Speaking of Stats

Joe Lieberman needs a miracle. He made a deal with the devil and retained his senate seat in 2006, despite losing in the Connecticut Democratic primary. He went 3rd party, and took all of the GOP vote plus all of the socially conservative Dem votes, squeaking out a victory over his primary vanquisher, Ned Lamont. But Joe had a problem - he really had no place in the rethugs universe, and had he gone over to the dark side, he had no chance at any kind of plum committee chair gig. SOOOOOO, he went back to the Dems and promised to caucus with them in exchange for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security/Governmental Affairs committee. He got his wish, the Dems controlled the senate, and everyone kept their powder dry for the '08 election cycle.

This is where Joe made his SECOND deal with the devil... Understand that Lieberman despises Barack Obama with an undisguised passion. At a national level, Obama is everything Joe isn't: articulate, telegenic, transformational, substantive, and above all else - ELECTABLE. At this point the general election was up-in-the-air. Joe perceived that national security and other hawkish concerns would be the tipping point. This was his strong suit - the reason that Kerry had tabbed him to be his VP 4 years earlier. If this election came down to the nubs, the people would side with the warrior or the orator. He went "all-in" with Satan and endorsed McCain, agreeing to speak at the rethugs' convention in Minneapolis. Since then he has been a reliable "prop" in Florida during McCain's campaign stops there. Joe knew that if his buddy got elected, a mere chairmanship wasn't in his future. Joe was looking at the Homeland Security post or maybe even Defense Secretary...

It's funny how reality has a way of sinking in at the most inopportune times. Since Joe made that fateful decision, the economy has gone down the toilet, the wizened warrior tack has failed to gain any traction with independent voters, and the rethugs prospects in the next congress look worse than bleak -- but all is not lost for Joe the Turncoat!! All he needs is the aforementioned miracle...
Here is where things stand today: The Dems control 49 seats, the rethugs control 49 seats and the two "independents" [Lieberman and Sanders (I-VT)] caucus with the Dems, and while Sanders has absolutely no interest in working with the dark side of the force, Joe has made his bed with the rethugs. So how does he keep his gig? He keeps his gig by the Dems gaining EXACTLY 9 senate seats - turning him into the "Filibuster-buster." Is it possible? As Sarah Palin would say, "You betcha."

These current GOP seats are considered Dem locks this cycle (all stats h/t to 538):
Virginia (Warner wins)
New Mexico (T. Udall)
Colorado (M. Udall)

Now we're at 54 total seats (including Joe the Turncoat)

Add in these "all-but-assured" pickups:
New Hampshire (Shaheen)
Alaska (Begich)
Oregon (Merkley)

And we get to 57. Now if all goes well, and these leaners fall the right way:
Minnesota (Franken)
North Carolina (Hagan)

we sit at the magical "59" and all Joe would need is ONE of these to fall into the Dem column:
Georgia [Chambliss (slimeball rethug) vs. Martin];
Kentucky [ McConnell (fearless leader of senate rethugs) vs. Lunsford]
Mississippi [Wicker (unabashed rethug) vs. Musgrove].

Nate Silver at 538 puts the chances of a 60 seat majority at 1 in 3. These are far better odds than Joe the Turncoat deserves. It would be the only thing that could put a damper on a Grant Park celebration. So here's hoping against hope that all of the dominoes fall, and the Democrats take 2 of those 3 longshot seats. I can think of no better fate for Joe Lieberman than to be unceremoniously drummed out of his pretty office and his cushy chairmanship. Joe needs to retire in the wilderness, tearing out his eyes like Lear.

Damn, elections are hard on stats junkies

Here's yet another way of looking at the data.

I've put together the polling data (using 538's projections), for basically every Tuesday since 9/9 (I left the data for 10/21 at work). I the grouped the 7 sets of data in the following categories:

1. McCain up by 5.0 or more in every week: Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Alabama, Nebraska (there is some intrigue with how Nebraska splits its congressional districts, but I'm ignoring that for now), Tennessee, Alaska, Kentucky, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Arizona. 137 EV (None of these have ever been closer than 7.5)
   
   
2. Obama up by 5.0 or more in every week: DC, Maryland, Hawaii, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, California, Washington, New Jersey, Maine, Iowa. 190 EV (None of these have been closer than 8.8, except in the 9/16 poll, when 4 states were - that week was the nadir of Obama's polling)
   
   
3. McCain up every week, but sometimes closer than 5.0: West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, and Georgia. 26 EV (These are all between 4.2 and 8.6 right now, with Montana and Georgia less than 5.0.)
   
   
4. Obama up every week, but sometimes closer than 5.0: Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and New Hampshire. 74 EV (All but the last 2 are above 10.0. If I dropped the 9/16 data, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would move into the upper category.)
   
   
5. The lead has switched at one point or another (the real tossups): Virginia, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana. 111 EV

The total in the two McCain categories is 163, in the two Obama categories it's 264. None of the states in the Obama categories have been closer than 6 points since September. For McCain to win, he has to do the following:

• Defend all of his states, especially Georgia and Montana, both of which are closer than every Obama state and Virginia and Colorado.

And


• Win every tossup state. If he loses Nevada only, the election would be a tie, and it would go to the House of Representatives, where most are projecting an Obama win.

Or


• He's got to steal something from Obama, and there's nothing seriously in play.

If Obama takes Virginia or Colorado, both of which are leaning in his direction, McCain's got to steal something substantial, which is even harder (we're back to PA).

Election Update, 10/28

As suggested by Carlos, I looked at RealClearPolitics in combination with fivethirtyeight and electoral-vote in putting together today's update. RCP is known to have a conservative bent, based on the polls they'll use in compiling their averages. They're also moderately annoying, because they don't compile data for every race and don't put together averages for a handful of races, which, admittedly, aren't in question, but it's a completeness issue.

Well, RCP has no effect on how I'm ranking the states. The only movement from yesterday is Ohio going from Tossup to Obama Likely. We're still looking at basically the same map as yesterday, with Indiana playing the real toss-up and maybe edging toward McCain, but only slightly. It's still Obama 364 (or 375) and McCain 174 (or 163).

THAT sounds like a winner

I just heard a senior GOP operative talk about their strategy during the last week. The campaign has been crippled by an absolute failure to define the candidate and any coherent message, lurching from gutter attacks to bizarre stunts (the campaign "suspension," for example). Now, with his last chance to say why John McCain should be president, this week, the campaign will focus on....

Jeremiah Wright.

Yup. They are going after a minister, to play the race game just after some skinheads were planning a racist massacre. That sounds like a winner.

Michael Dukakis is quite excited to turn over the traveling trophy for the Worst Recent Presidential Campaign.

A brief aside

It is 44 degrees and raining in Philadelphia. Here, in Chicago, where our World Series dreams were shattered, it is 38 degrees.

Baseball has destroyed its crown jewel.

Games end at 2AM, they are played in frigid conditions with howling winds and driving rain.

It is a pipe dream of course, but Commissioner Selig please. Shorten the season. Play regular-season doubleheaders. Play baseball during baseball season.

Don't go away mad, Senator Stevens, just go away

Will they rename the Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage?

CNN says he's guilty on all counts.

The Buzz

"What I'm talking about is-- Wait, what am I talking about?
- The buzz.
- The buzz. And the chicks, the whatever...is an offshoot of the buzz." - Almost Famous

Last week here at the Thinker was our best week yet in terms of unique visitors (523), surpassing even the halcyon days of the 06 election. Thanks to those who wander by to observe our babble and especially to those of you who comment and make us feel like there's some point to this beyond a little bit of navel-gazing.

Poll update, 10/27

This last week or so, I'm going to post daily updates, just so that we can see any movement quickly.

Movement since last week: basically none. Georgia moves from McCain win to McCain likely, and North Dakota moves from Tossup to McCain likely.

In the tossup group, Indiana is now slightly on Obama's side, which would give Obama 375 and McCain 163, slightly better than last week.

Just to demonstrate how stable the race is, using 538.com's model, since 10/7, no state has flipped in either direction. The average poll has moved 0.5 pts (the median is 0.6) in Obama's direction. McCain has thrown the kitchen sink at him, and there's basically been no movement in 3 weeks.

Alaska’s Largest Newspaper Endorses Obama: Priceless!

