October 2008 Archives

Forgive the slightly blue humor, but Matt Drudge is to McCain's poll numbers what herbal Viagra substitutes are are to men with ED.

Amazingly, Drudge has still got customers: K-Lo couldn't be more pleased that he thinks a one-day subsample of a Zogby polls means McCain will win.

I've got some advice for K-Lo: listen to Nate Silver. He'll save you from the embrassment of being a Drudge disciple.

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) speaks his mind about Palin and the McCain campaign's handling of her candidacy. Ensign says that "certainly" Biden is "much more qualified" than Palin, though he does offer the caveat that he also believes McCain is more qualified than Obama. Here's video:

TPM has been doing a great job of tracking the tracking polls, and as you can see from this chart, both candidates have crept up a bit -- McCain a tiny bit moreso than Obama -- but not much has changed. Most importantly, Barack Obama remains over 50%, and John McCain can't quite crack 45%.

I just joined the 22+ million Americans who have already cast their ballots in this presidential election, and it feels damn good.

Turnout was intense at my early voting location in southwest Las Vegas. When I arrived, there were two lines of seventy-five to one hundred people each, and when I left, the lines were at least as long. It was the last day of early voting here, but on the other hand it was also Friday night and it was Halloween.

As for demographics, it was a racially and ethnically diverse crowd, and I'd estimate that most people were under the age of sixty.

One interesting thing to note: I overheard the phone conversation of the woman on line ahead of me. I couldn't tell who she was voting for, but she was telling the story of a guy who had just been laid off his job after 31 years. I didn't catch many details other than that, but it was a reminder of what this election is really about, at least for me: making our economy work for all Americans, not just a select few.

The newest video from Humanitainment, the makers of Baracky. Hilarious:

Imagine if you were listening to panel of baseball analysts debate whether the pitcher should throw a curveball or a slider in a hypothetical scenario where the count on the on the batter was 5 balls and 4 strikes.

That's what it's like listening to a lot of these cable pundits debating the current state of the campaign.

I cannot wait until I don't need to see these guys again on a daily basis.

A quick survey of the three polling sites I frequent:

• FiveThirtyEight.com projection: Obama 346.5, McCain 191.5
• Pollster.com snapshot: Obama 311, McCain 142, 85 tossup
• Princeton meta-analysis snapshot: Obama 360, McCain 178

Good news for McCain!

Update (3:35PM): LBJ drew a crowd of 125,000, so Obama's crowd is not the largest in state's history -- just in recent state history.

Original post: Des Moines police estimate Obama's crowd today was 25,000 -- more than the 15,000 John Kerry drew in 2004, and more than the 10,000 Sarah Palin drew about one week ago.

Based on those comparison numbers, The Iowa Independent speculates that it is the largest political crowd in the state's history.

Over at 538, Sean Quinn takes a look at McCain's anemic ground game.

Without FOX, Bush never would have won re-election, and without FOX, John McCain would probably be losing by twenty points.

But that doesn't mean FOX has been a good thing for the Republican Party, at least not in the long term.

The problem with having such a successful propaganda organization is that it allowed the GOP to become utterly complacent about actually doing anything remotely resembling an effective job of governing.

In that sense, FOX became something of a crutch for them. It kept them walking for a few years, but sooner or later, things were bound to catch up with them. And now that they are paying the price for neglecting their core responsibilities, things are going to be ugly for the Republican Party for quite some time.

It seems everybody is jumping aboard the Obama express. The latest: Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's former chief of staff offered his endorsement this morning.

After endorsing Obama, Duberstein appeared on MSNBC, where he launched into a full-fledged assault on John McCain's judgment for selecting Sarah Palin. It was a sight to behold, not just for the denunciation of John McCain, but also for the sheer joy of watching the collapse of the GOP coalition before our very eyes:

Markos reports incredible numbers from the new Daily Kos poll in Arizona:

Here's one of the first videos from a series of clips of McCain's oddest moments on the campaign trail that I'll be posting on YouTube (and of course both here and Daily Kos) over the next few days, just to try to keep things lighthearted as we head down the final stretch.

This particular clip is of a moment from late May in which McCain is unable to find Bob Cashell, the Mayor of Reno, Nevada, at a town hall event in the city. I had a bit of fun with it, juxtaposing McCain's troubles finding Bob with his troubles finding Joe The No Show.

Anyway, it's totally silly, but there's nothing wrong with having a little fun now that there is less than four full days to go before election day voting begins.

Nico Pitney and Sam Stein report that former Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger, one of John McCain's key foreign policy surrogates, now says Sarah Palin isn't ready to take over the presidency should anything happen to McCain, adding that he would "of course not" be comfortable with her as president.

Eagleburger offered his remarks during an interview on NPR yesterday. Presumably McCain will throw Eagleburger under the bus, but it's worth remembering that just last Sunday McCain was proudly touting Eagleburger's support, along with that of four other Republican secretaries of state. Problem is, he couldn't quite remember one of their names, leading to a hilarious sequence of McCain confusion on live television.

This is a remarkable editorial coming from the WaPo:

To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Earlier, I posted the first half of Barack Obama's interview with Rachel Maddow; here's the second half, including the discussion on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Turns out that McCain got so flustered by Joe's no show that he flubbed an attack line on Obama, and instead of trying to correct himself, he simply said -- in an irritated voice -- "never mind."

These are the wheels coming off, my friends!

It looks like it's actually going to be a tough interview -- from the left. You don't see that very often.

Update (7:37PM): Here's part one of the interview (starts about 3:23 into the clip):

According to the new NYT poll, three in five voters think Palin is not qualified to be president:

Increasingly, Poll Shows Palin Hurting McCain's Chances

A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said that Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up 9 percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favored Senator Barack Obama.

I am not at all disturbed by Barack Obama's alleged relationship with Rashidi Khalidi, nor am I disturbed by Khalidi himself, and I say this as a supporter of Israel, as a Jew, and as an American.

I am, however, terribly disturbed by the McCain campaign's systematic assault on this man who not only has played no voluntary role in this campaign, but also owes what little prominence he does have at least in part to John McCain, who generously funded his organization in the 1990s.

Obviously, the reason this man is being targeted for his name and nothing more. I was watching a Palin rally yesterday in which she launched an attack on Khalidi, in the process so badly mangling his name that it was hardly recognizable, though it was clearly foreign-sounding.

Before she had finished mispronouncing it, however, the crowd was already booing. They had no idea who this man was. All they knew is that they didn't like the way his name sounded.

That's not the America we want to live in. That's McCarthyism. That's what McCain and Palin now represent, and on Tuesday, we bid them farewell.

It will be a good riddance.

Here's a hilarious web video from Obama-land on robocalls...urging those of us who support him to get on the phone and make some calls of our own!

Not only did 26.3 million Americans watch Barack Obama's primetime special yesterday, but a record number of viewers -- 3.6 million -- tuned into his interview on The Daily Show.

This new Obama web video powerfully summarizes the 2008 campaign, from start to finish, in Obama's own words, ending with the most important reminder of all: to seize this moment, we must vote.

This AP story is the entire McCain-Palin campaign in a nutshell:

Fact Check: Palin's Alaska spreads its wealth

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin summon antidemocratic images of a communist state to attack Democrat Barack Obama's tax plan and his comment about spreading the wealth around. But in her home state, Palin embraces Alaska's own version of doing just that.

Here's how it breaks down:

1. McCain gets desperate and decides he needs a new attack
2. Drudge and FOX amplify McCain's attack as much as possible, no matter how truthful it is
3. After a short period of time, not only is McCain's attack discredited as false, but it turns out that McCain or his running mate supported the very thing they had been attackign Obama for

In the end, it's the Republican Party that is left holding the bag, because John McCain leaves behind a party that has not only been devastated by Bush, but also now stands for nothing but attacking Barack Obama.

McCain will almost certainly do better than Barry Goldwater at the polls on Tuesday, but his campaign is a far bigger disaster for the GOP than Goldwater ever was.

Biden campaigns in Arnold, Missouri earlier today:

At Penn State University, Sarah Palin refuses to meet with the university's president because he's "a big Democrat." Where'd the maverick go?

Last night, Larry King wanted to know whether John McCain has total confidence that Sarah Palin could take over if he were ever unavailable during an attack on the United States.

A sampling:

• McCain's onto a new line of attack against Obama, this time trying to portray Obama as a tool of the oil industry. Please, I hope he does this every day until election day.
• Ben Smith says the new NYT/CBS poll will show Obama with a double-digit lead.
• In Iowa, they are kicking out audience members who 'look like' Obama supporters
• The McCain side of the campaign is trying to scapegoat Palin
• Palin's 2012 thoughts are creating a Republican rift
• McCain's dismissive "blah, blah, blah" about nuclear power safety earned him a rebuke from the Las Vegas Sun. (Because of Yucca Mountain, nuclear safety is a big deal here in Vegas.)

Now this is hilarious: John McCain calls on Joe The Plumber to stand up and be recognized...but Joe's nowhere to be found, and it confuses the hell out of McCain.

Joe must have been off trying to get a record deal or something...

h/t: Joe Sudbay of AMERICAblog

Update (9:49AM): MSNBC reports that two-thirds of the crowd were bused in school students:

A local school district official confirmed after the event that of the 6,000 people estimated by the fire marshal to be in attendance this morning, more than 4,000 were bused in from schools in the area. The entire 2,500-student Defiance School District was in attendance, the official said, in addition to at least three other schools from neighboring districts, one of which sent 14 buses.

It's been a great honor blogging here at TJR over the past few months, and now that we've reached that point in the election where the rubber meets the road, I just have one thing to say to you folks. Yes, just one single solitary damn thing to say. And I mean it with all sincerity:

We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies.

So Shephard Smith interviews Joe Wurzelbacher (hereafter "Wurz") for a bit over five minutes about why Wurz thinks Obama's election would mean the "death of Isreal." During the interview, Smith challenges Wurz, saying that Obama has repeatedly stated his position that the U.S. would be a friend of Israel, and suddenly people think "Shep" is some kind of a hero because he stood up to Wurz's smears.

Nonsense. By putting Wurz on his show and spending five minutes debating Wurz's absurd smear, Shep was in fact spreading the smear. You don't fight smears like that by giving the smear a platform, and then saying you don't agree with the smear. You fight smears by quashing them.

Here's an analogy: let's say that Keith Olbermann put someone one the air who made the case that if elected, John McCain would -- without provocation -- launch a nuclear strike against Iran. Now even if Olbermann gently suggested the person was making  baseless accusation, can you imagine a single person on the right being happy with Olbermann?

Here's the bottom-line: there are times when citing FOX is useful, but those times are almost exclusively limited to when FOX either contradicts itself, or reveals serious infighting amongst conservatives. Virtually every single time they are talking about someone on the left, they are up to no good.

The parallels are freaky. The Onion, May 29, 1993:

NRSC Chairman John Ensign of Nevada not only essentially concedes defeat at the presidential level, but also blames voters for the GOP's failures, saying that they have "mistakenly" blamed Bush for the nation's economic woes. The real culprits, according to Ensign? Congressional Democrats and their "overregulation."

Just another Republican defending the party of denial.

Special live edition of Countdown, airing now.

I just would have been beside myself with agony if Tampa Bay had managed to win a world series championship before the Seattle Mariners.

I'm on the west coast and won't be able to see it for another 3 hours.

Hey, it's on YouTube -- awesome! (And it's on MSNBC too.)

John McCain and Sarah Palin are basing their entire campaign on a series of nasty, false personal attacks on Barack Obama. Their bet is that Americans are a fearful, frightened bunch who won't be willing to vote for a new direction. But their assumptions are wrong; their bet is going to fail.

And when it does fail, it will leave the Republican Party with nothing. John McCain will almost certainly outperform Barry Goldwater in this election, yet he will leave his party in far worse shape than did Goldwater. At least Goldwater left his party with a devoted base of conservative activists, energized by his commitment to conservative ideology.

McCain, meanwhile, has simultaneously stood for nothing and for everything. He has taken a Republican brand that had been shattered by George W. Bush and rendered it even more meaningless. And the fact that almost nobody in his party seems to understand the devastation that they are inflicting on themselves is a strong indication that they will be in the political wilderness for some years to come.

ABC News (emphasis mine):

Gov. Sarah Palin suggested that if the Republican ticket is defeated on Tuesday she expects to be a player in the next election four years from now, saying "I'm not doing this for naught."

So Sarah Palin delivered a joke of a speech on energy policy today. It was basically a non-event, but there was some humor to come from the difference between the speech as prepared for delivery and the speech that she actually delivered.

Over at ThinkProgress's Wonk Room, Brad Johnson went through the entire speech and identified the portions that Palin ad libbed, yielding gems like this, swapping out "McCain administration" for "our administration":

And In a McCain our administration, we wi'll authorize and support new exploration and production of America's own oil and gas reserves -- because we cannot outsource the solution to America's energy problem.

And In a McCainour administration, we will set this nation on a course to build 45 new nucular reactors by the year 2030.

That's right. Even Sarah Palin doesn't like saying "McCain."

You can read the full text here, but beware, it's a disturbing journey to go insider her mind!

(Ozier Muhammad/NYT)

Up until the latter part of the summer, Digg was a pretty good way to get the word out about videos and campaign-related information. Then, McCain supporters got organized and started burying content. Now, I'd say that 4 out of 5 -- if not more -- things that would be appreciated by the Digg community as a whole get buried before making it to the front page.

And Bill O'Reilly (presumably jokingly) wants Burton arrested for being mean to her.

Joe may yet get his income over $250K: he's looking to sign a recording contract for a country music album.

