The Jed Report

The Best Daily Show Episode Ever?

2008-09-06T10:06:44Z

Maybe this isn't the best, but if not, it's right up there, delivering a wonderful ride through the final night of the GOP convention:

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Kerry Washington On Real Time With Bill Maher

2008-09-06T07:07:00Z

Here's Real Time With Bill Maher from earlier tonight. Kerry Washington totally destroyed Michael Steele again and again and again during the panel discussion, and Bill Maher ripped on the Sarah Palin embarassment throughout.

h/t: YouTuber heathr456 for all the videos.

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Opening Monologue:

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RNC New Rules:

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Jeffrey Toobin Interview:

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Panel Discussion Pt 1:

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Panel Discussion Pt 2:

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Panel Discussion Pt 3:

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At RNC, Dan Savage Looks For
Signs That George W. Bush Was President:

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New Rules

It's always the coverup

2008-09-06T04:53:42Z

Newsweek:

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

Where can you make the biggest difference as a volunteer?

2008-09-06T03:23:38Z

barath (a guest poster here at TJR) had a cool idea: create a map showing potential volunteers who live in "safe" states (for either candidate) where the nearest competitive state (based on 538 data) is.

Obviously, not everybody can travel to another state to volunteer, but for those who either have the time and live close enough, barath's map -- posted over at Daily Kos -- is a great guide. Because DKos has an issue with iframes, I've embedded the post below:

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View Larger Map

New GOP Spin: Palin's Not Ready

2008-09-06T00:22:05Z

Todd Harris, a GOP strategist who is close to the McCain campaign, says Palin won't be available to the press for about two weeks. His defense? She might make "a mistake."

If she goes out and makes a mistake, that is something that [voters will] care about, and that's something that will haunt [McCain] for awhile, so I think this is a smart move.

This has got to be one of the craziest messaging decisions ever: Harris is conceding that Palin's not even ready to be a vice presidential candidate, let alone be president.

I just don't see how they can sustain two weeks of keeping Palin in hiding. Every day the McCain campaign keeps her away from reporters just highlights the fact that they don't think she's ready.

This strikes me as a pretty impressive strategic blunder.

Exploiting 9/11?

2008-09-05T21:39:00Z

Sarah Palin on Wednesday:

Our son Track is 19. And one week from tomorrow - September 11th - he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.

It's a touching story of patriotism inspired by the 9/11 attacks, except according the New York Daily News, it turns out not to be entirely true -- her son is actually deploying on September 12, not September 11.

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Palin was expected to break from the trail to return to Alaska and see off her oldest son, Track, 19, who is deploying to Iraq with his Army unit on Sept. 12.

Of course, there is no need to embellish her son's honorable decision to serve this country, and nothing that Sarah Palin can say can cheapen that. But if the Daily News story is accurate, it says something pathetic about her character.

Joe Biden On Fire

2008-09-05T20:11:00Z

This is awesome -- Joe Biden just tears John McCain and Sarah Palin apart for completely ignoring every single major economic issue facing America and for offering nothing but sarcastic personal attacks.

CBS Poll Shows Dead Heat

2008-09-05T19:02:33Z

CBS has it at 42-42 in a poll conducted Monday through Wednesday. This is an outlier poll, but both Rasmussen (Obama +2, 48-46) and Gallup (Obama +4, 48-44) also have the race tightening.

I'm not at all alarmed by these polling numbers, at least not as far as my confidence that we will win this campaign. (It is a bit disturbing that people get sucked in by the Palin-McCain campaign, but that's a different story.)

In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the tightening polls might be good for press coverage: we all know how much the the media enjoys a close, exciting race, and if it's already close, they may be less likely to target Barack Obama or to take it easy on McCain.

It also underscores the importance of what they are doing to vet Sarah Palin. The fact remains that the first time most of us had ever seen her in action was one week ago, and even though I'm sure we will win the election, the polls are close and America deserves to know more about her.

Including, for example, the fact that her fabled Ebay jet sale...didn't actually happen.

Barack Obama in Duryea, Pennsylvania

2008-09-05T18:41:27Z

A small-town mayor asks about volunteer fire departments. Barack answers, and a bit over three minutes into the clip addresses the failure of the GOP convention to confront any issues that really matter.

'It could have been one of the McCain mansions'

2008-09-05T18:02:10Z

Now this is hilarious...Chris Wallace reacts to the backdrop disaster:

"It was a green backdrop behind him, it was a big lawn in front of a big house. You thought what the heck was that? It looked like it could have been one of the McCain mansions."

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Not even ready to be a VP candidate

2008-09-05T17:51:18Z

Ben Smith expands on Howard Fineman's report about the Palin-McCain campaign's decision to let her return to Alaska for several days, adding the crucial detail that she will campaign with McCain at a stop or two before heading up there (as she obviously did in Cedarburg).

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Fineman's source (and mine) said she'd spent much of the time between now and the middle of next week (when her son leaves for Iraq) straightening her affairs, tending to her official duties and packing her bags -- having departed abruptly for the national stage. She also seems unlikely to do many major media interviews between now and then, and the campaign seems to feel no urgency about putting her on the Sunday shows.

The campaign will "also use the plane time and time on the ground to begin the education of Sarah Palin," Fineman said. "They want to take that pause to train."

Two totally unrelated items

2008-09-05T17:35:51Z

First: McCain is getting his bounce -- 48/46 in Rasmussen, 48/44 in Gallup (Obama still leads in both polls). Poll numbers don't mean much right now, but these close numbers should remind reporters that there is a very good chance that Sarah Palin could be elected VPOTUS -- so we are depending on them to continue vetting her, despite the McCain campaign's bullying.

Second: Ben Smith has an awesomely hilarious post about the former governor's plane Sarah Palin listed on Ebay. Turns out it never sold (she never claimed it did, only that she listed it). When it finally sold offline, the state lost $500K. But apparently McCain -- like almost everybody else in America, including me -- believed that the plain had sold online, because today he falsely claimed that it had, and falsely claimed that it had been sold at a profit.

Just another example of the vetting disaster.

ABC News Nightline On Troopergate

2008-09-05T17:26:36Z

Good lord...

2008-09-05T17:22:00Z

I wonder how this speech would have gone over.

CNN Documents Sarah Palin's Truthiness Problem

2008-09-05T13:05:15Z

CNN finds a troubling number of lies during Sarah Palin's speech on Wednesday night. To be fair, they also found some things she was telling the truth about, but that's not really the point: aren't you always supposed to be honest? For more information, you can find a detailed fact check from the Obama campaign here.