Take it from those who know Sarah Palin the best. The Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s largest newspaper, has endorsed Barack Obama for president. The newspaper minced no words in declaring that Sarah Palin lacks the readiness to be president, should it become necessary:

[F]ew who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

Noting that Sen. John McCain is “the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation,” the newspaper said Sen. Barack Obama “brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand.”

Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown's root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it. It is easy to look at Sen. Obama and see a return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies of the last Democratic administration in Washington, which left the country with the momentum of growth and a budget surplus that President George Bush has squandered.

Read the full text here. It’s a ringing endorsement from our friends to the North.

Fruit Flies 2, Sarah Palin 0

Hmm … I’m beginning to think the DNC has burrowed a mole deep in the McCain-Palin campaign. We know Palin’s not very bright, but aren’t her handlers supposed to do the thinking for her, vet her “policy” speeches?

Here is clueless Sarah belittling fruit fly research:

And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good -- things like fruit fly research in Paris, France

(I must say, I like the dig at "Paris, France." Nice going, Sarah: definitely un-American!)

From the Washington Post:

As soon as Palin spoke, Democrats issued a long list of examples in which McCain had voted against fully funding IDEA and other special education programs. They also noted that scientific studies involving fruit flies are helping further researchers' understanding of autism, a disorder that both Palin and McCain speak of frequently while campaigning.

The Think Progress blog amplifies:

[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for..nerve cell connections to form and function correctly. The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

The study of fruit flies has also been used for other autism research and “revolutionize[d]” the study of birth defects.

Whoopise-daisy!

So, the rightosphere, desperate for something to change the narrative of this election (John McCain gets throttled by 150 EV), glommed on to the sensational story out yesterday about a 20 year old McCain volunteer supposedly getting attacked by a black man, where first he just robbed her, then noticed that she had a McCain bumper sticker, and just went nuts. Now, of course, such a story feeds into their feverish little vestigial brains because it reinforces the very very very old saw about how the black men will attack our white wimmen if only they had the chance. Stephen Douglas used that same line of attack on Abraham Lincoln, for crying out loud, which proves that conservatives never learn anything.

Anyway, they were all excited and ready to ride racial hatred and fear of DaScaryNaughtyWordsPeople to victory.

Umm, oops.

Pittsburgh police said a 20-year-old woman who originally said she was robbed and assaulted at knifepoint in Bloomfield because of her political views made the story up.

Ashley Todd -- who has a backward letter "B" scratched into her right cheek -- confessed to faking the story and will be charged with filing a false report, Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a news conference Friday.

Palin's "Policy Speech"

So Miss Wasilla is going to give a "policy speech" on special needs children.

1) Since when do veep nominees give "policy speeches?"

2) Once again she shamelessly uses her kids as props and

3) Her running mate and her party have not exactly been the greatest supporters of children's health needs. Did they just find religion?

"Go Visit Grandma"?

Keith Olbermann and Sam Seder rightly take down the GOP hack who sneered at Barack Obama for visiting his dying grandmother. There are rational responses to this sicko, but they're all unnecessary.

Good to be back

Tired though.

First, I am never flying again.

I'm on the window in a two-across aisle. Not bad, until Mrs. Jabba the Hut sits down. She had to lift the armrest and needed the belt extender, The whole trip she was eating this huge bag of candy on her lap--and sweating. DIRECTLY in front, a toddler, and her parents apparently mistook me for someone who likes kids. Directly behind me--a dog. No kidding. A little yipping dog.

Second it was a great conference, securities litigation. It's subprime time and that's better than Christmas for the litigators.

And third, I didn't even recognize San Francisco. When I went last year the city was being strangled by the homeless. I don't know what they did (maybe I don't want to know) but the legions of unfortunates sleeping about town were just gone. Even pre-dawn walking from the hotel near Chinatown to the BART on Market Street heading to the airport, not a one.

Time for bed.

McCain Sticks a Fork in Himself...

He knows he's done...

John McCain's election night watch party might be missing John McCain. Instead of appearing before a throng of supporters at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix on the evening of Nov. 4, the Republican presidential nominee plans to deliver postelection remarks to a small group of reporters and guests on the hotel's lawn.

Who does this? I have NEVER heard of a "victory" or "concession" speech for any significant office (even as small as Tammy Duckworth's unsuccessful 2006 congressional run) given in a vacuum. It stands to reason that McCain's election night party would be attended by several hundred people, and many - if not ALL - of them will have made a signficant emotional investment in the campaign. Doesn't it stand to reason that they should be allowed to view the body at the wake? It seems insanely self-centered to "mail in" a concession via television...

Sarah Palin: McCain’s Train Wreck

Remember the fake outrage generated by Bill Clinton’s $500 haircut? At the time it was spun by his opponents as an example of elitist excess by a politician who was said to have the common touch. So what are we to make of the RNC-McCain campaign spending $150,000 to doll up and accessorize Sarah Palin and her family?

Okay, so she’s got a big family, but $150,000? Most American families will never spend this much on clothing in their entire lives!

According to financial disclosure records, in September Palin’s clothing stipend included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York totaling $49,425.74. (Wasn’t she supposed to be meeting world leaders in New York?) Then there was an even bigger bill from a huge shopping splurge at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis for $75,062.63.

And then the RNC spent an astounding $4,716.49 on hair and makeup for Palin and her family.

Here’s what I don’t get: How come after all these astronomical expenditures on her clothing/makeup makeover, Sarah Palin still looks cheap and trashy?

Hell, just the other day as she gave an interview demonstrating once again she knows nothing about the Constitution and the vice president’s role, Palin was wearing a loud red leather (?) jacket that looked like it was right off the rack at Wal-Mart. There's no accounting for taste; that must be it.

The tight-lipped RNC said talk to the McCain campaign about this extravagant expenditure, and the McCain campaign tossed the hot potato right back. These guys have come a long way, baby, from their CREEP break-in days. (Remember when, the nefarious “Committee to Re-Elect the President” was riding high with McCain's pal, G. Gordon Liddy, during Watergate’s heyday?)

I think we can all agree that the RNC’s money would be much better spent had they handed Palin over to the professionals. Hey, the gal pals at Bravo’s hit makeover show, “Queer Eye for the Straight Girl,” could have Palin at least looking the part of (heaven forbid) president for less than $30,000, I’m sure.

So much for Sarah Palin, the Joe Sixpack hockey mom.

John McCain's gamble and why he's doing it

Yesterday, I posted about John McCain's bizarre focus on Pennsylvania given the difficult odds he faces there. The more I think about it, however, the more it makes sense, even though the odds are long. To see this, let's look at his paths to 270:

States he's basically got in the bag - Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota (152 EV). He's polling way ahead in each of these states. For argument's sake, let's add Montana and West Virginia and North Dakota - although that's far from a sure thing (11 EV) to his pile, so he's at 163.

States he's got no chance of winning - DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota (234 EV).

What's left - being very generous to McCain (in descending order of EV) - Florida (27), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Indiana (11), Missouri (11), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5), Nevada (5), and New Hampshire (4). Out of that, he needs 107 to win out of a possible 141.

Now, let's look a little more closely at how McCain could put together combinations of states to win.

If he doesn't win Florida, he needs 107/114 available. There are only 3 ways he wins if he loses Florida - losing exactly one of NM, NV, or NH, and sweeping the rest (OH, PA, CO, NC, VA, MO, IN).

If he doesn't win Pennsylvania, he needs 107/120 available. There are only 11 combinations where he wins if he loses PA. First of all, he absolutely cannot lose in either Ohio, Florida, or North Carolina. He could lose PA and either Indiana, Missouri, or Virginia, but how realistic is it to think that Obama wins any one of those states (or North Carolina, for that matter) and Pennsylvania, but none of the other 9 tossup states? In list form, of Obama wins PA, then the only ways McCain wins the election are:

• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, NM, NV, and NH; Obama wins: Nothing
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, MO, VA, CO, NM, NV, and NH; Obama wins: IN
  
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, VA, CO, NM, NV, and NH; Obama wins: MO
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, CO, NM, NV, and NH; Obama wins: VA
  
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, NM, NV, and NH; Obama wins: CO
  
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, NV, and NH; Obama wins: NM
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, NM, and NH; Obama wins: NV
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, NM, and NV; Obama wins: NH
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, NM, and NV; Obama wins: CO, NH
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, and NV; Obama wins: NM, NH
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, and NM; Obama wins: NV, NH
• McCain wins: OH, FL, NC, IN, MO, VA, CO, and NV; Obama wins: NM, NH

Ohio is similar, so I won't bore you here with the details.