From Obama's rain-soaked rally in Chester, PA (Doug Mills, NYT):

Barack Obama mocks McCain's 'socialism' attacks:: "Next thing you you know, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten!"

Transcript:

That's why he's spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. I'm sorry to see my opponent sink so low. Lately, he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten.

If you're sick and tired of John McCain's non-stop stream of lies about Barack Obama's tax plan, this video can help you put an end to it. Please send it to friends, family, or anyone else who you think could use it.

As the video shows, the fact is that under Obama's plan, 95% of Americans -- including Joe the Plumber -- would get a tax cut. Income over $250,000 would be taxed at pre-Bush levels (same as during the Clinton years).

That's not spreading the wealth -- that's a tax plan designed to create wealth by strengthening the middle class.

Don't tell Matt Drudge or FOX News, but John McCain himself took the same basic approach to taxes as Barack Obama -- at least until the 2008 presidential campaign brought about some changes in his views.

Now, with just six days to go, the only thing John McCain has left to run on is a bogus and hypocritical attack on Barack Obama's tax cut plan. To the extent this video can help reveal that truth, getting it into enough hands could help put an end to John McCain's lies about Obama's tax cut plan.

Now this is an October surprise I can live with:

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush dropped by the Republican National Committee headquarters unannounced to give the staff a little pep talk Tuesday amid polls showing Republicans trailing in the presidential contest and scores of key congressional races one week out from the general election. ... "He encouraged them to work hard for John McCain and keep turning out the vote until the final ballot is cast next week," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said after the 20-minute visit.

Heckuva' job, RNC.

I haven't read all the coverage of the squabble between McCain-land and Palin-land, and I don't even care about the details, but the mere fact that there is such a tussle going on is of endless amusement to me. (You can read some of it here, here, here, here, and here.)

From a partisan point of view, the best part of it is that they still don't understand that John McCain's biggest problem is the failure of the Bush Administration and its governing philosophy.

The fact that most Republicans are more interested in assigning blame for their defeat to McCain or Palin than they are in confronting the devastating failure of the Bush presidency (and Republican congress) shows that they still have absolutely no clue what went wrong with their party -- or how to fix it.

...is to join the Democratic Party, and Faux News is more than willing to help him out!

In a new poll, Barack Obama is within two points of John McCain in Arizona. In freaking Arizona! WABC15.com reports:

With one week to go before Election Day, a new Arizona State University Cronkite/Eight Poll shows Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama statistically tied in Arizona.

The poll surveyed 1,019 registered voters in McCain's home state on October 23rd, 25th and 26th:

46 percent favored McCain
44 percent favored Obama

The poll has a sampling error of +/- 3 percent, and marks the fourth taken by ASU/KAET-TV.

The first poll showed McCain with a 13 point lead in his home state.

In subsequent polls, McCain's lead slipped to 11 points, 7 points and now 2 points.

It's probably time to send Obama (or at least Biden) to Arizona to do some campaigning with Bob Lord in AZ-03.

Thankfully, only seven more days of McCain's garbage.

Here's how it works:

Romney all but throws in the towel on McCain, asking Republican donors to help out Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who is facing a strong challenge in Kentucky from Bruce Lunsfurd.

(Barack Obama in blue, John McCain in red. % of total dollars received classified by donor size.  Source: OpenSecrets Donor Demographics.)

Hint: it's not Barack Obama.

So it's raining in Pennsylvania and:

• Major league baseball suspends the first ever world series game
• John McCain cancels his outdoor event in Quakerstown
• About an hour away from McCain, Obama rallies in the rain

Joe Sudbay:

Okay, it's getting super nasty in the McCain/Palin campaign. Mike Allen at the Politico has the latest attack on Palin from the McCain camp:

***In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless "diva" description, calling her "a whack job."

Nasty.

I recognize that that there might not even be ten conservatives who regularly read this site, but on the chance that there are, or if you happen to know any who are persuadable, please encourage them to read Andrew Sullivan's list of the top ten reasons conservatives should cast their ballot for Barack Obama on November 4.

Update (3:40AM): Via teacherken, former GOP Senator Charles Mathias endorses Barack Obama.

Update (4:19AM): Republicans for Obama ad placed in USA Today.

It's not just John McCain -- Sarah Palin is a socialist too! Hendrik Hertzberg notes (emphasis added):

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist--Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine--that "we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

Using raw numbers compiled by George Mason University Professor Michael McDonald, I generated some stats on early voting trends nationwide.

According to McDonald's numbers, a bit over 12.3 million voters have already cast these ballots. About 5 million of these votes were cast in six states that report early voting turnout by party. (The states are Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina.)

I added up the totals for each these states and here's what the turnout is looking like so far for early voting (in percentage terms):

• Democrats: 47.8% of early voters
• Republicans: 34.6% of early voters
• Other/No party: 17.6% of early voters

It's hard to know what to compare these numbers to, so I decided to look at the November, 2004 voter registration statistics for each state (in a couple of cases, I had to look at county-level data). Here's what I found:

• Democrats: 41.2% of 2004 registered voters
• Republicans: 35.1% of 2004 registered voters
• Other/No party: 23.7% of 2004 registered voters

Remember, these numbers are only for the six states I flagged above. And as much as I'd like to offer a thorough analaysis, I'm not enough of an expert on these numbers to get into too much detail. Nonetheless, it is clear that Democrats are overperforming their 2004 registration numbers -- and they're doing so by quite a lot.

Sam Wang's polling meta-analysis, which aims to show the current state of the race, and Nate Silver's 538 projection, which aims to predict the final outcome of the race using current data, are now both offering up the same electoral vote numbers: Obama 351, McCain 187.

Early morning viewers of FOX & Frienders were greeted with a (false) story about some radio interview Barack Obama gave in 2001. If you had been watching, here's what you would have seen on your screen:

McCain-land pimped the Drudge-FOX story (which they probably fed to Drudge in the first place). Washington Post took a look at McCain-land's claims, and here's what they came up with:

In other words, Obama says pretty much the opposite of what the McCain camp says he said. Contrary to the spin put on his remarks by McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, he does not express "regret" that the Supreme Court has not been more "radical." Nor does he describe the Court's refusal to take up economic redistribution questions as a "tragedy."

Another day, another lie.

Fred Barnes joins the GOP meltdown crowd and flips out on Nicole Wallace for not taking responsibility for buying Palin's expensive threads. Far be it from me to defend Wallace here, but it's not like she actually sat there and physically dressed Palin, is it? (If so, that's kind of creepy.)

The point is that Palin could have decided not to wear the $150K wardrobe. The fact that she did was her decision and her decision alone.

Arizona Capitol Times cites two public polls showing McCain leading 48-44 and 44-42 respectively, and a GOP internal poll showing McCain leading by just 3. All are within the margin of error, meaning Arizona is in play -- incredibly. Wouldn't it be great if McCain lost?

Screen captured at 7:12PM Pacific time Monday evening:

Bill Burton calls FOX out for its agenda-driven political programming, enraging FOX anchor Megyn Kelly. Note how calm Burton manages to remain throughout the interview. He showed no anger whatsoever...which seemed to provoke Kelly into an even deeper fury.

From Sarah Palin's statement on the felony conviction of Ted Stevens:

I'm confident that Senator Stevens, from this point on, will do the right thing for the state of Alaska.

What makes her "confident" that he "will do the right thing"? Weird.

Joe Lieberman vows that John McCain will live to at least 85 years of age, presumably to deflect concerns about a Palin Presidency.

Stevens' conviction will be a problem for Republicans generally, and for John McCain and Sarah Palin specifically.

In July, Palin sat next to Stevens at a press conference, talking about how much she respected him and how his voice needed to be hard across America. And during her gubernatorial campaign, she ran a television ad proudly touting his endorsement.

Here's video:

Here's the final few minutes of Barack Obama's closing argument speech in Canton, Ohio. He was outstanding:

McCain's new (and bogus) line of attack against Obama started with a headline on Drudge, quickly jumped to FOX News, and was quickly pushed by his own campaign.

What are the chances that McCain-land wasn't involved in getting Drudge to hype the story?

Now, apply the same thinking to the 'B' scratch hoax story. I'm not saying that McCain-land perpetrated the hoax, that would have been beyond stupid.

But it defies credulity to imagine that they weren't the ones who got Drudge -- and shortly thereafter, FOX -- to push the fake story.

I just watched the last few minutes of it; Obama ended it on a powerful note, as you might expect. I'm working on uploading an excerpt soon.

This might just be the perfect companion to John McCain's "the economy is fundamentally strong" gaffe. Sunday morning on Meet The Press, McCain told Tom Brokaw that he and George W. Bush shared a "common philosophy."

Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course.

Now let me just ask you a simple question: at this point in the campaign, is there anything stupider that John McCain could have said about his political philosophy than to admit that he shares it with George W. Bush?

Barack Obama quickly seized on McCain's gaffe, tearing into him in both Denver and Ft. Collins. Here's a quick video montage, along with McCain's original comments:

Drudge has lost his touch. He's now going freakishly hyperbolic with a strange headline linking to a heavily edited YouTube recording (complete with trippy visuals).

The headline claims something about how Barack Obama in 2001 said it was a tragedy that the Supreme Court didn't redistribute the wealth, but (a) the clip that he links to is heavily edited, so it's hard to know what is going on in the clip; and (b) to the extent that you can make anything out, Obama actually says the exact opposite of what Drudge claims.

The original clip is here, and it's an hour long.

AP's Ben Feller reports on Obama's day in Colorado:

DENVER -- Roaring toward the finish, Barack Obama presided Sunday over two Colorado rallies that together drew about 150,000 people, a startling turnout in a key swing state.

In Denver, the city where he claimed his historic presidential nomination, Obama stepped on stage and seemed surprised at his own following. He saw an estimated crowd of more than 100,000 people -- the largest U.S. rally to date in an Obama campaign full of them.

...The location of a later rally -- a Colorado State University lawn known as "The Oval" -- suggested Obama's possible future workplace. He spoke to an estimated 45,000-50,000 people at the Fort Collins event.

And here's what I know about Obama's closing argument speech. It's scheduled for 12:30PM Eastern time, and I expect that you will be able to watch on CNN.com live as well as http://origin.barackobama.com.

To tide you over, here's excerpts from his speech:

Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need

Monday, October 27^th, 2008, Canton, Ohio

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.

A friend of mine writes -- seriously -- with the following suggestion:

SUBJECT: Dude

You should start a new blog or accessory site called jedstate.com

To which I replied:

(Source: Washington Post Candidate Tracker.)

I know I'm late in mentioning this, but it's just hilarious that Elizabeth Hasselbeck would allege that the uproar over the "Wasilla Hockey Mom's" $150,000 shopping spree was "deliberately sexist." I mean, has she ever even heard of John Edwards $400 haircut?

But the real story is that by brining up her clothes, Sarah Palin threw John McCain under the bus in spectacular fashion. I don't think there's a political professional in America who thinks that by talking about her clothes, she was doing it to help John McCain out. The last thing he wants to talk about is how the RNC paid $150,000 to dress up his vice presidential candidate.

But that's not Palin's concern. All that matters to her is preserving her viability for 2012. And in the end, her disloyalty just underscores the epic nature of John McCain's fail on the most important decision he's faced this entire campaign: selecting a running mate.

Update: Andrew Sullivan notes that McCain's people specifically said that they did not ask Palin to make her clothes remarks.

More questions from that crazy news anchor in Florida, including some to John McCain and a hilarious one (no spoilers, but it's straight from freeperville) she asked to Biden in September:

Stanley Kurtz, one of the wingers over at The Corner, is all freaked out about the way the election is going, and he's taking it out on Ben Smith for failing to declare Barack Obama to be a homosexual foreign-born Marxo-terrorist who dates white women and carves B's into their faces while demanding that they fork over sixty hard-earned American dollars.

Although I now feel comfortable describing Kurtz's ravings as unhinged, I haven't always felt that way. In fact, up until recently, I've always assumed that he and those like him were deeply cynical hacks pursuing a flawed line of attack because they thought it would work, not because they believed it.

Increasingly, however, it seems as as though they actually are severely deranged true believers. They really do believe the garbage they are spewing. If I had any sympathy for what they are trying to accomplish, I might even feel sorry for them, because they need help.

This image is part of a new series of posts we're calling Charting Change, tracking stats about the election and the candidates. Clicking on the chart will take you to a standalone version you can embed elsewhere.

Is it just me, or has the Obama campaign perfected the art of making closing arguments? They have the best sense of timing -- in terms of building towards election day -- of any campaign that I can remember.

Anyway, that being said, Ben Smith notes that tomorrow in Canton, Ohio, Barack Obama will be making his closing argument.

I guess John McCain will be busily trying to suspend the election or someting like that.

...then you take whatever crowd you can get. At least that's what seems to have happened early today when a woman acting as if she were a Palin impersonator was standing behind McCain at a rally speech in Iowa.

Doug Elfman, a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, does a little profile of me in his blog.

McBush says he's his own man. Har, har.

Oh, did I mention: 100,000 for Barack Obama?

And this:

Alaska's natural gas pipeline was supposed to be Sarah Palin's biggest accomplishment, but it turns out that nothing has been built, it's years away from beginning -- if at all, and it's been plagued by influencing peddling...involving Sarah Palin herself, of all people.

Even though she's in third place for the 2012 nomination, it's amazing to me that 20% of Republicans still want to nominate her. They've just witnessed a campaign run by a pathological liar, and they've seen the impact of his lies on his campaign. And now 20% of them want to pick another? Just crazy.

If you're reading this post, then you're viewing TJR's newest facelift, a modest layout change designed to create a space for featuring videos and other items that would otherwise scroll off the page.

