sold by the state at a loss.

That left only one high-performance aircraft deemed safe enough for her to use — a 1980 twin-engine King Air assigned to the public safety agency but, according to flight logs, out of service for maintenance and repairs about a third of the time Palin has been governor.

[Roman]

The New York Times Magazine is set to publish an explosive story this Sunday on the inner workings and combative personalities of what has been a wild few months for the McCain campaign.

The piece, written by Robert Draper and titled "The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate," breaks some new reportorial ground, including a growing weariness within a campaign that seems more interested in tactical victories and the next compelling narratives than an overarching strategy. Draper writes:

"By October, the succession of backfiring narratives would compel some to reappraise not only McCain's chances but also the decisions made by [Chief Strategist Steve] Schmidt, who only a short time ago was hailed as the savior who brought discipline and unrepentant toughness to a listing campaign."

Having interviewed several of the Senator's chief aides, Draper details the process by which McCain ultimately chose his running mate (New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was surprisingly high on the list). And the decision may have been even more impulsive than initially thought. Gov. Sarah Palin, who had never been on the VP shortlist, was advanced at the last minute by Schmidt and Rick Davis, and was picked after a less-than-hour-long chat in with McCain at his ranch in Arizona.

From there, Draper tracks the campaign through Palin's widely praised convention speech, the roaring early campaign events, and then the first glimmer of doubts. There are additional, juicy nuggets that he uncovers earlier and along the way. These include the birth of the Obama-as-celebrity attack line -- the campaign felt it was on the wrong track, its pollster described their situation as "third and nine," and Schmidt "blurted out the epiphany concerning Obama. 'Face it, gentlemen,' he said. 'He's being treated like a celebrity.'"

Then there is Schmidt's -- perhaps fatal -- push for McCain to "go all in," leave the campaign trail and head to Washington to work on the financial bailout package.

"Schmidt evidently saw the financial crisis as a 'true character' moment that would advance his candidate's narrative."

Ultimately, Draper defines the McCain campaign in a series of different narratives: the heroic fighter, the country first deal-maker, team of mavericks, etc. His reporting will undoubtedly spur an early start to the campaign postmortems. Even McCain aides waxed skeptically about their bosses chances.

"Despite their leeriness of being quoted," Draper writes, "McCain's senior advisers remained palpably confident of victory -- at least until very recently."