The upshot of all this is that if McCain does not win Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, the electoral maps that lead to victory for him basically go away.

So you don't have to

Browsing the hilarity over at the Corner on NRO, I ran across this question:

Biden vs. Palin [Ed Whelan]

How is it that anyone can believe that Joe Biden, whose national-security “expertise” consists of being wrong on virtually every important question over the past few decades (as my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Pete Wehner discusses in this Wall Street Journal essay from last month), is more qualified to be Vice President than Sarah Palin is?

I'm sure he's not asking that as a rhetorical question, so I'll answer it. For starters, Ed, I suspect that Joe the Senator has some idea what the Vice President does, unlike your heroine.

During the Sarah Palin interview, CNN passed along a question from a third grader at a local elementary school.

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, “What does the Vice President do?”

PALIN: That’s something that Piper would ask me! … [T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

Just to remind you:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

New widget theft

You may have noticed the countdown clock at the upper right. I shamelessly stole it from Schmidlap's "Fuck Off, Chimpy" clock.

Edit: clock modified to reflect that Alaska's polls close later than Hawaii's.

Two weeks out

Crunch time, ladies and gentlemen. The last week has seen the race tighten a bit, but not a whole lot. There has not been a lot of movement state-by-state. Obama is firming up his support - he has no "likely" states anymore, but his "win" states are more solid - every win state has a 90+% chance of going his way (according to 538), and he's got 171 EV's at 100%. McCain's states are similarly solid (although he has fewer) - all of his win or likely states are at 91+% or higher for him to win them.

The big news from overnight, according to CNN, is that McCain is conceding New Mexico, Iowa, and Colorado. If Obama hangs on to every Kerry state plus those, he wins with 273 EV. So what's McCain's strategy? Pennsylvania. He has to take that from Obama and prevent Obama from getting 19 EV's back, in places like Virginia (13), Ohio (20), Florida (27), Nevada (5), Missouri (11), or North Carolina (15) - all states where Obama is polling ahead right now. Can he do that? Well, EV.com has Obama up by 12 in PA, 538 has him up by 9.5 with a 98% chance of winning, and if you go to 3bluedudes.com (newly added to the links list), which compiles data from something like 80 projection sites, they've got him polling up by 12.2% and have it in their "Strong Obama" category. Does John McCain have the Warren Zevon cranked up for his election night gathering?

Don Quixote had his windmills
Ponce de Leon took his cruise
Took Sinbad seven voyages
To see that it was all a ruse

(That's why I'm) Looking for the next best thing
Looking for the next best thing
I appreciate the best
But I'm settling for less
'Cause I'm looking for the next best thing

On to the numbers:

Italicized states have trended (changed categories) towards McCain, bolded towards Obama.

McCain win: Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota. Total: 152 EV (unchanged).

McCain likely: Montana, West Virginia. Total: 8 EV (+5).

Obama likely: None. Total: 0 EV (-49).

Obama win: DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Colorado, Virginia. Total: 286 EV (+22).

Tossup: Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, Florida. Total: 92 EV (+22).

Only four states moved this week. McCain put West Virginia back into the likely from the tossup column, while Obama moved Virginia and Colorado to win, but lost Florida from likely to tossup. Combining the "win" and "likely" for each, we'd be at 160 for McCain and 286 for Obama.

If you include all states that are leaning one way or the other, you'd put IN and ND in McCain's column and FL, MO, OH, NC, and NV in Obama's. That would give you totals of 364 for Obama and 174 for McCain, exactly the same as the last two weeks. Stability helps Obama.

Just a quick break from politics for a moment

Last night the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays defeated the Boston Red Sox in the 7th game of the American League Championship Series. In doing so, they make my long-standing Cub-fandom that much more pathetic. Now, each of the last four expansion teams into MLB will have appeared in the World Series AT LEAST ONCE - while in the words of the late-great Steve Goodman - "the last time the Cubs won a (National League) pennant was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan." Let's put that into perspective shall we? The four expansion teams [Colorado Rockies, Florida Marlins, Arizona Diamondbacks, and the aforementioned (Devil) Rays] have played a combined total of 54 MLB seasons, and have qualified for a combined FIVE WORLD SERIES. They have won THREE, and have an outstanding chance of adding a FOURTH. 1945 is 63 years ago.... sigh

Do they still play the blues in Chicago when baseball season rolls around?

You betcha.

Powell

I respect the thoughts that Carlos has about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama today, but I must say that it means little to me. Hopefully, it will control the media for a while, but Powell is a liar whose words have zero credibility to me. I just want everyone associated with this 8 year long disaster to go away.

Colin Powell: A Deal-Closing Endorsement

It is often correctly assumed that high-profile endorsements are of limited utility to the candidate being endorsed. Such endorsements might fire up the base or, perhaps, further tilt those voters already leaning the candidate’s way.

In the case of General Colin Powell’s extraordinary endorsement of Barack Obama for president, however, its effect could endure through November 4, with devastating results for John McCain's slim prospects of election. This may be the first nail in the McCain campaign coffin as the end game begins.

General Powell’s indictment of the Republican Party and McCain was so wide-ranging that extended excerpts of his interview-endorsement bear repeating here (emphasis mine):

On McCain and the Republican Party:

I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years it has moved more to the right than I would like to see it.

I also believe that on the Republican side, over the last seven weeks the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower.

On McCain and the economy:

And I must say that I’ve gotten a good measure of both, and in the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that we were having. And almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. 

And that concerned me, sensing that he did not have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had.

On Palin:

And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired, but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be President of the United States, which is the job of the Vice President. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.


On the Republican smear campaign:

And I’ve also been disappointed frankly by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign has, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign, but Mr. McCain says he’s a washed out terrorist—well, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that because of this very, very limited relationship, that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, now Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings, and I think that’s inappropriate.

I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrower. It’s not what the American people are looking for. 

And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. 

And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift.

On Republican religious bigotry:


I’m also troubled by…what members of the party say, and is permitted to be said, such things as, ‘Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, 'He is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian.'

But the really right answer is, 'What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?'

The answer’s 'No, that’s not America.'

Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion he’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture, at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave, and as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards, purple heart, bronze star, showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old, and then at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have a Star of David, it had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Ushad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11. And he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life. 

Now we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know, but I’m troubled about the fact that within the party, we have these kinds of expressions. 


On Supreme Court appointments:

I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that’s what we would be looking at in a McCain administration.


On Senator Barack Obama:

So when I look at all of this and I think back to my army career, we’ve got two individuals. Either on of them could be a good president. But which is the president that we need now? Which is the individual that serves the needs of the nation for the next period of time? And I’ve come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities, as well as his substance, he has both style and substance, he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.

I think he is a transformational figure, he is a new generation, coming onto the world stage, the American stage,

And for that reason, I will be voting for Barack Obama.

Amen. Thank you, General Powell, for being a voice of reason and candor from the rational, moderate (what’s left of it) wing of the Republican Party.

One parting thought: Having Sarah Palin's frivolous, worst yet, unfunny appearance on Saturday Night Live juxtaposed against the gravitas of a great American hero and the most respected military man of our time give this endorsement of Barack Obama the following day, Sunday on Meet the Press (an NBC twofer!) is doubly devastating for John McCain.

Greetings from San Francisco

I awoke to news of the Colin Powell endorsement, and the front page of the SF Chroniche had the front page pic of the Obama rally in St. Louis.

Un-freakin' believable.

50 cents

That's it. That's what Barack Obama raised in September. From every man, woman, and child in the United States. $150,000,000 in one month. His previous high had been $65 million in August.

Holy crap, that's a lot of money. Those of you in battleground states - you won't see a commercial for anything other than this campaign for the next 16 days.

Better Late than Never

This Sunday, the celebrated Chicago Tribune for the first time in its history is endorsing a Democrat for president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

The Trib, well-known for its relentless conservatism and support for Republicans, gained legendary infamy for its 1948 headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman," which enabled one of the most famous photographs in presidential campaign history: a broadly smiling Truman holding up the hapless newspaper with its egg-in-the-face banner headline.