Nothing has changed with the layout of blog posts themselves, and while I'll probably tweak things a little in the featured area, the blog posts will stay exactly as they are.

If things aren't displaying properly for you, try hitting control+F5.

A brutal appraisal from a conservative Republican:

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.

McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. "There is not a safe Republican seat in the country," he warned. "I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them."

In the Senate, things look, if possible, even worse. ... We are cannibalizing races that we must win and probably can win in order to help a national campaign that is almost certainly lost. In these final 10 days, our goal should be: senators first.

There were dueling rallies in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Saturday:

• John McCain: Less than one thousand attendees (at least two of whom left the rally as Barack Obama supporters)
• Barack Obama: 45,000 for change.

Now those are the kind of numbers I can live with!

Saturday evening, Markos posted some amazing numbers out of Arizona: Barack Obama trails John McCain by just 4, 40-44. Among early voters who say they've already cast their ballot, Obama leads by 1, 47-46.

McCain is still favored to win the state, but in the final days of his campaign, it can't help him to have reporters asking questions like this:

Could McCain lose his home state?

Barack Obama captures the endorsement of Sarah Palin's state newspaper.

Why is Sarah Palin spending so much time in Iowa? Might it be the 2012 Iowa caucuses?

The RNC's newest McCain attack ad ("Storm") makes the case that John McCain would be a steadier presence in the Oval Office than Barack Obama. It's a silly ad, and not just because the financial crisis revealed McCain to be as herky-jerky as Obama is confident and composed.

When you're 72 and you've selected Sarah Palin as your running mate, the last argument you should be making is the experience argument. I've put together a response to the new RNC attack, turning the ad around on itself, and applying its line of attack to Palin. Here it is:

Unebelievable:

(CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

Andrew Sullivan asks the key question:

"If McCain doesn't trust her, why should anyone else?"

An Orlando area reporter (and former Miss Vermont) asks questions of Joe Biden that would make FOX blush...and he laughs them off with ease. One of the funniest interviews you ever will see.

You ever notice how John McCain's YouTube attack videos sometimes got tons of play, but very low ratings? Well, this Pew poll may explain why:

The study revealed a notable gap between liberals and conservatives when it comes to using the Internet for political information. Pew found 43 percent of liberals say they read blogs, compared with 22 percent of conservatives. In addition, about six in 10 liberal respondents said they have viewed "some form of campaign video" (such as a debate or commercial) online, compared to about a third of conservatives.

I wonder if McCain did himself more harm then good by posting his attack ads online, given that he was mostly just pissing off supporters of Barack Obama. Perhaps if he'd kept a more positive online presence, he wouldn't have built up such a snarling reputation.

Just another example of stupidity from one of the most poorly run campaigns in presidential campaign history.

Transcript below the fold:

You have to give FOX some credit. They'll report anything -- anything -- to help John McCain win an election:

Newsweek surveyed Republicans:

If John McCain is not elected president, which one of the following three possible candidates would you be most likely to support for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012?

Mitt Romney 35%
Mike Huckabee 26%
Sarah Palin 20%

Let the 2012 jockeying begin!

So we already know the McCain campaign played some sort of a role in helping get the 'B' hoax off the ground in the first place.

Now, thanks to Brian Williams, we know that once it was off the ground, McCain-land continued spreading the hoax to reporters, fueling the attention it got by publicizing phone calls from both McCain and Palin to the so-called victim.

Now he's stealing Obama's lines. But that just ain't gonna fly:

Greg Sargent of TPM with a blockbuster of a scoop:

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

Update (3:25PM):

Barack Obama claims another GOP editorial page.

Hahahaha:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, who has been rarely seen on the campaign trail, cast his ballot for GOP presidential nominee John McCain. In past elections, the president and first lady Laura Bush have traveled to Texas to vote, but the White House said Friday they cast their ballots in the early voting process.

Ambinder:

In response to this morning's post about an anti-Palin faction developing with the McCain campaign and among Republicans, Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, e-mails:

Just read your post.  This is on the record.  This is cleared by HQ.  It is a fact that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists.  It was a fact before Governor Palin  said it in a fully vetted speech and it is fact today.   It is bullshit to claim or write anything else.

Before all the facts were known:

In an official statement the McCain campaign says: "We're shaken up by this. It's sick and disgusting."

Governor Sarah Palin reportedly spoke with the victim by phone.

Over the first two weeks of October...it was Sarah Palin's makeup artist.

KDKA:

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter "B" in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

Three points:

1. No reporter should ever listen to anything Matt Drudge ever says again, period. He's done. Over. Toast. Proceed at your own risk.
2. The young woman who made up this story is deeply disturbed and needs help. She sought to enflame racial tensions at a point in our country's history when we could finally be overcoming some of them. That is a hideous sin, but rather than wanting to see her punished, I want to see her recover, because this is a cancer that we can no longer afford in our nation.
3. Conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin who held their fire (edit: actually, expressed their skepticism) deserve credit for not trying to enflame the divisions in this country. I won't say this often, but thanks. My only hope is that they could be this honest more often.

Higher Pie has a great diary at Daily Kos on the subject. Key takeaway: Democrats are dominating the early vote. In Clark County (Las Vegas and Henderson), 57% of early voters are Democrats, compared to just 27% Republican. In Washoe County (Reno), 52% are Democrats, compared to just 32% Republican.

In Clark, turnout is up 58% over the same stretch in 2004; in Washoe, turnout is up an outrageous 144%.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan:

GOP congressman says McCain campaign is struggling

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A prominent Wisconsin congressman supporting Sen. John McCain expressed displeasure with the campaign's operation on Friday.

"I would have done things differently the last few weeks," Rep. Paul Ryan, a Janesville Republican, said during an interview.

I've got a longer post on this video down below, but I think that it is so important that I wanted to bump it up to make sure everybody who visits TJR has a chance to see it. I'm going to go to bed early (if you can call 3:30 early), but I'll have more to say about this tomorrow.

One Mr. Barack Obama is coming to Las Vegas on Saturday. Ah, the joys of living in a "schwing state."

If you didn't like the Jedrudge Report thingy, here's some good news: I'm shelving the idea, though perhaps only temporarily.

Instead of launching a whole new page, for now I'm going to explore a more modest redesign of the current TJR home page, keeping the same basic look and feel, but going from a 3 column layout to a 2 column layout. I'll then use one of the columns as a place to put content that I want to feature (for example, a video that I think is important).

That way, I'll be able to keep on blogging without worrying about pushing stuff down below the fold. (I'll also use the area to link to cool stuff.)

But in any and all scenarios, you're still going to have to put up with me rambling away in blog posts!

Dave Weigel on the new poll showing Obama leading by 4 in Montana:

The gap between Obama and McCain is exactly the same as Paul's support in the state. In the interals, Paul is drawing independents, "other parties," and Republicans, but no Democrats whatsoever.

My favorite line from Nate's report:

To find good news for McCain, you have to go South -- to the deep South -- where new polling in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana suggests that those states have yet to become competitive.

Update (8:28PM): Normally, I'd have posted something else by now, or at least be planning on putting something else up. But I haven't been able to get this off my mind, so I'm keeping this post up for a while longer.

Original post: This is perhaps the single most incredible thing I've heard any candidate say this entire general election campaign.

Asked by Brian Williams whether she felt abortion clinic bombers were terrorists, Sarah Palin said she didn't know.

Others who would want to engage in harming in innocent Americans or facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable to...I don't know if you're going to use the word 'terrorist' there.

It's not just the words she used -- it's the sigh she gave after Brian Williams asked his question, as if she were upset at facing a gotcha' moment. It was also the shake of her head as she spoke, suggesting she actually felt they weren't terrorists.

Watch the video and see for yourself (extended version here and in the vodpod):

According to John Harwood just now on Countdown, the AP report that McCain wasn't planning on attending his election night party isn't correct. It did seem too good to be true...

Bristol's boyfriend got free clothes too.

Update: And reporters are having trouble actually accounting for the money that was supposedly spent. Did it go to a slush fund?

Nate bursts Drudge's bubble, again.

Oy. Not the best spin, Johnny Boy.

Also, a thought comes to mind: couldn't McCain have just bought the clothes for her, rather than asking GOP donors to foot the bill?

Eh, I'd say this lacks credibility.

"Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously," Mr. McCain said in an interview with The Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio.

So now, days before the election, he blasts the Bush legacy. But at the beginning of the year, he was blowing wet kisses to it, saying we were better off than we were eight years ago.

Only thing that's changed in McCain's thinking? The polls.

Just a couple of things worth pointing out about the story Drudge is pimping about a McCain supporter who had a backwards B scratched on her face:

• The story is a sad one that nobody should be forced to go through and the victim deserves speedy justice
• Unfortunately, justice may be hard to achieve because according to news reports, the attack "happened outside the view of the bank's surveillance cameras."
• Fortunately, the attack was not as severe as originally feared. Pittsburgh police report that "the woman refused medical treatment after the assault."

icebergslim has some fantastic photos in her diary, and here's a video of Barack talking about the economy at the rally:

I'm sure Jonah Goldberg will claim he was just being "funny" by pushing this idea to smear Obama:

Someone Put On His Thinking Cap [Jonah Goldberg]

From a reader:

If the donations list is published we could always do a bunch of donations as William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright etc. and then publicize that Obama's taking donations from these indidividuals. The only way to avoid the connection is to admit that they allow anonymous donation which, if I understand correctly, is a violation of federal law. I'd think an amusing ad could be put together from the already published donor list. The tag line is that if Obama would let his contributors lie to give him money who else is lying to him? That plays off the trust, experience and judgement angles all at the same time.

I just wanted to (a) thank everybody for providing the comments that they provided and (b) reassure folks that the TJR blog, as you see it right now, isn't going anywhere. What I'm talking about is a new page for TJR in addition to (not in replace of) this one.

I just noticed that FOX News is now broadcast in HD on DirecTV. I have to say, it's the lamest HD channel ever. All they do is move the old SD picture over to the left and throw up a few headlines on the right side of the screen. Totally useless.

In Clark County, Nevada, there's five days of early voting down and nine to go. Here's the numbers:

• 113,165 votes cast, up 60% from the 70,669 cast during the same period in 2004.
• 57% of early voters are Democratic
• 27% are Republican
• 16% are unaffiliated

The interesting thing is that in the past couple of days, the Democratic advantage has accelerated. In the last two days alone:

• 62% (!) are Democratic
• 20% are Republican
• 18% are unaffiliated
  

It's hard to see how McCain will be able to make up for this Democratic enthusiasm on election day; if anything, Republicans are growing increasingly disillusioned, which could accelerate the Democratic rout.

A bit over a week ago, I posted a beta version of a new feature for TJR: a new home page merging a set of headlines (like Drudge, but with my perspective on things) with the blog. Based on your feedback, I decided that wasn't a good approach, so I've decided to try out a 2-page approach.

On FOX "News" Channel, it's okay if you're a Republican, especially if your name happens to be Sarah Palin (h/t: to Media Matters for its archives, from which I gathered the haircut clips):

Today FNC mentioned either ACORN or Ayers 95 times. They mentioned "middle class" 12 times. Meanwhile, CNN mentioned "middle class" 22 times and MSNBC mentioned it 33 times.

So if the thing that matters most to you is ACORN or Ayers, by all means, watch FNC. But if you care about the economy and the middle class, stay far away.

References to either ACORN or Ayers today:

• On CNN & MSNBC combined: 20
• On FOX alone: 95

Mike Murphy:

You can feed a pit-bull for 483 years with 150 grand.

Okay, the fact that there is any debate at all within Republican circles about whether or not Palin's $150K shopping spree was a good idea is tells you everything that you need to know about the state of the GOP. From Politico:

Other donors, in other e-mails and interviews, said the costs were worth the investment.

Palin has proven to be a major draw at campaign rallies, and her strong performances and appearance provides a polished and professional image on television, one donor noted.

In addition, he suggested, the bad press only means the GOP base will unite even further behind the McCain-Palin ticket.

An excerpt of Barack Obama's speech earlier today in Richmond, Virginia:

With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by race or class or region; by who we are or what policies we support. There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation - we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from.

That is some inspiring stuff.

An agonizing 8-minute stretch of Hardball (if you're Nancy Pfotenhauer):

On Wolf Blitzer today, John McCain said that while he opposes tax increases on Social Security, he is willing to negotiate on them. Whatever you think of McCain's current position, it's sure to infuriate conservatives, such as the anti-tax organization Club for Growth. Recall that in July, Club for Growth blasted McCain for a similar statement. This will be sure to accelerate conservative disaffection with McCain as his campaign enters its final days.

Updated at 2:21PM with extended video (below):

Down in the polls, John McCain's Divide & Flail™ strategy is to call Barack Obama's tax cut for 95% of Americans "socialism." Well, John McCain must have once been a socialist, because it turns out that for years he supported higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for lower taxes on the middle-class. The YouTube don't lie:

Sarah Palin photographed wearing a scarf urging folks to vote...decorated with pictures of donkeys.

One of my closest friends alerts me to a campaign being waged by a friend of his, Josh Zeitz, in New Jersey.

Josh is the the Democratic challenger to Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey's fifth district, which has Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+1. Smith, a thirteen term Congressman, is an absolute loony wingnut, especially on the issues of reproductive freedom. He wants to investigate Planned Parenthood for child abuse and believes the birth control pill should be outlawed.

There's only thirteen days left in the campaign, but of late, Smith has been doing everything possible to give Josh a chance at an upset victory. The big issue: it turns out that Chris Smith doesn't really live in New Jersey at all -- at least not according to documents his family filed in order to secure a tuition break for his daughter's education in Virginia.