The Chicago Tribune will never, ever, live this one down.

The Tribune has had a long history of support for reactionary, ultra-conservative causes, with a xenophobic twist. Reaching back to its nativist roots in 1855 of support for the Know Nothing party, during the Great Depression the Chicago Tribune of Col. Robert McCormick was stridently anti-FDR and anti-New Deal. And during WWII, the Colonel's Trib was fiercely isolationist, providing a platform for the America First movement, which had attracted pro-Nazi elements and poster-boy Charles Lindbergh.

But the Chicago Tribune also has had moments of backing progressive causes and of great journalistic integrity. In a return to the better angels of its nature, the Trib was on the right side of abolitionism. The newspaper supported Abraham Lincoln, his radical Republican Party, and the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1974, the Chicago Tribune was the first newspaper to publish the full transcripts of the Watergate tapes.

By endorsing Barack Obama, breaking with a partisan tradition that goes back more than 150 years, the Chicago Tribune adds to its history one of those moments of journalistic integrity, reasserting itself as one of America's great newspapers.

You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them.

I would like to retire two hackneyed phrases from this campaign season.

No more people should be "thrown under the bus." And henceforth policy matters or political questions may not be referred to as "too much inside baseball."

Thank you.

Joe the Plumber? Joe the TOOL

Since McCain brought up “Joe the plumber” in the debate the guy, inevitably, has become a media darling. It seems this is precisely what the McCain plumbers unit wanted. Upon closer scrutiny, though, certain inconvenient facts have emerged to cloud Joe the plumber’s “everyman” image:

1. Though he claims to be “undecided” Joe, whose first name is Samuel, is a registered Republican and voted in the Republican primary.

2. Joe the plumber reluctantly admitted that he’d actually benefit from Obama’s tax cut. Joe the TOOL then went on a tirade that he’d have to buy equipment from other businesses that would presumably be taxed under Obama, thus hurting poor widdle Joe. Aww… either Joe the INGRATE is an economics wiz schooled in the the specious intricacies of trickle-down, or, more likely, he got the TALKING POINTS. Hey Joe, that’s above your pay scale, pal. Literally and figuratively.

3. Joe doesn’t have a plumber’s license, a requirement in Toledo, although he says he doesn’t need one.

4. The state of Ohio has imposed a lien on Joe the plumber for over $1,100 in unpaid back taxes. Seems as if you could use Obama’s tax relief, Joe. That is, unless someone else is picking up the tab.

5. In a call-in to Katie Couric, Joe the plumber said his intention was to get Obama to talk about his tax plan (presumably beyond what Obama had been patiently explaining at the greeting line), and not “tap dance” around the issue. Then he added rather gratuitously that Obama did "a tap dance...almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."

This language comes very close to outright racism. Sammy Davis Jr. was never known in his illustrious career simply as a tap dancer. Such references can very easily be interpreted as code for the worst kind of bigotry.

It turns out, according to the AP, Joe the plumber “had something of a debate Sunday as [Obama] walked house to house on Shrewsbury at the start of the candidate's four-day visit in the Toledo area.”

The New York Times reported:

Mr. Wurzelbacher told Ms. Couric that his encounter with Mr. Obama was a matter of impulse.
“Neighbors were outside asking him questions, and I didn’t think they were asking him tough enough questions,” he said.

He went on, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask one of these guys a question and really corner them and get them to answer a question,” he said, “for once instead of tap dancing around it, and unfortunately I asked the question, but I still got a tap dance.”

He added, “Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”

Here’s a brief history lesson of Jim Crow racist stereotypes, like tap dancing:

“The onset of Jim Crow laws and customs rested upon the racist characterization of black people as culturally, personally, and biologically inferior. This image functioned as the racial bedrock of American popular culture after 1900, especially manifested in minstrel shows, the vaudeville theatre, songs and music, film and radio, and commercial advertising."

Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.

A few debate thoughts

I wish Obama would hit back on the whole $3 million projector earmark. The planetarium must have helped educate millions of children in math and science over the decades.

John McCain's education plan for college is that you can take out as many loans as you want. My sister has lots and lots of loans and will be paying them until she's past 65. That's a crappy plan.

John McCain wants unqualified teachers in schools.

I thought Obama was kind of flat for a lot of the debate, but McCain just looks creepy on those reaction shots.

Why do we care if nuclear power is safe? Go visit the area around Chernobyl, Senator McCain.

Women's "health" as a mocking issue?

Regarding Pete's post below

Here's some data from fivethirtyeight.com on early voting patterns.

Completely Anecdotal

As I drove my children home from school yesterday I noticed something exceedingly peculiar. Between school and home lies a municipal park, with the usual playground, along with baseball diamonds a soccer/football configuration, basketball and tennis courts and a field house. I was stopped at a traffic light when I saw it - a line spilling out of the fieldhouse on to the wide sidewalk fronting the building. I had no way of knowing just how many people were standing in line, but it was clearly in the mid double digits. As I sat there waiting for the light to change, I tried to imagine why that many people would be standing in line on a Tuesday afternoon. Had the Fall/Winter programs become so popular that people were waiting in lines to use the limited health club facilities?

Then it hit me - EARLY VOTING.

These people were waiting in line to cast ballots. These early voters did not fit the "profile" of early voters that I have reading about - namely young and minority --- the so-called "Obama base." No, these voters were middle-aged and older, lots of women, and all of them were white. As the light turned green, I was thinking that there must have been some kind of organized effort to bring out the early vote, and that I should ask the wife if our precinct captain had been in touch... and I didn't think anything more about it as I drove on.

Two hours later, my wife came home. The first words out of her mouth were, "Do you know that there is a line at the fieldhouse for early voting?" When I told her that I had seen it as well two hours before, she gave me a stunned look.

Immediately, I got on the phone and called my precinct captain, an earnest woman in her late 50s, She is both effective and unobtrusive (no mean feat!). Voter turnout in our precinct routinely hits the 80-85% mark. Our conversation was both brief and stunning. The gist was that she had not made any effort regarding early voting. All of these people had come out on their own. The line had been consistent since early in the morning. She figured that in our precinct alone (the field house is the voting site for 5 precincts) over 90 people voted during the first day! She believed that there were similar numbers in the rest of the precincts. I asked if she had any idea of who was voting, and she said she had -- nearly every single voter was a registered Democrat. I realize that this is (as the title states) completely anecdotal, but McCain is in deep deep shit if middle-aged white people are willing to wait in line to cast an early ballot for Obama. These are "votes in the bank" that no amount of mud-slinging and fear-mongering can undo.

Three weeks out

This last week has been excellent for Obama in the polls, and bad for McCain in the universe.

Italicized states have trended (changed categories) towards McCain, bolded towards Obama.

McCain win: Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota. Total: 152 EV (-3).

McCain likely: Montana. Total: 3 EV (-5).

Obama likely: Colorado, Florida, Virginia. Total: 49 EV (+13).

Obama win: DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire. Total: 264 EV (-13).

Tossup: Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, North Dakota. Total: 70 EV (+8).

Very little movement this week. McCain lost North Dakota (from the win) and West Virginia (from the likely) to the tossup column (3 EV), while Obama didn't lose any (Virginia went from win to likely). Combining the "win" and "likely" for each, we'd be at 155 for McCain and 313 for Obama.

If you include all states that are leaning one way or the other, you'd put IN, WV, and ND in McCain's column (and barely) and MO, OH, NC, and NV in Obama's. That would give you totals of 364 for Obama and 174 for McCain, same as last week. Stability helps Obama.

Where's Waldo Peggy?

From the picture below, any guesses as to where the lovely wife is?

With a national double-digit lead

And ahead in the battlegrounds--

Is this election out of stealing range?

Breaking: Democrats as stupid as Republicans

Why, Rahm, why?

"Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fla., finds himself in some seriously hot water today. ABC News’ investigative team is reporting that Mahoney paid $121,000 in a settlement with a former mistress he fired from his congressional staff. And that’s only the beginning.
...
ABC reports:

Senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the chair of the Democratic Caucus, have been working with Mahoney to keep the matter from hurting his re-election campaign, Mahoney staffers said."

Don't we know that any hint of doing this sort of coverup crap pisses the country off and might be just what the GOP is looking for to stem the tide a bit and prevent us from getting more of them the hell away from our government? On the other hand, if the Democrats are going to coverup things the same way that Republicans do, does it really matter?

Being ahead means never having to say "maverick"

So the traditional media (and their muse, Drudge) are all a-twitter today because the Arizona Maverick and his sidekick, PowerAbuser, are "re-invigorating" their campaign with a *NEW MESSAGE*

Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We’re 6 points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.

Now, the idea is to make the story about how energetic and innovative McCain is, and that Obama is merely sitting still and resting on his laurels. Of course, the reason Obama could do that is that he is the one with the lead, and McCain is playing a classic loser's gambit. Now, the reason losers try that is that sometimes it works, much like sometimes a Hail Mary pass works.

How is Obama responding? With some tired DLC crap about how he's in the lead or something inane? Nope.

Barack Obama's campaign says their candidate will deliver a major policy address today in which he'll lay out his economic rescue plan for the middle class.The campaign says the Democratic presidential nominee will outline his proposals as he speaks at a rally in Toledo, Ohio. Obama is expected to speak sometime after 1:30pm ET, and CNN will have live coverage of the event.

It can't all be good news

There have been two benefits to the recent economic problems - 1) John McCain's chances of becoming President are dropping rapidly and 2) so are gas prices. If I had to fill my tank today, I could do it by work for under $3.

But the smartest men in the room (ahem) are working on getting the markets under control, and today the futures are up.

And so is oil. Don't expect these prices to last.

The last kicker - OPEC's meeting to "decide" what to do about the drop in oil prices. The only thing they'll "decide" is by how much to cut supply.

W's Lyrics of the Day

Ninety-nine days left in the regime
Ninety-nine days of hell
Chamber a round, kill some more brown (people, that is)
Ninety-eight days left in the regime...

What's the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom?

Impeachment.

The remarkable think about the various Palin scandals is that it shows her complete disregard for the need to separate public business from her personal affairs. From bilking the taxpayers on her at home per diems to flying her family around on the public dime to involving "the First Dude" in state business, Troopergate only caps off the obvious conclusion that this woman uses high office as her own personal fiefdom.

We've had a vice president doing that for the last eight years. In the name of God we can't afford another one.

You betcha.

For they have sown the wind

and they shall reap the whirlwind.

So wrote Hosea in the Old Testament.

The wind in this case is the black hole of illiterate hatemongers who make up the Sean Hannity audience, etc. who John McCain so actively courted. The whirlwind that ever so predictably is swirling beyond McCain's control has reduced him from being a candidate and a man with perhaps an ever-so- slight bit of dignity to the Grand Wizard at a Klan rally.

John, be careful of what you wish for.

You will not be president. You are not fit to be president. Beyond that, you will have lost the respect of millions of Americans. Ponder that while you're scorned and forgotten, left only with your badly Botoxed and too-tightly nipped and tucked fading trophy wife--and Joe Lieberman.

Bummer of a day, Grampy

First of all, there's that glorious tape of McCain in a hall full of mouthbreathers, having to awkardly walk back from the racism and hatred he's fomented.

And then that little report comes out of Alaska tonight.

Buh-bye.

A little Friday break

As the world spins out of control around us, let's all take a short break with some Saw Doctors:

Shut up, Dubya

You would think that someone inside the BushBubble would have noticed that every time he speaks, the country gets worse, and would just keep him quiet for the next 15 weeks. Maybe we could send some cat toys, or a laser pointer, or some hookers and blow.

Derivatives and the Conservative Mind

Lately, I have been amusing myself with browsing The Corner at NRO. They're just all up in arms that McCain didn't go hyper-negative on Obama, specifically attacking him for ever sitting in the same room as Ayers. They're jumping up and down, screaming in their pathetic little voices that we should all PAY ATTENTION TO THEM because they have SOMETHING VERY SERIOUS TO SAY!!!!1!1!!, even though the rest of the country has decided that they don't really give a crap. And then they advocate wisdom like this: "Don't you think the real worry about the Ayers thing is the projects they worked on together at Annenberg? I sounds like they provided funding for political indoctrination under cover of "educational reform", which to me sheds light on how Obama might treat education through his appointees."

It's all quite amusing. You see that attitude reflected in McCain's ads, which always seem to include some sideswipe at Obama's "liberal allies," as if the word liberal still carries the connotation "unAmerican baby-killer". They're even upset that McCain didn't concede Congress to the Dems and make the case that the president and Congress should be of different parties (and you know they said the same thing in 2004) and that people should just ignore how fucked up the economy is and keep a Republican in as president.

Most telling, however, was this quote: "As always, it is the job of a conservative to expect the worst and hope to be wrong." They just live in fear, don't they? It all sucks and it will always suck unless we can protect ourselves from The Others, who contribute nothing and take everything. That's why Obama's message of hope confuses the crap out of them - they don't think the word means the same thing he does. To Obama, it's the idea that the world can be a better place, but to the conservatives, it can't. It can only get worse, so we have to protect the status quo at all costs. They live life at a local maximum, and all around them is void.

Hannity hits new low

Dimwitted Fox talker Sean Hannity reached a new low recently, and if you're familiar with Sean Hannity, a new low is quite an accomplishment.

He ran a hatchet job on Obama this weekend with his star source, "Andy Martin." "Andy" was introduced as an "author and journalist."

Really?

"Andy Martin" is actually Anthony Martin-Trigona. Who, you say?

Well, to those of us who went to the University of Illinois, he was well known as a Champaign-Urbana slumlord, where his buildings were rat-infested, leaky, fire trap collections of code violations. His firm was also involved in the first phase of the construction of the Rosemont Horizon arena here, which collapsed.

But it gets better. "Andy" moved to New York where he decided to start suing everyone. He filed incoherent rambling pro se complaints in the federal courts practically on a daily basis. The abuse of process was so extreme that a 2nd Circuit judge took the extraordinary step of enjoining "Andy" from filing further actions in the district courts.

Better still, read some of those complaints. It appears that "Andy" is a bit of an anti-Semite. When the courts would dismiss his nonsense suits, he would then sue his lawyers with such lovely phrases as how the "Jew defendant" and the "Jew lawyer" conspired with the "Jew judge." He ran for Congress with a theme of exterminating "Jew power."

Nice work, Sean.

Debate Follow-Up

Initial thoughts:

1) AWFUL format, AWFUL moderator.

2) Did it seem rather surreal, as if both were dancing a bit around the end of the world?

3) Didn't you almost expect McCain to yell "Get off my yard, you damn kids!"

4) Grampy says we must bring spending under control and then in the next breath he calls for the government to buy out upside-down mortgages??

5) Two things that don't go well together--John McCain and HDTV.

Watching the graphs on CNN

Chicks dig the longball. And Barack Obama.

John McCain hates science

Dissing the Adler Planetarium? Bastard!

Out of the mouths...

The 5 year old girl who lives next door got very excited watching us put up our Obama/Biden yard sign. According to her dad, they watched the first debate together, and she said that she liked Obama (actually, "the brown man"). When asked why, her response was "Because the short man is lying."

I'm not sure how this is going to help

True Colors

In a post below, frequent commenter I'm Not Ned says "But they can't use the "N" word and have nothing else left."

The times, they are a-changin'...

Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

h/t TPM

Four Weeks Left

This last week has been excellent for Obama in the polls, and bad for McCain in the universe.

Italicized states have trended (changed categories) towards McCain, bolded towards Obama.

McCain win: Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota. Total: 155 EV (-3).

McCain likely: West Virginia, Montana. Total: 8 EV (+3).

Obama likely: Colorado, Florida. Total: 36 EV (+26).

Obama win: DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire. Total: 277 EV (+27).

Tossup: Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana. Total: 62 EV (-44).

The net trend since last week is McCain didn't gain or lose any EV (Montana went from "win" to "likely") from his column, while Obama gained 53 (105 over the last 2 weeks). Combining the "win" and "likely" for each, we'd be at 163 for McCain and 313 for Obama. For the first time, Obama currently stands over the threshhold for victory. In fact, if Obama only won the "win" states at this point, he'd get 277 EV and win. PA and MI are still critical, but we know that McCain has given up on MI (although Caribou Barbie hasn't), which puts Pennsylvania directly in the crosshairs for the McCain campaign.