Today, Zeitz sent a letter to New Jersey election officials seeking the immediate removal of Smith from the ballot.

Zeitz's task is a tough one, but in a year like 2008, if Zeitz, whose campaign focus has been on economic issues, is able to get the message out about Smith's abandonment of his home district, this race may be winnable yet.

On Morning Joe, Mika initially defends Sarah Palin's huge shopping budget, but when the angry e-mails begin to flow in, she quickly concedes just how absurd Palin's spending was -- and the rest of the panel heartily agrees.

Meanwhile on FOX, they are truly hilarious, initially spinning that the shopping budget is the reason why she looks so good, and then quickly sputtering themselves into a strange rant on sexism and how TV personalities always get free clothes anyway.

McCain-land might get lucky and skate by on this if they play their cards right and other news drowns out this story, but nine times out of ten, this will be the moment when not just the media, but also other Republicans, start talking about the McCain-Palin campaign in the past tense.

Jonathan Martin chronicles McCain's bleak prospects:

"Republican donors at the end of day aren't stupid," said another Republican familiar with third-party activities this cycle. "They're not going to throw good money after bad."

I know that some of you are going to think I'm being complacent when I say it's over, but it is over. It's totally over. There is a zero percent chance that John McCain will win this election. None. Nada.

All this talk about Pennsylvania is has last best hope...well, sure, maybe that's right. But c'mon. Seriously. It won't work. We all know it. He's done for. John McCain is not going to be the next president.

Still, we don't know how big Obama's win will be. In the worst case scenario, it might be a 2 point win, and in the best case it might be as many as 7 or 8 points. And the size of the victory matters, not just Obama's victory, but also the size of the Democratic majority we elect to Congress.

At this point we're not playing to win -- we're playing to crush the Republicans, and to put Obama in a position where he can actually get the things done that this country so desperately needs.

It's no longer just about winning the campaign. Now its about governing the country.

Even Republicans are upset at the recent revelation that the RNC has spent over $150,000 on clothing in just one month for Sarah Palin.  Marc Ambinder explains:

Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter  (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures.

This sort of spending is without precedent -- the closest approximation for any campaign I've ever covered is make-up expenses for television interviews and commercial shoots -- , and Schmitt's weakly defensive response tonight indicates that the campaign is deeply embarrassed by it and has nothing to say in their defense. Spokespeople have clammed up, a sure sign that they're trying to figure out who authorized the expenses and who knew about them.  Did Palin wear all of the clothing? Where is it kept?

Just for the record: Wurzelbacher is a GOP donor.

NYT:

Democrats who monitor advertising spending now put at five the number of states where Senator John McCain is reducing his advertising - New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota.

...

By our very rough reckoning, based on what he spent in those states last week according to advertising monitoring firm CMAG, the move should free up an additional $2 million that Mr. McCain can now spend in Pennsylvania, or wherever else.

Politico reports on the world's most expensive VP candidate.

On Monday, a Missouri-based television reporter asked McCain whether he was proud of a smear-laden mailer sent out by the RNC on his campaign's behalf. McCain's reply: "Absolutely."

It all comes down to the economy. Despite his attempted "reboot", John McCain is still as determined as ever to smear Barack Obama with the most scurrilous garbage imaginable -- all because he has no clue what to do about creating new jobs.

McCain has a Bush-like encounter with the English language:

McCain spent $8,672.55 on makeup last month.

These are just amazing early voting numbers for Clark County, Nevada, (basically Las Vegas and Henderson, plus a few surrounding communities):

• In the first three days, 68,946 votes have been cast
• That's nearly two-thirds more than the 41,922 votes cast in the first three days of early voting in 2004
• 59% of the early voters have been Democrats
• Just 25% have been Republicans
• 16% have been from unaffiliated voters

Good for Barbara Lorman, who not only bailed on John McCain over his nasty campaign tactics, but also announced her support for Barack Obama.

Maybe the McFailing campaign ought to consider cancelling Governor Palin's interview on NBC with Brian Williams. Maybe she'll skate through without another 'VP runs the senate' type gaffe, but if she does make another big mistake, it'll be a big problem.

Sarah Palin says the Vice President is "in charge of the United States Senate." Um, not exactly. Update: Kagro X has more on why Palin's answer was just so thoroughly stupid.

Welcome to Sarah Palin's America:

This now takes the place of the previous record-holder: it's the best Daily Show episode ever.

First, John Stewart eviscerates the GOP's "real" America attacks, along with audio of Sarah Palin's infamous "pro-America" parts of the country comment.

Then, the Daily Show visits Wasilla, Alaska, meeting not just with the Mayor of Wasilla, but also Mark Chryson, the former head of the Alaskan Independence Party -- who talks about Todd Palin's membership in the secessionist group.

Via TPM's Zachary Roth,  here's a story about how Adam Serwer, a writer for The American Prospect and his own blog, Too Sense, won a dispute with National Review's Jim Geraghty without ever lifting a finger.

In 2004, in the first two days of early voting, 27,296 voters turned out.

In 2008, in the first two days of early voting, 45,658 voters turned out.

That's a 67% increase -- and Las Vegas isn't exactly known for being terribly politically active. Has to be a good sign.

DemFromCT looks at the polls, including a CBS survey in which the very same people were polled before the debates and after the debates. The net result? A shift from an Obama lead of 5 points to 13.

But the really incredible thing:

Mr. Obama's favorability is the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years of Times/CBS polls. Mrs. Palin's negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate as measured by The Times and CBS News. Even Dan Quayle, with whom Mrs. Palin is often compared because of her age and inexperience on the national scene, was not viewed as negatively in the 1988 campaign.

I don't think I hear Sarah Palin complaining about the Alaska Permanent Fund, a government program that distributes oil revenues to non-felon Alaska residents. Here's the income she received frm the fund as reported on her 2006 and 2007 tax returns:

Update: John Cole has more.

Politico:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Barack Obama will leave the campaign trail Thursday to travel to Hawaii to see his 86-year-old grandmother, who has fallen ill, spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday.

"In the last few weeks her health has deteriorated to the point where her situation is very serious," Gibbs told reporters aboard Obama's campaign plane.

The change of plans means Obama will scrap scheduled rallies Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa, and Madison, Wisc. He will instead head to Indianapolis, Ind., for a morning event, leave for Hawaii and return to the campaign trail Saturday.

Hahaha. Sarah Palin, still a hypocrite.

Ken Adelman endorses Barack Obama. He isn't particularly thrilled with Obama, which actually makes me happy. Adelman, after all, was an early proponent of the Iraq War. But he finds McCain to be an intolerable alternative, based on "temperament" and "judgment":

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I've concluded that that's no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office--I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency.

This is what flailing looks like:

Erik Schmidt endorses Barack Obama.

The polls show McCain's Joe-baloney didn't work. So naturally, McCain-land is doubling down and looking for another Joe.

Jonathan Martin notes:

Actually, it's more of a canyon.

Obama had an estimated 100,000 people come out to see him at the St. Louis Arch on Saturday.

In suburban St. Louis today, McCain had a crowd of about 2,000.

Extend the post to get a look at CNN pimping the McCain's latest crazy line of attack:

Now: Sarah Palin says she doesn't like the robo-call terrorist attack and thinks Michele Bachmann was wrong to suggest some members of Congress were anti-America.

Then: Sarah Palin said Obama palled around with terrorists, that he did so because of his view of America, and that she enjoys campaigning in the "pro-America" parts of America.

Barack Obama will be in Florida today, first in Tampa (good timing after the Rays' victory) and second in Orlando, appearing with Hillary.

And the WSJ has a beautiful headline for its article on the Powell endorsement:

Powell Endorses Obama, Reflecting Fractures in GOP

Republican former Secretary of State Colin Powell's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama is the latest sign that the Republican Party's coalition is fracturing amid the stresses of the campaign.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press" Sunday, Gen. Powell lamented his party's tilt to the right and a campaign by Sen. John McCain that he said had dwelled too much on inconsequential issues and attacks.

Gen. Powell, a secretary of state under George W. Bush, echoed many conservative intellectuals in his criticism of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, saying: "I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States....That raised some questions as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made."

I've spent most of the afternoon (and early evening) putting together a new montage of Colin Powell's endorsement, along with video clips from the campaign trail supporting his key points.

As you can see, Powell didn't just endorse Barack Obama -- he also systematically dismantled the entire rationale for John McCain's presidential campaign:

Whatever you think of Colin Powell, in the context of our national discourse, the endorsement of a Republican military figure like Powell is a severe blow to McCain's smear campaign. Among the key points Powell made against McCain's campaign:

• On the Ayers smears: He thoroughly repudiated McCain's "Obama associates with terrorists" smear job.
• On the religion smears: He not only affirmed the fact that Barack Obama is Christian, but he also rejected the idea that it would be a problem if he weren't, defending religious freedom in passionate terms.
• On the "anti-American" smears: He even targeted Michele Bachmann's divisive rant claiming that there are "anti-American" Members of Congress
• On McCain's judgment and readiness: He destroyed the notion that McCain has either the judgment or policy acumen to serve as president, citing McCain's selection of Sarah Palin and his unsteady response to the economic crisis
• On Republican extremism: He slammed the GOP's rightward tilt, specifically noting that it would be unacceptable to nominate two more hard-right justices to the Supreme Court

Powell didn't just decimate the McCain campaign rationale, however. Powell also offered up an endorsement of Barack Obama in the strongest possible terms, saying that Obama would be an "exceptional president" and that he had the capacity to be "transformational."

The amazing part of all this is that Powell still considers himself a Republican. While there will never be an excuse for his role in supporting the Iraq war, one thing does seem clear: Powell's endorsement today will be a boost for Barack Obama's campaign, and therefore a good thing for this country.

Today, John McCain defended his selection of Sarah Palin as "a cold political calculation" that has "energized our base." He says she is a "a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America."

So what's the "liberal feminist agenda" McCain is fighting against? The one that cares about "health of the mother?"

The man is just a total pyscho. No air quotes needed.

Just over fifty years ago, Joseph McCarthy attacked Edward R. Murrow with some of the exact same language that John McCain and Sarah Palin are using today to attack Barack Obama.

In these chilling excerpts originally broadcast on Murrow's own show, McCarthy accused the CBS newsman of defending "traitors" and associating with a "terrorist organization":

I missed this one: the Houston Chronicle endorses a Democrat for the first time since LBJ in 1964. Like many of the Republican papers jumping ship, McCain's selection of Sarah Palin made their decision fairly straight-forward:

Perhaps the worst mistake McCain made in his campaign for the White House was the choice of the inexperienced and inflammatory Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Had he selected a moderate, experienced Republican lawmaker such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with a strong appeal to independents, the Chronicle's choice for an endorsement would have been far more difficult.

According to a campaign e-mail, Obama raised $150 million in September, including donations from 632,000 new donors. The average donation was less than $100.

A hip-hop artist named MC Yogi offers up one of the latest examples of pro-Obama music on the web:

John McCain is now basically resting his campaign on the argument that Barack Obama is a terrorist and a socialist. The first is absurdly false, and the second is just name calling without any real meaning.

So instead of throwing about rhetoric, let's take a look at the actual numbers behind the competing tax plans offered by Obama and McCain.

The chart below was created using data published last Tuesday by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Institute on both the McCain and Obama tax plans.

Wow. First a 100,000 person rally in St. Louis. And then a 75,000 person rally in Kansas City. icebergslim has got the photos.

A YouTube posted by the Obama campaign nearly one year ago:

Also, the WaPo notes that today McCain was campaigning in "fake" Virginia:

Sen. John McCain headlined a boisterous outdoor rally in Woodbridge, Va., today, while his campaign took heat for suggesting the populous region was not part of "real Virginia."

...then this will be a great talking point:

Powell knows McCain far better than Obama and gave $2,300 to his then-struggling primary campaign in August 2007.

Jonathan Martin reports how McCain supporters greeted CNN's Ed Henry today in "fake" Virginia:

"CNN sucks!," yelled one voter at Henry.   "Communists go home," shouted another"

At one point, Henry was hit with a flying pack of chewing gum.

Political reporters are paying attention to the McCain campaign's assertion that northern Virginia isn't "real" Virginia:

• Politico's Ben Smith: Fake Virginia
• Politico's Jonathan Martin: McCain adviser: Northern Va not the "real Virginia."
• ABC's Jake Tapper: McCain Adviser Says Northern Virginia Not "Real" Virginia
• AP: McCain aide says he's strong in 'real' Virginia
• TIME's Swampland: Interesting Strategy
• NBC's Carrie Dann for First Read: Will The Real Virginia Please Stand Up?

The biggest crowd in Missouri's history shows up to hear Barack Obama and his message of change. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has photos here and blogged it here.

There is no level of desperation to which the flailing McCain campaign will not stoop. It is now their official position that the suburbs of our nation's capitol, home to millions of Americans, are not "real" because they aren't "Southern in nature."

Here's McCain spokesman Nancy Pfotenhauer making the campaign's views clear on MSNBC earlier this morning:

In just two and a half weeks, this campaign will come to an end and the American public will render a final verdict on the Bush presidency.

There's really no question what that verdict will be. Whether it's health care and the economy, Iraq and foreign policy, or global warming and energy independence, the fundamental issue of this campaign has always been the same: our nation's desperate need to change course from the disastrous path charted by the Bush Administration.

Now, as we enter the final stretch of the campaign, Barack Obama is winning because more than any other candidate, he has been able to make the case that he can provide the change we need.