If you include all states that are leaning one way or the other, you'd only put IN in McCain's column (and barely) and MO, OH, NC, and NH in Obama's. That would give you totals of 364 for Obama and 174 for McCain.

Melting Down Redux

So is Grampy losing it? After his drunken doddering around the bailout mess, suddenly he has decided that the "Bill Ayers" issue is a winner.

Hmmm...he lives in the same neighborhood with the guy. Their kids go to the same school. he served on a charity board with him and attended one political function at the guy's house. Shocking.

It won't work because the market has already absorbed that information and incorporated into Obama's "stock price" if you will. The country has also seen the man and concluded that he is anything but "radical."

The Addled Brain of George Will

Now, maybe he's more addled than usual because of the pathetic display of anything even vaguely resembling quality play by his favorite baseball team, but this quote from Will is truly insightful and special:

The second problem with early voting is that one of its supposed benefits is actually a subtraction from civic health. The benefit is that it makes voting easier-indeed, essentially effortless. But surely the quality of the electoral turnout declines when the quantity is increased by "convenience voting."

I'm not the first to take Will down for this (see Open Left and Daily Kos), but I must add to the chorus. I've long advocated that Election Day be a national holiday so that more people could vote, but early voting is even better - even on national holidays, plenty of people still work, and often long shifts - doctors, nurses, firefighters, etc, but having a month to vote removes that obstacle. Now, not everyone who could vote will, but anyone who actually wants to has very few excuses in a system like this. Hell, I'm working as an election judge again, and since there's a good chance I won't be in my precinct, I couldn't vote without some sort of early voting system. That's right, according to George, those who decide to serve their community by working a 15 hour day to ensure that others can vote apparently aren't "quality" voters. In fact, we're slothful:

A word describes most of the people who will vote only if a ballot is shoved through their mail slot: "slothful." What kind of people will not bestir themselves to exercise their franchise if doing so requires them to get off their couches and visit neighborhood polling places? People who are barely interested, and hence probably are barely informed.

So, everyone who has trouble getting to the polls on Election Day - the aforementioned doctors and nurses, the sick, the elderly, the single parents, the guy working two jobs, the mother who goes to college and to work - is slothful? What a tremendously insulting thing for him to say. I have no idea how hard he may or may not have worked at his job throughout his life; how dare he assume he knows the motivations of others. Ignorant and insulting - that's conservatism for you.

Go jump in a wood chipper, Mr. Will.

Now ONLY an Obama victory can make 2008 a good year...

"Hey, play that lonesome loser's tune
That's the one I like the best."
And he closed his eyes, and slipped away,
It was the dying Cub fan's last request:

Do they still play the blues in Chicago,
When baseball season rolls around?
When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play
In their ivy-covered burial ground?
When I was a boy they were my pride and joy
But now they only bring fatigue
To the home of the brave
The land of the free
And the doormat of the National League...

And now it can be rightly said:
ANY TEAM CAN HAVE A BAD CENTURY

Can anyone...

Name an actual ANSWER from Caribou Barbie?

And of course, she will not appear again in any setting where there are, you know...questions.

How sad is it when badly repeating memorized talking points is "exceeding expectations?"

He gets a vote, too

When you walk into your polling place sometime in the next 32 days, think about this. When you push that button or pull that lever for Obama, someone, somewhere, will be voting based on something like this, from NRO's Rich Lowry (h/t Daily Kos):
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

Palin Scatters a few Harmless Hits

Sure, she gave her supporters a few scattered lines to cheer about. But to use a baseball metaphor, Biden came on in middle relief, shut Palin down, preserved his team’s comfortable lead, and handed Obama the ball to close out the game in the last two innings.

So what if she didn’t speak in tongues or run off the stage in tears? So what if she lit up her slumping supporters with “glittering generalities” and telegenic folksiness? To change the dynamics of this campaign, to stop the polls from moving Obama’s way, Palin needed to produce a gamechanging performance that was simply beyond her limited capacity.

Not surprisingly (for those who watched her Alaska debates) Palin exceeded the low “expectations” bar set for her by pundits and talking heads. But that wasn’t good enough. Not this year. Not in this election, the “most important election since 1932,” as Joe Biden said.

Palin’s callous nonresponse to Biden’s emotional moment, as he spoke of being a single parent under tragic circumstances, must have been jarring to many viewers. In one bizarre exchange, Palin embraced the Dick Cheney model of expanded executive powers for the vice president, demonstrably ignorant of its Constitutional implications. Biden hit it out of the park, declaring Cheney one the “most dangerous” vice presidents in history. Then he gave a succint lesson on the limited Constitutional duties of the office, and warned against the radical right wing theory of the “Unitary Executive” which is behind the Bush regime’s shredding of the Constitution.

Palin sought to reassure voters that as governor at times she has had to bow to legislative prerogatives. Which begs the question: Why raise the issue at all if not that her backwoods dictatorial executive style, such as it is, bears a disturbing resemblance to the Bush-Cheney executive power grab?

The implication In Biden's response was clear: If you like Dick Cheney, you’ll love Sarah Palin.

A CNN poll of debate viewers gave Biden the “win” by 51% to 32%. It wasn’t even close. Most important, did Palin pass the so-called “threshold” test for president?

In a word: No.

Sigh

I cannot survive another 4 years with governmental leaders who cannot produce the word nuclear. There will be beatings.

McCain gives up on Michigan

All the analyses show that if Obama holds on to Michigan and Pennsylvania, he'll be awfully tough to beat. Well, McCain has conceded one of those.

That's debatable

The bar for Caribou Barbie tonight has been so ridiculously low that the media will be slobbering over her if she doesn't wet herself and fall off the stage.

Prepare for them to slobber. This is the PERFECT debate format for a high-functioning moron, 90-second "sound bites" with no interaction. She's capable of memorizing enough crap to coast.

One bit of good news for me

Kudos to Dan Quayle. My undergraduate alma mater no longer is responsible for the most ridiculous GOP veep candidate in my voting lifetime.

Bailshit

The Senate bill is the House one substantively, but covered with chocolate syrup. Tax breaks, gimmes to the Wool Research Board and the makers of kids' archery toys, etc.

How can the House approve this, with an extra $150B, without looking like (and being) petulant children?

Moron Dowd

Maureen Dowd has been spurned by the man she once loved, the man she used to write about so glowingly, even though she was once one of the alienated suitor's "people" who wined and dined with him.

She was kicked off Grampy's press plane.

And this deep thinker responds with "It was disappointing because I didn't think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney."

Please.

The 1st amendment means the government can't arrest you for what you've written or stop you from publishing. It DOESN'T guarantee your hack derriere a seat on a private plane. Geez. Get over yourself.

The Very Definition of Clusterfuck

I have been reading with growing trepidation that a bailout plan is growing to pass congress. The plan is going to give around 700 billion taxpayer dollars (borrowed from friendly nations like China) to the very same crooks who scammed the system to the point of collapse in the first place. In return, we will get bad debt, grossly distressed real estate and A BUSINESS TAX CUT!!!! I am at a loss to understand why my congresscritter (Rahm Emanuel for those scoring at home) is behind this plan (he's already voted for it in the defeated house version). I'd love to find out, but his house web page is down - but then again so is EVERY SINGLE HOUSE WEB PAGE. If the government can't keep its sites up and running, how the hell are they going to combat a banking collapse?

Five weeks left

This last week has been excellent for Obama in the polls, and bad for McCain in the universe.

Italicized states have trended (changed categories) towards McCain, bolded towards Obama.

McCain win: Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana. Total: 158 EV (+3).

McCain likely: West Virginia. Total: 5 EV (-24).

Obama likely: Colorado, Minnesota. Total: 10 EV (-18).

Obama win: DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Total: 250 EV (+48).

Tossup: Missouri, North Carolina Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Indiana. Total: 106 EV (-36).

The net trend since last week is McCain lost 21 EV (54 over the last 2 weeks) from his column, while Obama gained 47 (52 over the last 2 weeks). Combining the "win" and "likely" for each, we'd be at 163 for McCain and 269 for Obama. That puts Obama 1 EV/state away from victory. PA and MI are still critical, but the trend was heavily in Obama's direction this week. If you include all states that are leaning one way or the other, you'd put MO, NC, and IN in McCain's column and NV, OH, FL, NH, and VA in Obama's. That would give you totals of 338 for Obama and 200 for McCain.

Thrilla in Columbia, District of

Down goes bailout! Down goes bailout!

That's one heck of a number...

From the text of the draft bailout bill:

SEC. 122. INCREASE IN STATUTORY LIMIT ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting

‘‘$11,315,000,000,000’’.

Thoughts

1) I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I'd be a lot more likely to support the bailout if W would stop telling me how awesome it will be. That makes me very very nervous.

2) Fox was helping the McCain campaign pre-spin the veep debate by saying that the deck is stacked against Palin because they'll ask a majority of foreign policy questions, which everyone knows are Biden's forte, and she'll look bad, and everyone knows that most people only care about domestic matters anyway. Umm, what? She looked as stupid answering questions about domestic matters as foreign policy, and, frankly, isn't it a good thing that Biden knows stuff?

Next up: the Wasilla Witchcraft Project

Sarah Palin’s face-off meltdown with “America’s sweetheart” Katie Couric has left the Palin-McCain camp reeling and running out of secular options. Right wing commentators are hitting the panic button as the cringe factor grows. The reset button no longer works. Each time it’s pressed, Sarah Palin’s programming comes crashing down even harder:

That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land-boundary that we have with Canada. It's funny that a comment like that was kinda made to … I don't know, you know … reporters. … As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.

Ouch. Conservative columnist David Brooks said, “It’s embarrassing, it’s painful to watch those things, you want to turn them off.” If Palin can’t handle Couric, how can she possibly be expected to stand up to Putin’s disembodied head?

Kathleen Parker, the latest right wing columnist to push the Palin panic button, made a plaintive appeal to Palin’s patriotism:

I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

[…]

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

[…]

Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Fat chance, Kathleen. Your scenario is as likely as ... well, Brooks’s whimsical vision of Putin’s head floating above Alaska’s aurora borealis.

What to do, you ask?

There’s only ONE solution that can save Sarah Palin: First, cast away those debate prep briefing books “festooned” with NeoCon talking points too numerous to memorize. Next, summon Palin’s witch-hunting pastor, Thomas Muthee.

Back in 2005 Pastor Muthee alighted on Wasilla and conducted a “laying of hands” ritual on sister Sarah to exorcise “all forms of witchcraft” in advance of her successful run for governor.

Here's the link to "Palin's Pastor Problem."

The Palin-McCain camp shouldn’t argue with success. You never know, the evangelical vote is still up for grabs. Time for another McCain Hail Mary?

In the name of JEE-ZUHS.

Proofreading 101

Typos are a fact of life for those of us who write for a living. This one, though, is one you HAVE to catch. From the AP:

Democrats also wanted to avoid an election-year clash with Bush that would have played in his favor. They are willing to take their chances that Democrat Barrack Abeam will be elected president in November and permit increases for scores of programs squeezed by Bush each year.

How embarrassing. Here's the story, if they haven't cleaned it up yet.

RIP Paul Newman

We will miss a great actor and an even better person.

CW

I am also fascinated by the contemporary wisdom that the "surge" has "worked."

Spending Freeze?

About the only thing that stuck out in my mind after the debate last night was McCain's comment about a spending freeze on everything other than defense and entitlements. Really, John? So screw the bridges and levees and education and climate change and all that? I know that the Giggling Murderer has spent the government into oblivion, but how's that going to sell in places like Minnesota or Louisiana?

Debate Post-Mortem

If condescension, ill-disguised contempt, and a patronizing attitude toward his opponent were part of the scorecard of presidential debates, then one might say that McCain "won" last night's debate. Unfortunately for McCain, his rambling, bullying performance may have been red meat for the base but did not endear him to that strange breed of voters calling themselves "undecideds" and "independents." Several post-election flash polls seemed to bear this out, giving Obama a clear "win" on points. At the risk of giving the TV punditocracy too much credit for another election 2008 buzzword, e.g. "pivot," which is then repeated ad nauseum, there was no "gamechanger" in this debate. Which is not good news for McCain.

Senator Obama wasn't at his best; he could, and should have, landed more punches on McCain. On the other hand, Obama stayed "on message," displaying his usual impressive command of the issues, and treated McCain with a deference and respect that the old geezer clearly did not deserve. Not surprisingly, this gentlemanly quality of Obama's resonated well with the viewers. At the same time, McCain did not help himself by his refusal to look Obama in the eye. The voters who will decide this election, and who were probably turning their full attention to the election for the first time, do not like to see unneccessary displays of rudeness from their candidates, and style matters as much as substance to such voters.

Perhaps it's not in Obama's nature to be combative. His "brand" (to coin another silly buzzword) would be tarnished by excessive partisanship. One could argue that Obama is where he is today because he is a brilliant politician who has figured out that Americans want a nonpartisan, conciliatory, consensus-building approach from their president. This is Obama's strength. But it could have turned into a weakness had he allowed McCain to roll him. It didn't happen, but there are those of us who would like to see more combativeness from Obama, especially in these dire times, with so much on the line in this election.

Newsflash: It went almost unnoticed that the leader of the Republican Party admitted the United States tortures prisoners. "Never again will we torture prisoners," said McCain. Am I wrong, or is this the first time a Republican officeholder with access to intelligence reports has made this assertion? Would the candidate care to amplify his comment before a war crimes tribunal in the Hague? For one who lectured Obama on what a potential president should or should not say, John McCain certainly strayed off the Republican reservation, even if confirming the obvious.

There's progress, and then there's John McCain progress

From the McCain campaign:

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon.

All the news this morning was about how there was a major breakdown in discussions, that there are two competing plans (the Dodd variant on the Paulson one, or something like that, and the House GOP insurance scam) that have nothing in common and where the House GOP members have dug their heels in and are posturing like they're the defenders of the holy land or something and how W is impotent and how the meeting yesterday was beyond bad and how Paulson got down on a knee to beg Democrats to not tattle on him, and that the GOP might not even send reps from the House to discussions today, etc.

That's "significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement"? This from the guy who only spoke at the White House meeting when prodded by his opponent?

Go jump in a woodchipper, Senator McCain.

Bailing on the bailout, or something

I'm not really sure what to think of what's going on with this whole bailout thing.

First of all, and rather importantly, Paulson and his crew have not spelled out just what the real danger is, so it's hard to know how important it is that something get done RIGHT NOW. Clearly, financial markets struggle under the veil of uncertainty, and as we saw last week, sometimes the mere insinuation that the government is planning to help calms things down, so there may well be value in some action.

Secondly, however, the Paulson plan is clearly DOA. No one wants to give him (and, really, his successor) $700 billion (a number they pulled out of their collective behinds, BTW) with no oversight of any kind. Thankfully, even der Chimpenfuhrer has acknowledged that, and the plan that Dodd was talking about yesterday as "an agreement on principles" was, apparently noticeably different.

Thirdly, however again, we don't have the details of Dodd's plan (or whatever the compromise plan is looking like). So everyone is still reacting to Paulson's crappy plan, and there is no effort to sell us on why the compromise is not just a better idea, but actually a *good* idea.

Fourthly, in comes Saint JohnnyMac and his House GOP cronies. They have put together a "plan" which is more laughable than the Paulson one. It includes, as you would expect from crazy people, reducing regulations and cutting corporate taxes. The assumption, of course, is that if the government just got totally out of their way, companies would assume these bad debts their own bad selves and somehow figure out how to make money on them. Yes, that will work. That's why when the government was begging banks to come up with funding for AIG (I think it was AIG, I'm getting confused with all the failures) they said no way.

So, here's where we are. There are three plans, two of which are laughably bad and dangerous and one which may be better (and on which everyone except the House GOP had signed off, basically) but we don't know what it is. W has no authority of any kind (his party is in absolute revolt), McCain is clearly trying to use this to somehow gain popularity as the man who fixed the problem, and meanwhile, overnight WaMu went belly-up.

I can see the following scenarios taking place:

1) The Dems give in and sign off on the House GOP plan (or the Paulson one), either of which would be a disaster. I don't think that will happen, in part because they've got the bit in their teeth somewhat (Barney Frank is goin' ape) and in part because this is like the only time they've ever gotten Bush to give in on anything (other than SSI, and that one he just pouted on) and they can't let him forget it.

2) Nothing passes, and the markets self-correct. McCain looks like a genius for stalling everything and being terribly non-commital.