So when you hear another false smear from John McCain or Sarah Palin, all they are trying to do is distract attention from anything that might remind voters that they support the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

It's clear that their strategy is failing, just as it's clear that Barack Obama's strategy is succeeding. And because of that, we are now in the closing stages of the countdown to change.

Just seventeen more days.

An odd thought just occured to me: Barack Obama will be the first president ever to actively use e-mail.

Another Bush 2004 endorser for Barack Obama.

Update: And another Bush 2004 paper for Barack Obama: The Denver Post.

I don't know if Powell will endorse Barack Obama or not, but it's hard to imagine that he won't endorse somebody during his Sunday appearance on Meet The Press. (Would they really invite him on to say he's undecided?)

Whoever Powell endorses, I doubt that it would sway most of the readers of this site, given what he did to enable the Iraq War. But setting that aside for a moment, the thing that really matters is electing Barack Obama by the widest possible margin, and Colin Powell can play an important role in making that happen.

As FreedomFries pointed out in the comments, the real value of a Powell endorsement is that it would singlehandedly destroy the entire GOP argument against Barack Obama.

It's not just that Powell is a respected figure among political independents and conservatives. It's not just that he's a Republican, and it's not just that Powell is as mainstream as you can get.

It's that if the GOP caricature of Barack Obama were true, Colin Powell would never endorse him. Given the dynamics of our discourse, on questions of patriotism, Powell is about as good a character witness as you can get.

So with that all being said, I predict that one of two things will happen. Either (a) Powell will endorse McCain, and the GOP attacks on Obama will intensify; or (b) Powell will endorse Obama, and the GOP will be forced to destroy Powell before they can touch Obama.

Whatever happens, it won't change my opinion of Barack Obama, nor should it change yours. But if Powell does do the right thing and endorse Obama, he's going to be creating one hell of a political problem for John McCain.

Every day or two, I get an e-mail accusing me of being biased against conservatives. They are usually fairly entertaining, but this one was one of the best I've ever received:

Jed,

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE YOUR LEFT WING SPIN ON CURRENT EVENTS. JUST GOES TO SHOW WHY NBC AND THE LIKES OF YOU CONTINUE YOUR DOWNWARD POPULARITY. I'M A REGISTERED DEMOCRAT BUT OPEN MINDED ENOUGH TO SEE WHY PEOPLE HAVE SO LITTLE TRUST IN THE MEDIA. MY GOD MAN WHY DON'T YOU JUST PROCLAIM IT BEFORE EACH NEWS STORY AND AT LEAST GIVE THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOUR VIEWS AN OPPORTUNITY TO FOLLOW YOUR DAILY DOSE OF HALF TRUTHS EACH DAY. YOUR A DIGRACE TO A MEDIA WHO'S JOB IS TO REPORT AND LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE. FOR YOUR SAKE YOU AND THE MAJORITY OF THE MEDIA LEFT AND RIGHT HAD BETTER HOPE THE BRAIN DEAD AMERICANS WHO FOLLOW YOUR TRASH NOT AWAKEN TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES FOR WHEN THEY DO YOU AND THOSE LIKE YOU WILL SURELY BE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER LINE OF WORK.

Hah!

So the GOP organizes an "I Am Joe" rally to show how they are in solidarity with  blue collar America. They dress up in overalls and everything. But it turns out that the leaders of the rally are...the head of the College Republicans, and some guy from Australia. FireDogLake, on the other hand, actually has some real "Joes the plumber."

And don't forget the most important point: under Barack Obama the actual Plumber Joe would get a tax cut. Under John McCain, he wouldn't. There's no question about it: even Joe admits Obama would cut his taxes.

Is it just me, or does Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (MN-06) seem totally paranoid? Not only is she "absolutely" concerned that Barack Obama has "anti-American views," she thinks there needs to be an inquiry into whether or not there are anti-American members of Congress.

Update (4:19PM): Here's a link to the ActBlue fundraising page of Bachmann's general election opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg.

Joe Biden responds to Sarah Palin's boast that she enjoys campaigning in the "pro-American" parts of this country:

For the first time in the 161 year history of the Chicago Tribune, the paper has endorsed a Democratic presidential nominee: Barack Obama.

Update (1:09PM): Conservative radio talk show host Michael Smerconish joins the O-Train to victory and change.

Obama in Roanoke, VA earlier today, going after John McCain's radical health care agenda, including his plan to slash Medicare and tax health care benefits for the first time ever. Obama's bottom-line: "Every single American has a right to affordable, accessible health care."

The Washington Post reports on another strange Palin statement made at a North Carolina fundraiser:

Palin also made a point of mentioning that she loved to visit the "pro-America" areas of the country, of which North Carolina is one. No word on which states she views as unpatriotic.

The statement is obnoxious enough on its own, but when you consider the unanswered questions about her support for the pro-secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, it's a downright bizarre thing for her to say.

Remember, Sarah Palin still hasn't explained why she palled around with secessionists:

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a decision by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals from earlier this week. The appeals court decision had been in support of a vote suppresion plan by the GOP; the SCOTUS decision vacates that ruling, and will ensure newly registered voters in the state have an opportunity to cast a ballot in the November election.

John McCain 4.0 (or is it 4.5?) is now making the argument that we need to elect him because we can't afford another four years like the last eight. He must not think we have much of a memory, because earlier this year -- when he was still leading in the polls -- McCain was eager to tell us that we were actually better off than we were eight years ago. Here's video:

No real analysis here, other than that I'm sick and tired dishonest reporting about the Bradley Effect, which no longer exists -- if it ever did. Maybe it's time to ask: how many folks aren't voting for McCain because he's so old?

And if that strikes reporters as a loaded and unfair questions to ask, well, they are probably right. All I'm saying is this: be consistent, please.

debrazza's post reminded me that I ought to post this follow-up  (also posted over at Daily Kos) on FOX has turned itself in the 24-hour ACORN and Ayers network, with updated stats.

Based on a search of closed caption data gathered since Sunday, FNC has mentioned the GOP's favorite issues (ACORN and Ayers) nearly thirty percent more frequently than they mentioned the GOP's least favorite issues, the economy and the middle class.

Guest post by debrazza

During his speech at the Al Smith dinner last night, Barack Obama once again mocked Fox News, boosting an effort to destroy the power and influence of the conservative media networks, an effort that I consider to be every bit as significant as the destruction of the modern Republican party. As noted by Kos, this continues a theme for the week where Obama mocked Fox during the debate last night and then again in the upcoming New York Times Magazine in an article by Matt Bai. This is also the continuation of a recent theme for the Obama campaign: Robert Gibbs famously ambushed Sean Hannity after the last debate in Nashville, David Plouffe recently called them the "24-hour ACORN channel" and Bill Burton has been all over their network embarrassing them over and over.

Here's how pathetic McCain's "Joe The Plumber" gambit is: despite the fact that Joe is a raving right-wing loon who thinks McCain is too far to the left, even he admits that Barack Obama's tax cut plan will lower his taxes. Watch as he (reluctantly) rebuts McCain's lies in this mock mini-debate:

David Letterman asks John McCain if he's ever attended a fundraiser at G. Gordon Liddy's house, and McCain (who has done that very thing) plays dumb. (Liddy, if you recall, is a convicted felon who has called for shooting Federal agends in the head.)

Update: I've swapped the video out for a longer, better quality video from CBS.

Even Joe (reluctantly) admits Obama would lower his taxes. (I'm working on a video related to this that I think is going to be fun.)

Among the many items of interest in this report: Todd Palin spent 50% of work hours in the governor's office itself. Doesn't that make his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party relevant?

It won't change anybody's vote, but earlier in the campaign, I never would have expected this to happen.

You've got to be totally ****ing kidding me! But it's real.

Update: The vetting of Joe The Plumber is like the vetting of Sarah Palin is like the vetting of the Iraq war. These guys are totally ridiculous!

Last night, debrazza mentioned to me how important it was that Obama challenged FOX during last night's debate. I'd planned on writing something about it this afternoon, but kos beat me to it.

I always feel sappy/cheesey saying this, but we are so fortunate to have a nominee that we actually want to win. It's not just about beating McCain: it's about helping Obama win.

Please excuse the self-promotion, but it was kind of neat seeing two of my first headlines on Daily Kos posts showing up on MSNBC earlier this afternoon!

I'm going to be away from the machine for a little while, so while I'm going please enjoy this brief guided tour of John McCain's rage by CNN:

I said no more posts on that super lame plumber stunt guy. But he's not a licensed plumber. And I just couldn't resist posting that.

This will hopefully be the last I have to say about Joe Wurzelbacher, the plumber occupying way too much of our national mindspace this morning, and I'll do it in bullet point format.

• Yes, his taxes would go down under Obama. (He makes less than $250k.)
  
• No, his taxes would not go up under Obama. (The cost of the firm he's seeking to buy is $250K, not it's annual revenues. Nobody earning less than $250K will have their taxes hiked.)
• No, he's not undecided, and he never was.
• His full legal name appears to be Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
• He is a registered Republican and voted in the GOP primary in March.
• His first registration was with the right-wing Natural Law Party (according to a press conference he held earlier this morning).

We don't know much about Joe The Plumber, but we do know this: he made up his mind who he was voting for before last night's debate.

Speaking with Katie Couric, "Joe" said that he "wasn't swayed" by the debate last night, yet pretty much knew who he was going to vote for. So if (a) he wasn't swayed by the debate and (b) knows who he is going to vote for, then (c) he had already made up his mind before the debate.

Here's video:

The Obama camp takes aim at McCain's assertion that he's not President Bush. True, he's not Bush...but he voted with him ninety percent of the time.

He really is crazy:

Here's a clip of about 90 seconds worth of John McCain's condescending, snotty, and childish grimaces, grunts, and eye rolls that turned off so many voters during tonight's debate.

I'm planning on using some of this video to make a shorter, snazzier video, but thought it'd be worth getting the raw video up right away. If you've got any ideas for music or other ways of making the video funny, please share!

Obama wins in the CNN poll, 58%-31%; wins the CBS poll 53%-22%.

That makes 3 of 3.

Post-debate #3: CBS snap poll shows resounding Obama victory, 53-22.

Post-debate #2: CNN panel seems to think that Obama did well towards the end of the debate, when McCain started to lag. Overall, 15 gave the win to Obama, McCain just 10.

Post-debate update #1: FYI -- I'm working on a video now of McCain's reactions to Obama, so I might not be posting much for a little bit.

Original post and update: Obama is sticking to what matters, and correcting McCain's lies. McCain is attacking, avoiding the issues. Here's a funny moment during the debate when McCain got totally befuddled by Obama's refutation of one of his attacks:

Two things to remember:

• The Dow today closed lower today than it has before any presidential debate since 1996.
• Even more telling: the unemployment rate today is higher than it has been before any presidential debate since 1992.

Oh, and I'll add a third. This debate is largely irrelevant, short of a major gaffe. Perhaps it's worth a two or three points in the final margin, and that is significant, but no matter what happens tonight, Barack Obama is winning.

Effective today, I'm joining the team at Daily Kos as a contributing editor.

I couldn't be more excited at the opportunity to reach a wider audience, and to work with a group of exceptional individuals. I don't need to tell you the role that Daily Kos has played in changing our political discourse, and I'm lucky to be a part of it.

As for The Jed Report, I'll still be posting here, and nothing much will change other than the logo on my videos and the YouTube channel to which I post them. (Update: The new channel is a Daily Kos channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/DailyKosTV.)

(My earlier post about setting up a new page of headlines and links isn't related to this announcement. I'll offer more comments later, but the bottom line is that I am not going to nuke this blog page; if and when I launch that page, it will be in addition to this one.)

I also want to thank everybody here at TJR. You folks make doing this worthwhile, and I've learned so much from you, and I'm looing forward to learning more in the future.

Be prepared to dislike Bob Schieffer even more than Tom Brokaw...

Another Republican unwilling to continue telling lies for John McCain. Don't forget to digg it up! (The digg link in this post is affiliated with the article linked above.)

LOL...will he do it?

My friends, I think this qualifies as part of the culture of corruption that we need to change in Washington, DC.

When you see the McCain campaign trotting out guys like Ben Porrit to be their spokesman you get the feeling that you're watching a last-place team wrapping up the end of the baseball season, concerned only developing new talent for the next season.

I mean seriously -- he's pinch-hitting for Tucker Bounds, who couldn't hit his own weight in the majors.

I will give Porrit this much: he's learned quickly, lying straight out of the box, just like a good Republican.

Here's a couple of things to keep in mind tonight when John McCain makes personal attacks to avoid discussing the economy.

Even if the Dow manages to recover its losses for the day, it will close lower today than it did before any presidential debate since 1996.

Even more telling: the unemployment rate today is higher than it has been before any presidential debate since 1992.

Update: Ben Smith takes a look at what's framing the debate:

Could the day's news be worse [f]or McCain? The market is back down, and the rest of the news is about health crises for political figures of his generation.

As John McCain is promising to go back to his discredited and self-destructive Ayers line of attack in tonight's debate, the most active pro-McCain 527 is abandoning it, electing to instead associate Obama with (of all people) Chris Dodd.

Seems that Palin can't even track when the Russians are in Alaska to do business with the state:

The campaign of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said the Alaska governor was unaware of a visit by Russian energy officials to Anchorage on Monday.

Here it is...

For some time now, I've been interested in creating an extemely simple set of links to newsworthy and intersting stories -- basically, something like Drudge Report without his conservative bias.

At the same time, I'm going to keep on blogging, so figuring out exactly how to accomplish both tasks with one web site is a bit of a challenge.

I've put together a beta of a hybrid solution -- the top of the page is simple links, and if you scroll down, the blog and vodpod are there, just like they are now.

If you have a moment to check the beta out, I'd like to know what you think of it. Specifically, I'm wondering:

1. Do you like the layout for the quick links (it should look fairly familiar)?
2. Are you interested in the content that I put on that page?
3. What do you think of the way the blog is integrated into the beta page?
4. Whether or not you like the way I accomplished the integration, do you think I should just keep the pages totally separate, or do you like the idea of one single page that has both the blog and the headlines?

And of course, I'm eager to hear any other thoughts you may have on it. Thanks!

Here's some more data from my SnapStream Server (more on that here). These figures represent the number of mentions of each word or phrase on each channel since Saturday morning (using closed caption data). The numbers speak for themselves -- over the last few days, FOX has mentioned both ACORN and Ayers twice as frequently as CNN and MSNBC combined.

Note that Joe Vogler is the founder of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, which Todd joined in 1995 and Sarah Palin addressed earlier this year.

This was brilliant (now using a YouTube version, I'll replace it with Comedy Central's player when available):

Joe Sudbay catches David Gregory engaging in some seriously unethical behavior: cherry-picking old polls to make it seem as if McCain was leading in some states where he was actually losing. Gregory showed polls from VA and NC, both with McCain leading Obama. Problem is, since the polls Gregory showed, there have been 8 polls conducted in those states, and Obama has led in 7 of those polls (he was tied in the 8th).

Media Matters notes that FOX News has mentioned ACORN on 342 occasions since Friday. Media Matters uses the tveyes.com service, but I actually get different numbers using a raw feed of the transcript as recorded by my SnapStream Enterprise Server, a fantastically cool product that allows me to record up to 4 channels simultaneously, including live searchability of closed caption data.

Here's the numbers I get (since Saturday):

• FOX: 609 mentions
• CNN: 90 mentions
• MSNBC: 30 mentions

But that only tells part of the story. Look at how infrequently both FOX and CNN discuss the middle class:

• FOX: 113 mentions
• CNN: 107 mentions
• MSNBC: 151 mentions

I was surfing around this afternoon and found this video of Barack Obama explaining to a plumbing business owner why his tax plan (check out the new Obama tax cut calculator) was superior to John McCain's. It's really something to behold: initially, the question was fairly hostile; by the end, although I don't think Barack won the guy's vote, I think he'd managed to ease his concerns dramatically. It's hard to the exchange justice with mere words -- it's a video worth watching:

John McCain keeps on launching attacks on Barack Obama, and then it turns out that he has the same problem. Take, for example, his attacks on Barack Obama's fundraising machine: turns out he suffers from the exact same compliance issues. As Marc Ambinder reports, McCain's donor database includes entries from fictitious zip codes, anonymous sources, and even donations from China.

Please pardon the dust as I catch up on some of what I missed while wrestling with my server earlier today:

• McCain's transition chief aided Saddam in lobbying effort -- after the first Gulg War.
• Chris Buckley on Hardball to discuss his endorsement of Obama and his resignation from National Review (h/t Genevieve)
• Lilibet Hagel (Chuck Hagel's wife) will be Michelle Obama's guest at tomorrow night's debate.
• They're still shouting "kill him" at Palin mob scenes.

I generally don't post much about polls; with Nate Silver and Sam Wang, the blogosphere has already pretty much got that covered. But between the new 14-point CBS poll and the fact that virtually every other poll shows Obama leading McCain by a wide margin, the polls are now inserting themselves as a major asset for Barack Obama.

It's not just that people like a winner, although that does give a boost to Obama's aura of strength and confidence. And it's not just that it will encourage more Republicans to bail on McCain, although it will.

It's also that every single thing that John McCain does is now viewed through the prism of polling data that shows him to be in a desperate position indeed. It makes everything he does seem more political than it might otherwise appear, and as a result, it means that no matter what he says, his credibility is automatically discounted.

When you combine this dynamic with the fact that McCain's campaign has been thoroughly dishonest since at least this summer, he now faces a nearly impossible task: getting voters to believe anything he says. And if he can't get them to believe him, how can he expect to win their support?

At Barath's urging, I've posted an ActBlue thermometer in the side bar to help raise money for candidates in the close Senate races in addition to Barack Obama. The Senate is especially important because if we can manage to get 60 seats, the GOP's ability to thwart progressive legislative intiatives will be decimated. So if you can afford it, please drop a few bucks in the ActBlue jar. (Thanks to Barath for setting it up.)

Update 2:57PM: I think things are back up and mostly normal. Today has been a very heavy day of traffic, and it turns out that my server had been running an old version of Apache in an inefficient manner. After resolving that problem earlier today, my ability to post was nuked. That seems to have been resolved. I'm currently on a phone call (a conference call), but I'll be getting back to posting soon. Sorry for the interruption!

You have to see it to believe it. The man is a total lunatic -- he is literally telling God that unless McCain wins, God's reputation will be shattered. Who in the world was crazy enough to invite this confused, sick man to a McCain event? Keith O. rightfully gives him a world's worst award.

Ad Nogs asks the tough question:

With 23 days, one presidential debate, and countless advertisements, speeches and attacks and counterattacks left to go, could this hugely anticipated race for the White House really be over?

Well, no. It's not over. But will be over before Ad Nogs seems to think. His article -- published on the Oct. 13 -- claims there to be 23 days left in the campaign. That would mean a general election on Wednesday, November 5. To be fair to Ad Nogs, he probably wrote this piece on Oct. 12, and didn't realize that by the time people read it, one day would have elapsed. Sometimes, it's the simplest things.

Anyway, his article is an otherwise boring affair, but every time I get the opportunity to dredge up his analysis of the situation in Iowa in 2004, I take full advantage. So here goes, Ad Nogs just days before John Kerry won and John Edwards finished second:

Michael Barone spreads this lie in the pages of the Washington Times:

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Mr. Obama that were "false." I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-'02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis.

Notice that Barone fails to cite a source. The reason he cites no source is that there is no credible source for his story.

Neither McCulloch nor Joyce have ever been quoted saying anything remotely similar to what Barone claims. It's a total lie, manafuctured by rightwing bloggers and radio shows, and the fact that Barone spreads it further underscores the fact that he is not a man to be trusted.

Marc Ambinder digs up a pretty damning video, given McCain's current line of attack on Barack Obama. In 2006, McCain told members of ACORN, UNITE HERE, SEIU, and PAW that they were "what makes America special."

As Ambinder says:

McCain had no trouble fraternizing with ACORN in 2006 when their political interests coincided with his. Now, his campaign is writing e-mails in his name bashing ACORN as a tool of the Obama machine.

Ben Smith also posted a picture of McCain at the same rally. Here's the video Ambinder posted:

To hell with McCain, the Republicans are trying to jump ship from their entire party!

Dana Bash raises the remarks by Virginia's GOP state party chair urging canvassers to tell voters that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden are both friends of terrorists, and John McCain again refuses to condemn them, instead attacking John Lewis, who had absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Watch as McCain once again reveals his pathetic inner-self:

Here's video of Barack Obama's speech in Toledo, Ohio from earlier today:

We've added an RSS feed to the "Republicans Jump Ship" page that I posted about earlier. Also, as you can see on the sidebar, there's a link from the home page along with the most recent additions to the list.

The man is just a pathological liar. Here's video, from a CNN interview with Dana Bash. (And by the way, Bash gets serious minus points for not challenging McCain on his lie.)

Palin chastizes a group of what she thinks are protestors. Problem is...they were actually supporters.

That's what CNN's Ed Henry is calling it. Here's video:

Barath Raghavan and I have collaborated on a new web page dedicated to documenting the collapse of support for John McCain from Republicans and conservatives. So far, we've got 27 examples of Republicans jumping ship and expect the list to rapidly grow.

We'll be rolling out a widget and an RSS feed shortly, but for now, you can check it out at:

http://www.jedreport.com/shipjumpers/

We're planning on updating it at least until it becomes superfluous. If you notice any examples that should be added to the list, please e-mail me with "Republican Ship Jumper" in the subject line.

Rich Lowry, Sunday evening:

"McCain to unveil new economic plans"

Here. Better late than never.

10/12 10:17 PM

Today: no new economic plans. I guess the implication of Lowry's Sunday evening post would be something like this: "Worse never than late."

Just goes to show the perils of trying to read McCain's erratic tea leaves.

It's nice to see Obama winning the endorsement of legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith, and not just because I was born in Chapel Hill. As this Kos diarist notes, Smith is a winner, and as Jason Zengerle notes, John McCain once said of Smith: "Dean Smith is not merely a basketball coach of historic accomplishments. He is also a man of uncommon integrity and decency." True, that. And he supports Obama.

The campaign has posted details here.

Jonathan Martin:

Palin said of her running mate this morning in Virginia Beach: "Since he won't say it on his own behalf, I'm gonna say it for my running mate here: There is only one man in this race who has ever really fought for you."

Then McCain took the mic and said: "I''ve been fighting for this country since I was 17-years-old and I have the scars to prove it."

Hilarious -- in the wake of Bill Kristol's self-serving (and history denying) repudiation of the McCain campaign, the McCain campaign is now claiming that Bill Kristol "has bought into the Obama campaign's party line."

The Obama campaign announces that today at 1.30PM Eastern in Toledo, OH, Barack Obama "will deliver a major policy address to lay out his economic rescue plan for the middle class."

I don't know if it will be broadcast live, but if it is, here's the link.

This is the sound of dishonorable defeat: McCain refuses to condemn the Virginia GOP chairman for telling McCain canvassers that they should compare Obama to Bin Laden when going door-to-door. McCain says he needs "context" first. Video here and in the vodpod. (h/t: Raising Kaine)

McCain-Bailin' 08, it's the hip thing to do for Republicans everywhere!

Tom Matzzie has an excellent post over at Huffington Post debunking the the GOP's fraudulent assault on "vote fraud" and ACORN.

Matzzie's overall contention is that the while McCain will lose this election, the GOP is going to try and claim that it was stolen by "community organizers" from "Chicago."

I've got no doubts they will try, but (a) as long as people like Matzzie get the facts out; and (b) we win this election by a large margin, it won't be an issue. Of course, it still is absolute bull that their charade might work in a close election, but hopefully we can just keep that a theoretical injustice.

Here's an excerpt from Matzzie's post:

The McCain campaign responds to Tapper's post about Palin's lie regarding the Troopergate report. Their basic argument: the report cleared us because we disagree with its findings. Truly phenomenal.

Sarah Palin, talking with Alaska media yesterday (via Jake Tapper):

Well, I'm very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.

Um, that's a total lie. The report says:

Finding Number One

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

"The legislature reaffirms that each public offer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Andrew Sullivan calls them the odd lies of Sarah Palin. Amen.

This post has nothing to do with the campaign, at least not directly; it does, however, concern YouTube, which has played a powerful role in the campaign.

You may be aware of a new YouTube feature called "annotations." You may not have yet seen an annotation, but if you have, they are those little gray overlays on YouTube videos, typically urging you to visit a website, to subscribe to the channel of whoever posted video, or just to another watch video.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've seen a trickle -- about to turn into a flood -- of Republicans bailing ship on John McCain.

Each has their different reasons. The earliest to leave never really liked John McCain all that much anyway -- case in point, conservatives like George Will or Kathleen Parker. And certainly McCain's mortgage plan, which so enraged the National Review, cost him support from ideologues on the right.

But most Republicans abandoning ship just don't think John McCain will win. Their primary interest is protecting their own hide. They don't want to get blamed for defeat, and they don't want to go down with McCain. Take Bill Kristol, for example, who has been one of the biggest McCain apologists of the campaign. His unloading on McCain earlier today on FOX was all about saving his own skin. Basically, what Kristol is saying is that if McCain had used his strategy, then McCain would have had a chance.

My sense is that McCain's closing strategy is going to exacerbate the GOP flight from McCain.

Update: (2:27PM): As Glenn Greenwald points out, this is the same Bill Kristol who was the chief proponent of McCain's strategy of attack, attack, attack. In fact, he was one of Palin's big boosters before she was picked. So he's basically calling himself stupid.

Original post: Oh, this is just too much fun...they know that they've lost, and they're already pointing fingers. It's the beginning of the great unraveling:

barath sent me this fun little article in the Miami Herald. Apparently, Florida Republicans are already playing the blame game on why John McCain lost the election.

Even GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone is getting in on the action, complaining that McCain's "campaign has no consistent message.''

That's just such an awesome thing to see Roger Stone say. I mean, he's basically pushing the Democratic line attack on McCain -- that McCain is erratic -- without even realizing it.

It seems as if the entire GOP is falling into disarray. It's nice finally being on the winning side, isn't it?

Even though Philadelphia Flyers hockey fans booed Sarah Palin from the very instant she was introduced, FOX 'News' claimed the reaction was "mixed." To make their case, they posted a video on FOXNews.com that:

1. Completely edited out Palin's introduction, when fans booed her most loudly (the booing let up a bit as her daughters took the ice).
   
2. Edited out a 27 second stretch during which which loud boos and some applause could be heard, presumably to allow the video to jump straight to the applause after Palin dropped the puck.
   
3. In the video FOX did show, they used very poor audio quality, making it hard to discern the boos.

Here's a side-by-side video of the original broadcast and every moment of the FOX video up until Palin and her daughters start to leave the ice:

YouTube Link

This is simultaneously pathetic and hilarious. FOX News reports:

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee said at an earlier fundraiser that she would stop some of the booing from the rowdy Philadelphia fans by putting her seven year old daughter, Piper in a Flyers jersey. She said, "How dare they boo Piper!"

So basically Sarah Palin has been reduced to the "human shield" defense.