3) Nothing passes, and the markets and banking industry continues to go down the toilet. If this happens, McCain's candidacy is doomed beyond comprehension, because everyone will remember how close they were to a compromise (for good or ill) and then it died.

4) Somehow, a plan that doesn't entirely suck gets passed - the banks get a couple hundred billion (but not 700) and regulations get increased and homeowners get something back in return.

Of course, I have no idea what will actually happen, and now I have to go to work.

Guest post by Dr.Pete

This was sent to me by a friend of mine:

The Senate’s Glass Dome

Unless you’ve been living in the basement of a sealed-off cave on the dark side of the moon, you’re probably aware that the 2008 election is “historic”. We’ve heard a lot about the barriers being broken by the Obama and Clinton campaigns, and rightly so, but what about the rest of our Federal government? As we edge closer to the possibility of a black president, are we making strides in other areas?

Since Barack Obama is a sitting Senator and the Senate has the mathematical virtue of having exactly 100 members, I thought it would be interesting to see how the Senate’s make-up compares to the country at large. Currently, the Senate’s official ethnic diversity page reveals that we have 5 sitting Senators who are racial minorities: the Senate is 95% white, 1% African-American, 1% Asian-American, and 3% Hispanic/Latino. At the time of the 2000 U.S. Census, the country at large was roughly 69% white, 12% African-American, 4% Asian-American, and 13% Hispanic/Latino.

According to that same census, women made up 51% of our population. The ratio of currently serving female Senators is 16%. Now, you may think that 16% is reasonably high, and that this could just be pure chance, the same as getting heads 16 times on 100 coin tosses. Just for the record, if we picked our Senators at random, the odds of getting 16 (or less) women are roughly 1 in 768,000,000,000.

So, how are we doing? I’m afraid the answer is “not very well”. While the make-up of any body will never completely mirror the country at large, and merit should always be our primary qualification for office, it’s painfully clear that we have a long way to go. We need to work to understand the forces and social pressures that still act to keep women and racial minorities from serving in the highest offices. Hopefully, the 2008 presidential election is at least a beginning to that conversation.

Quiz time, boys and girls

It is unlikely, but possible, that the electoral vote ends in a 269-269 tie.

No cheating--what happens?

Quote of the Day

Couric asked Palin, "Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more, and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?"

Palin: "That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation."

What the hell is she talking about? Giving $700 billion to rich people who lost their shirts will reform health care, reduce taxes, and create jobs? Is she on crack, or just as dumb as she sounds? BTW, I just watched the video, and Katie Couric gets huge props for not giving away how stupid that answer was.


h/t Balloon Juice

Let me get this straight

So, Senator McCain, last week "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," but now the economy is "cratering" (crater? I hardly know her! - h/t Paul Shaffer) and Friday's debate (as well as next Thursday's Veep evisceration, err, debate) need to be postponed or canceled so that you can do something you haven't done since last year - play at being a United States Senator? That's quite a turnaround, wouldn't you say?

World traveller Palin visits New York

AP:

At the start of her meeting with Talabani at a downtown hotel, the governor was overheard saying: "There's plenty to do here, isn't there? Plenty to see."

I love the smell of desperation

The AP, not buying the spin:

Even as McCain said he was putting the good of the country ahead of politics, his surprise announcement was clearly political. It was an attempt to try to out-maneuver Obama on an issue he's trailing on, the economy, as the Democrat gains in polls. He swiftly went before TV cameras minutes after speaking with Obama and before the two campaigns had hammered out a joint statement expressing that Congress act urgently on the bailout.

And while McCain's campaign said he would "suspend" his campaign, it simply will move to Washington knowing the spotlight will remain on him no matter where he is.

Obama repeatedly stressed at his news conference that he called McCain first to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. He said McCain called back several hours later, as Obama was leaving a rally in Florida, and agreed to the idea of a statement but also said he wanted to postpone the debate and hold joint meetings in Washington.

Obama said he suggested they first issue a joint statement showing bipartisanship.

"When I got back to the hotel, he had gone on television to announce what he was going to do," Obama said.

Rush's dumber brother, redux

I thought David Limbaugh below was just stupidity, but apparently it has become the official party line of the wingers--the Community Reinvestment Act and other housing laws "forced" banks to lend in "high risk" areas. That is a complete lie. First of all, no financial institutions were forced to suspend prudential lending standards. Secondly, these are not the loans that are the basis of the subprime mess, and of course, by mentioning "high risk areas," they use codewords for where black people live, and did you notice that Barack Obama is black???

The loans in question can be traced not to fair housing laws but to the securitization of mortgage pools and the separation of the underwriting risk from the making of the loan. Mortgage-backed securities and instruments such as credit default swaps (which I don't understand, and I'm a securities lawyer), sold through a deregulated market, led to the crisis.

Suspension

So JohnnyMac wants to postpone Friday's debate and is suspending his campaign (whatever that means) to do, y'know, his job as a US Senator (something he hasn't done in ages...). I've got two better ideas:

1) Suspend your pathetic campaign permanently and put yourself out of our misery
2) Have an unscripted and unplanned discussion on Friday night about the economy. Sit at a table with Obama and just talk. Show us how bipartisan and mavericky you really are, and work out a solution that doesn't just line the pockets of your rich friends.

From Rush's dumber brother

"Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. This created an unnatural price bubble in real estate, which was securing these ill-advised loans. When the bubble inevitably burst, the mortgages secured by the artificially inflated real estate plummeted in value, which left us with an epidemic of grossly under-secured loans."

That's some deep thinking for you.

Link

Is Vader losing his power?

From the AP:
Vice President Dick Cheney and Jim Nussle, the Bush administration's budget director, met privately with restive House Republicans, some of whom emerged from the session unpersuaded.

"Just because God created the world in seven days doesn't mean we have to pass this bill in seven days," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Added Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., "I am emphatically against it."

Six weeks left, update

The last week has generally not been a good one for humanity, poll-wise, but the trend over the last day or two is moving back towards Obama. Regardless, here's this morning's snapshot of the polls. See here for last week's analysis and an explanation of what I'm trying to do here.

Italicized states have trended (changed categories) towards McCain, bolded towards Obama.

McCain win: Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota, North Dakota. Total: 155 EV (-61).

McCain likely: Montana, Missouri, North Carolina. Total: 29 EV (+18).

Obama likely: Wisconsin. Total: 10 EV (-18).

Obama win: DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, California, Delaware, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, New Mexico, Oregon. Total: 202 EV (+23).

Tossup: Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Florida, Indiana, West Virginia. Total: 142 EV (+38).

The net trend since last week is McCain lost 33 EV from his column, while Obama gained 5 (and the tossup column gained 38). Combining the "win" and "likely" for each, we'd be at 184 for McCain and 212 for Obama. Not quite a dead heat, but close. PA and MI are still critical, but the trend was heavily in Obama's direction this week. If you include all states that are leaning one way or the other, you'd put WV, IN, FL, NV, and NH in McCain's column and OH, VA, CO, PA, MI, and MN in Obama's. That would give you totals of 302 for Obama and 236 for McCain.

Oh Madam Speaker...

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Please consider your decisions over the next few days VERY carefully.

If you push this bailout through the House, you are a complete and utter MORON, and you will have just handed the election to Grampy. That piece of crap will get to show up in the Senate, vote "no" on the bill and then, well looky here, ain't he maverick-y! Then he spends the rest of the campaign running against BOTH Bush and the Democrats and then we're screwed for four/eight more years.

Do the right thing. Please.

Wow

Bush has sunk below the Alan Keyes line, and that took some doing:

Overall, 19% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president, 76% disapprove, and 5% are undecided.

That's not the most amazing number in the data, however (19% still approve?):

No Americans say that the national economy is getting better, 13% say it is staying the same, and 82% say the national economy is getting worse.

From CNN

"The Bush administration's proposed $700 billion financial rescue began to take shape today with lawmakers debating whether to add provisions to protect taxpayers."

Only in Bush's America could protecting taxpayers (y'know, those of us footing the bill for this bailout idea) be something worthy of debate.

Bail! Bail!

This has already been said by others, but the simple truth is that if the banks and GOP feel like they can impose any conditions they want on their bailout, they must not need the money that badly. What's the threat - that they'll go out of business? Talk about cutting off your dick to spite Congress' face.