Also worth noting: the video that FOX used on its web site cut off the most intense boing, which came right as the Palin's presence was announced.

So the GOP realizes McCain is going to lose, but that doesn't stop some of their most brilliant minds from offering him some advice.

"The main thing he needs to do," said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, "is focus on a single message -- a single, concise or clear-cut message, and stick with that over the next 30 days, regardless of what happens. He's had a lot of attack lines. But it's time to choose."

Emphasis added, because as smart as it would be for McCain to be a bit less erratic, 30 days from now is Monday, Nov. 10 -- six days after the election.

NBC's Savannah Guthrie tonight claimed that according to the Branchflower Report, Sarah Palin "broke no criminal laws, but violated ethics rules."

Guthrie needs to learn how to read. From page 8:

Finding Number One

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

"The legislature reaffirms that each public offer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

I don't know about Guthrie, but where I come from, when you violate a statute, you're not just breaking the rules, you're breaking the law.

America's most-booed hockey mom? (Updated: Better quality video.)

Ari turns in another strong performance on MSNBC. Basically, these days he's mowing down whatever GOP hack they happen to put in front of him.

publius documents the full range, from Karl Marx to Darth Vader. (via John Cole)

Pollster.com's composite has Obama over 50% for first time.

Basically, McCain lies while Obama tells the truth:

• Politifact: McCain's claim that "(Bill) Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together" is "pants-on-fire" false.
• CNN: Obama's claim that "McCain would shift the burden from lenders to taxpayers, guaranteeing a loss of taxpayer money" is true.
  

Here's video of CNN's report:

Newest wingnut paranoid extravaganza: Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama's memoir. Keep it up, nutjobs!

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds just now on FOX confirms that the McCain campaign will center its attack on Obama around his "associations."

Also, he apparently thinks the election is on November 3, because he said there's only 23 days until the election.

If Norm Coleman promises to run more stupid ads like this, should we donate to his campaign?

...then it was already over.

Here's the story, from AMERICAblog: Norm Coleman is running an ad in Minnesota featuring a video clip of what appears to be a furious Al Franken totally losing his mind. Except the video clip in the Coleman ad was actually taken from speech in which Franken is simply telling a story about how the late Paul Wellstone used to cheer on his son David in cross-country races.

These guys are going to be the laughingstock of the nation by the time this thing is over.

For about a year now, I've noticed a horribly annoying bug with Adobe Flash on the Windows platform: if your browser has been open for awhile, at some point, embedded Flash video (such as with YouTube) just stops working.

When you first open your browser, everything works great. Then at some random point, videos will only play for 2 seconds, without audio. After 2 seconds, all playback just stops.

The invocation at McCain's rally in Iowa today:

"There are plenty of people around the world who are praying to their god, be they Hindu, Buddah, or Allah, that (McCain's) opponent wins. I pray that you step forward and honor your own name." Ends with "in Jesus' name."

Maybe the real question isn't "who is John McCain?" Maybe it's "how many John McCains are out there?"

He's a coward and a joke, says one thing when the heat gets close, but let's his campaign say something else when he's out of harm's way.

debrazza writes:

What irritates me is that people don't know how to read. CNN reports that she abused her power but broke no laws. That is false. The abuse of power comes from her breaking the state ethics law.

Ben Smith:

Perhaps equally damning, the report essentially accuses Palin of dishonesty. It also contradicts the best Palin spin, which isn't about the details but about the big picture: That she and her family were afraid of the fired trooper, who had allegedly abused her sister. The evidence is "inconsistent with such claims of fear," Branchflower writes, adding that the allegation of fear was "not bona fide."

I just watched the video of McCain "denouncing" his supporter who called Obama an untrustworthy Arab.

First, he did the only thing could do, which was to disagree with her. If someone wants to explain how he could have done anything less than disagree, I'm all ears.

Second, he did the absolute minimum that he had to do. That's his choice; he's running a campaign and isn't obliged to show any decency towards Obama.

So spare me the plaudits for McCain. This was not a maverick act of decency. He did what needed to save his own skin, and nothing more.

McCain lit this fire. All he's doing now is trying to get just far enough away that it doesn't burn him alive. He's not trying to put it out.

Well, it seems like a lot of news happened while I was away, but it also seems like the news doesn't really change that much.

For example:

• Sarah Palin is a sleazy, lying, illegally power-abusing politician. (No kidding!)
• Republicans are still bailing on McCain's campaign.
• John McCain still speaks out of both sides of his mouth, denouncing allegations made about Barack Obama, allegations which never would have been made had he not inspired them in the first place.

Oh, and did I mention, Barack Obama is still destroying McCain in the polls.

Remember in late July when Barack Obama predicted John McCain's attack strategy? Remember McCain's howls of protest in response? Well, it turns out that Obama was right about McCain's attacks. As it turns out, he knew McCain better than McCain knew McCain. I guess that means we can call him "Nostrobamus."

I've got a meeting that will last all day Friday, so I will unfortunately not be able to post blog entries until late Friday night. I do, however, have one new video that I'll be putting up in a little bit.

Ed Rollins ran Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1984, so he knows a thing or two about landslides -- and  he's predicting one for Barack Obama. At this point, he says the only question left to answer is whether John McCain will take the Republican Party down with him.

Rachel Maddow and Max Blumenthal discuss Sarah Palin's secessionist problem:

By Palin.

You don't buy 30-minute chunks of national TV time if your goal is to eke out a narrow victory. You do it if your goal is to blow your opponent out of the water. And you do it if you realize that the bigger your margin of victory, the more you can get done in your first few months as President.

In short, you do it if you're as interested in governing effectively as you are interested in winning.

The New York Times drops a hammer on the Palins' claims that they never pressured Walt Monegan to fire her sister's ex-husband, finding evidence for dozens of calls pressuring Monegan to fire the state trooper. The NYT also found that Monegan's successor was pressured as well.

Perhaps most importantly, the NYT uncovered clear evidence contradicting the Palins' claim that Monegan's own firing had nothing to do with his refusal to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law.

Immediately after Mr. Monegan's firing, Ms. Palin said her intent was to change the department's direction. (She declined to be interviewed for this article.) She has since offered a variety of explanations for his ouster, most recently accusing him of insubordination and opposing her fiscal reforms.

As evidence, she has contended, among other things, that Mr. Monegan arranged two unauthorized lobbying trips to Washington. But according to interviews and records obtained by The New York Times both trips were authorized by the governor's office.

Can you imagine the vindictive personal drama that would ensue if Sarah Palin were ever actually elected Vice President or President?

John Cole is right: "McCain is a coward."

John McCain's campaign is sending him back to Iowa.

If he were to win (don't worry, he won't), and he ran the country's economy like he's run his own campaign, then God save us all.

Update: And his stupid staff is keeping him out of swing-state Nevada.

Charles Keating to John McCain, 1986.

Aravosis looks at the headlines.

Meanwhile, the candidate who is actually talking about issues that matter (yes, that would be our guy, Barack Obama) purchases a 30-minute ad block on CBS, scheduled for Wednesday, October 29 at 8:00pm.

Ben Smith explains the difference, which is huge. Basically, vote fraud is when a vote is fraudulently cast (by a dead person, a farm animal, etc.). Registration fraud is when the voter rolls are fraudulently padded. The former is a fundamental breech of democracy, the latter is a clerical issue.

Every single paranoid Republican fantasy about fraud is focused on the latter. In other words, they are freaking out about a database problem.

The fact that John McCain has totally lost George Will is nothing new, but now he's even lost the National Review. In a truly spectacular editorial, NR actually praises legislation by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as superior to McCain's new mortgage proposal:

We never thought we would defend the Frank-Dodd legislation, which we bitterly opposed last summer. But it looks downright prudent compared to what McCain has proposed.

Basically, for all the paranoids, racists, and angry people McCain may win over with his character attacks on Obama, he's losing at least as many sensible conservatives who realize that McCain is totally nuts when it comes to the economy.

This has got to be BNF's best work so far:

Tucker Bounds gets himself humiliated once again, this time by Andrea Mitchell. The issue: the Palin-McCain campaign's Bill Ayers attacks.

Tucker says that the McCain campaign doesn't have a problem with the Annenberg board that is the centerpiece of the Palin-McCain smear strategy. I guess that should settle that, right? I mean, if they don't have a problem with the board, then there is nothing to have a problem with. Then again, there never was anything to have a problem with.

Here's video:

Yikes! Update: Right now it's a little below 8800. It crossed 9000 on April 6, 1998.

Someone really ought to grill Palin about the AIP today. In other news:

1. John McCain's hilariously stupid new Ayers ad calls the Annenberg Foundation a "radical" group. Of course, it was funded by Walter Annenberg, a Republican. His wife is still living -- and supports John McCain for president. Does that mean McCain asked for and received support from a terrorist?
   
2. Steve Doocey on Fox & Friends says that because the media is biased, McCain needs to spend money on attack ads. He then proceeds to play a 1:40 McCain YouTube attack ad that will never be run as an ad.
3. Channeling my inner Gail Collins, I think I'm to blame for all this crap because I started my political career at Joe Lieberman's house (I doorbelled it during the 1992 campaign).

...if i got a nickel every time i called americans "fellow prisoners"...lol

This hilariously stupid web video about Bill Ayers is McCain's new "strategy" to beat Obama? LOL! McCain wants us to believe he honestly thinks Obama is too risky for America, but that he couldn't bring himself to say it to Obama's face? Ha! This guy McCain is a total joke.

For those of you who haven't seen it, here's the video McCain needs to explain: the one showing that his running mate, Sarah Palin has for years been involved with the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party and is in fact married to a former member!

So says George Will. The amazing thing? Even Democrats agree.

When it comes to voting, it seems to me that the difference between progressives and conservatives is fairly simple: progressives think the problem is that not enough people vote, conservatives think too many people vote.

Who's right? Well, considering the fact that 2004 was the highest turnout presidential election since 1968, yet barely 60% of registered voters showed up at the polls, it's pretty clear that not enough people are voting.

Just a quick update: 13 hours after posting the video, the view count is at 325K and rising. There's still 20 simultaneous viewers, and my YouTube channel is currently the #2 most watched channel of the day.

Okay so on Tuesday night McCain's mortage plan includes this line:

"Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they've already suffered."

But on Wednesday, McCain's campaign said the line was included accidentally, and that his plan is for the government to pay above-market prices for mortgages, bailing out the lenders.

That's a ginormous change, and it's nearly impossible to fathom how the sentence above could have been inserted accidentally. Even more puzzling is why the price tage on both documents was $300 billion.

Whatever the case, I simply cannot understand why any economic conservatives would continue supporting McCain at this point.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but doesn't it seem like Barack Obama has finally gotten Charlie Gibson to warm up to him, at least a little?

Okay, this video is a little bit self-indulgent, and it's really not the most important issue of the campaign, but I still thought it was sort of funny and I hope you do to. Here's what it's about: Earlier this week in Florida, Sarah Palin stole one of Hillary Clinton's strongest lines of the primary (itself borrowed from Bill Clinton) -- and she she does it with a wink and a nod, literally. h/t to John Lumea for catching this.

After watching Pat Buchanan on The Rachel Maddow Show just now, I get the sense that some conservatives are more interested in insulating Sarah Palin from John McCain's near-certain defeat than they are in fighting for McCain up until the end.

For these conservatives, Sarah Palin represents the future of the Republican Party; they can see that McCain is losing this election, and they just want to make sure that he doesn't take Palin down too.

Keith O. raises several of John McCain's domestic terrorism problems in this segment, including Nick Juliano's report on John McCain's 1993 speech before a hate group in Oregon. As McCain prepared to take the stage, Marilyn Shannon (who happens to be a 2008 delegate for McCain) praised the shooter of Dr. George Tiller simply because Tiller had performed perfectly legal abortions surgeries. Only one thing was missing: the fact that John McCain that very same year voted against legislation to protect abortion clinics from such terrorists.

Via Oliver Willis: On ABC News, Obama knocks McCain for being unwilling to say to his face what the GOP ticket has been saying on the trail for days.

My god, they are totally nuts:

As seen at recent McCain events, this afternoon's crowd was vocal in their support for McCain and their anger with Senator Obama. At one point one man could be heard yelling, "Off with his head," when McCain spoke about Obama's tax plan.

This is just hilarious...FOX News is livid that Newsweek put up a photo of Sarah Palin without retouching her facial hair. It's awesome that they are focusing on such petty, stupid, meaningless stuff.

Brandon Friedman, who served as an infranty officer in both Iraq and Afghanistan and is now Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org, offers his take on McCain's "my fellow prisoners" line. An excerpt:

My fellow prisoners was #3 as of about 1:45PM Pacific time. Update (2:53PM): Now #6.

An excerpt from Barack Obama's amazing speech in Indiana earlier today:

McCain's "my fellow prisoners" video is taking off something fierce. I just checked the clip I posted on YouTube, and it showed 20 simultaneous viewers, which is the most they ever report. Keep in mind that the clip I posted is just one of many clips posted, and it's only 14 seconds long, so 20 viewers at a time is huge.

Also, even though the digg link on TJR is tied to the video post on youtube.com, there has been a huge traffic spike to jedreport.com which you might have noticed if you've had any trouble getting into the site. Perhaps it's time for another hosting upgrade?

Finally, MSNBC just played the video.

Update (12:26pm): I've posted an extended version of the clip in the vodpod so you can see the context. McCain was talking about his domestic policies, and clearly meant to say "Americans" or "countrymen" or somesuch.

Original post: This is the kind of mental mixup that really makes you wonder what is truly going on inside of John McCain's mind. Here he is, campaigning in Pennsylvania, accidentally calling Americans "my fellow prisoners":

More on that $3 million dollar projector for Chicago's planetarium.

Sarah Palin has a press avail -- though not a press conference. She takes a question on Bill Ayers. But none of the reporters ask why she was palling around with the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. If she's going to keep up these terror attacks, she needs to explain her involvement. Period.

Update: Everything above 2x now that they are doubling down on their stupid "Hussein" strategy.

I don't agree with Michelle Malkin on just about anything, but I'll give her this: she's not afraid of dumping on Republicans, and when it comes to McCain's new mortgage bailout plan, she's livid.

I just don't understand the McCain campaign. They've been running this hard-right campaign, and now they've embraced this mortgage plan that is almost sure to alienate the people they've spent months wooing.

It's as if they have totally lost their minds.

Barack Obama just wrapped up a rally in Indiana -- I can't post the video as the speech was a half-hour long, but I'm sure the campaign will put it up before long. It was fantastic -- a great way to start the morning.

Update: Here's the full text of the speech.

The Obama campaign continues pounding away at the Achilles' heel of John McCain's health care plan: the fact that it would for the first time ever levy a tax on health care benefits.

Are they starting to mail it in over in McCain-land?

The campaign's official blog, The McCain Report, seems to have forgotten to claim victory. After the first debate, campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb was on the ball. And after the VP debate, he remembered to declare victory. But tonight? Crickets.

I'm sure he'll have the official victory statement posted by the AM. The question I have is whether he really believes it.

McCain-land actually has a new for his "new" mortgage proposal: The McCain Resurgence Plan. Could they possibly come up with a more desperate sounding name?

I wonder how conservatives will react when they internalize the fact that John McCain has now proposed having the government step in and refinance the mortgages of "irresponsible" borrowers?

Six months ago, mind you, McCain promised never to do such a thing. Now he says he'll do it. I wonder if any of them still think he's a man of his word?

One of the things that we learned when Sarah Palin released her taxes was that she did not pay taxes on either the per diems that she received for working at home, or for the travel expenses the state paid for her children.

Well, the state of Alaska is now reviewing whether or she should have have paid taxes on the per diems. Or, to put it in slightly more blunt terms: officials are now investigating whether Palin cheated on her taxes.

John McCain says he wants to send a man to Mars. Surely, then, he believes it is in the national interest that Americans understand the cosmos and our place in it.

What better place to educate children about that relationship than the planetarium? I know that when I grew up, I loved the Hayden Planetarium; it wasn't just educational, it was fun.

So when the most ridiculous earmark John McCain can find is an unfunded (but reasonable) request to replace a forty-year old projection system for Chicago's planetarium (serving a population of millions), I have to wonder if his war on earmarks hasn't just totally jumped the shark.

I mean, what does he have against planetariums? Seriously.

GOPers think "that one" was one of McCain's best moments of his debate.

Next time, get him a shorter stool, one he can comfortably sit on.

The AP picks up on an observation made by debrazza last night: despite McCain's claim, he hadn't cut off ties with the "U.S. Council for World Freedom" in 1984.

The logo has arrived! LOL. This is getting fun.

Update: The website has arrived!

CNN: 54-30, Obama

CBS: 39-27, with 35 saying it's tied. Most striking number: 80% say Obama understand their needs and problems compared to just 46% for McCain.

Update: CBS actually was 40-26-34, despite what was initially reported on TV.

Obama is beating Tom Brokaw and John McCain.

One day, I'd like to moderate one of these things.

6:11: McCain said 1.3 million people make their living on Ebay. Wrong. And as pointed out in the comments, the company just  laid off thousands.

6:15: I'm going to stop doing live updates here and I'll stick to the comments. But I will say that it seems like on that second question, Barack Obama may have scored a first round knockout.

barath's set up a debate donation/volunteer "money bomb" at Daily Kos.

In general, I think Obama will continue avoiding personal attacks, but will be plenty tough on McCain on the issues. He might say that McCain's response to the economic crisis was erratic, but in general the contrasts will be about his substantive policy differences with McCain.

I don't think McCain will launch any personal attacks. Sure, he'll make some false accusations about policy issues, but I don't think he's going to voluntarily raise any of Sarah Palin's lines of attack, and if a voter raises it, he's going to try and say "well that's a question Obama needs to answer."

You gotta' love the internet. The coolest stuff just pops up from nowhere:

A new low: she attacks Joe Biden while he's at his mother-in-law's funeral.

David Talbot reports on what would have been the crowning achievement of Alaskan Independence Party founder Joe Vogler had he not been first killed in a plastic explosives deal gone bad:

Vogler's greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States "tyranny" before the entire world and to demand Alaska's freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That's right ... Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

The following year, Todd and Sarah Palin attended the AIP convention, and Todd Palin joined the party shortly thereafter.

Ben Smith says that Tom Brokaw wasn't a party to the agreement between the campaigns that forbade follow-up questions from the debate moderator. Therefore, Ben says, both campaigns expect follow-ups.

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott received criticism for his "Hussein" comment at yesterday's Palin rally, but the thing that I really had a problem with was the fact that he appeared onstage not just in uniform, but also with his holstered firearm on clear display. If that wasn't an attempt to intimidate voters -- dare I say, terrorize them -- I don't know what is.

In a 2000 debate, McCain attacked Clinton for ordering bombing raids where they were "flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians" instead of planning ground operations. Now that it's 2008, McCain says Obama is "dishonorable" for saying essentially the same thing.

Ohio: 50/47 (Obama); Indiana: 46/51 (McCain); New Hampshire: 53/45 (Obama); North Carolina: 49/49 (tie); Wisconsin: 51/46 (Obama).

Not to play the expectations game, but tonight's debate is taking place on McCain's turf -- all campaign long, everybody from McCain to the media have talked about how great he is at town hall meetings.

Check out this new DNC web video to see what I mean:

Nick Juliano at Raw Story makes a great catch: it turns out that in August, 1993, John McCain spoke before an ultra-right wing organization in Portland, Oregon.

Marylin Shannon, the vice chairwoman of the Oregon GOP, had a spot on the program to give an opening prayer. In short order, she praised the Grants Pass woman accused of shooting an abortion doctor in Wichita.

McCain accepted Shannon's kind words for the shooter without protest. Indeed, just a few months later he voted against legislation to protect abortion clinics from such violence.

The shooter was subsequently convicted of attempted murder.

I just heard Axelrod say that Obama has now received contributions from four million people. That is just remarkable.

Rich "Starburst" Lowry:

In the midst of economic discontent, George H.W. Bush ran against Bill Clinton on character and experience. Clinton pledged to fix the economy. Bush had little or nothing to offer the middle class, while Clinton (like Obama this year) promised those voters a tax cut.

So, by all means, McCain should highlight Obama's troubling friendships, but he has to be careful. If it's the candidate of "change" versus the candidate of "change the subject," he'll lose in an electoral landslide.

If Sarah Palin wasn't a secessionist, then why was she palling around with them?

I hear this question a fair bit: why, when the economy is in shambles, would any Obama supporter want to talk about anything but the economy? Isn't changing the subject what McCain wants? Won't talking about non-economic issues play into his hands?

I understand where that concern is coming from, but the reason why it doesn't worry me is simple: at the end of the day, nothing is going to change the fact that the economy is the number one issue for most voters. Nothing.

And nothing is going to change the fact that while John McCain is ignoring the economy, Barack Obama will continue to focus on it.

But that doesn't mean that some elements of his campaign, or his supporters, can't or shouldn't engage McCain wherever McCain may be playing the game. Sure, McCain isn't on the main field of play, but think of it this way: while a subset of us are sparring with McCain on the sidelines, Barack Obama is marching down the field towards victory.

In battlefield terms, McCain is attempting a flanking maneuver, albeit a highly implausible one. We're just making sure it won't work.

I'll close with a related thought: keep an eye out for a new TJR video sometime in the next 12 hours or so, focusing in on "Secessionist Sarah."

One of Keith's best ever:

The New York Times documents the falsehoods in McCain's attack speech.

CNN's newest poll, which shows Obama with an eight point lead, also shows that 56% of voters believe McCain's policies would be "the same as" Bush's.

Update: Obama leads by 6 in the new NBC/WSJ poll, which also shows that by a 50/29 margin, voters think the Obama-Biden ticket is outperforming Palin-McCain in the debates.

McCainiacs  managed to bury this video on digg, so I'm reposting it with another digg link to help get the word out. You can view the original post here.

David Gregory: "Sarah Palin had a successful debate." I guess if you use Queen Latifah's standards, he's right, but everybody else thinks she lost.

Even The Donald just can't bring himself to say the words:

So it appears as if John McCain is now recanting his confession that the Keating Five scandal was the "worst mistake" of his life. Let's go to the videotape, from shortly before the New Hampshire primary in 2000:

Referencing an NYT article about Obama, McCain spokesman Nancy Pfotenhauer today proclaimed:

If Senator McCain had hung out with somebody who had bombed abortion clinics, no one would consider [raising the issue] illegitimate.

Well, there's no evidence that McCain hung out with any clinic bombers.

But he did vote to protect them from the law, siding with radical "pro-life" terrorists and putting women and their doctors at risk.

CNN just put up a poll, +/- 3%, conducted Oct. 3-5:

Question: Is Another Depression Likely?

• Yes: 59%
• No: 42%

No matter what John McCain does with his campaign, no matter what his surrogates say, no matter what I might post, there is just one thing that matters now: the economy.

And McCain has nothing to say. All he wants to do is turn the page.

So I just got up and going about forty minutes ago...and my god, the Dow Jones lost a digit.

McCain is going crazy on TV right now, by the way, accusing Obama of being responsible for the bailout package's initial defeat.

He's really losing it, in every sense.

When it came to fighting violence against abortion clinics, John McCain put his radical "pro-life" politics first -- putting women and their doctors at risk:

...the honorable service to this nation performed by...the Los Angeles Times, which reports (emphasis added):

Mishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator

McCain was on his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when a surface-to-air missile struck his A-4 attack jet. He was flying 3,000 feet above Hanoi.

A then-secret report issued in 1967 by McCain's squadron said the aviators had learned to stay at an altitude of 4,000 to 10,000 feet in heavy surface-to-air missile environments and look for approaching missiles.

h/t: VetVoice

Politico's Mike Allen reports that Barack Obama will unveil a 13 minute documentary tomorrow at noon eastern time on John McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal. The video will be hosted at keatingeconomics.com.

In the meantime, here's a 97-second summary of the issue I put together for HuffPost:

Politico reports that John McCain is till taking weekends off, even with just one month to go in the campaign. According to Politico's count, McCain has has held 35 events since the GOP convention, just seven shy of Obama's 42. That doesn't include press conferences, however, of which Obama has had six or seven, while McCain has had only one.

First: the debate is likely to be framed as a showdown between a candidate who is focusing on the key economic issues facing America (Obama), and a candidate who desperately wants to stop talking about the economy (McCain), even if that means making false personal attacks about his opponent's character.

That's never a good frame, but it's a particularly brutal one for a town hall setting (edit: even with Brokaw moderating). McCain is basically going to forced into one of two positions: either he's going to live up to the frame, which will turn the audience against him, or he's going to push back on it, and renounce the character attacks, which would basically shoot his campaign strategy in the foot. (It's enough to make you wonder why they stupidly leaked it to the press.)

Brokaw on The Today Show, talking about Palin's attack:

It's been a little curious to me by why the Obama campaign didn't address it earlier.

Brokaw on Meet The Press:

Would it have been wiser for him, however, to get at that much earlier than now, when--30 days before the election?

Excuse me, but WTF is Brokaw talking about? Barack Obama addressed this line of attack six months ago on a nationally broadcast debate. There is absolutely nothing new about it.

Tim Dickinson's Rolling Stone article on McCain: Make-Believe Maverick.

Sarah Palin is now defending her false "palling around with terrorists" attack with another falsehood. Now she claims that Obama "kicked off his political career" in Bill Ayers' living room.

That's a bogus claim: although Obama did attend one meeting in Ayers' home, that meeting did not kick off anything. Obama was already a candidate. In fact, the meeting had been set up for him by Alice Palmer, with whom he soon had a falling out.

Palin's obvious intent is to distract attention from the pressing economic isssues facing this country; it's another example of the McCain campaign giving up on the economic debate.

But for Palin to be making these accusations about associations is a rather spectacular mistake. After all, her husband was for years a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, and she spoke to their annual convention as recently as last year. By attacking Obama, she's not only opened the door to accusations of lying, but also to an inquiry into her own past dealings with radical right-wing organizations.

Well, I tried, but I just couldn't keep myself away from TJR. So I'm back, blogging away, doing videos, and generally having a good time as we finish off John McCain and head towards big victory in November.

I enjoyed my brief spell with The Huffington Post, and continue to love their site, both for breadth of the content and the depth of the reporting (yes, Sam Stein, that means you!). But I'm also committed to blogging about the 2008 campaign, at least through the election, and so here I am.

I'm putting back in place some of the features that I'd taken down (digg and reddit, for example), and am looking forward to the next 30 or so days!

I also want to say thanks to everyone for sticking around, and offering their encouragement; you guys make this both worthwhile and fun.

Barack Obama in Asheville, NC earlier today, talking about John McCain's plan to "turn the page" on talking about economic issues by launching a negative Swiftboat-style attack campaign.

The key line: "November 4th, you and I are going to turn the page on the disastrous economic policies of George W. Bush and John McCain." Full transcript below.

Will Peggy Noonan still be given the red carpet "famous person" treatment by McCain-land after dumping on Palin populism ("increasingly concerned about her," "not helpful for the country") during Meet The Press?

The CNN Truth Squad