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Hands cover Barack Obama as he shakes hands at a rally in Orlando on Monday.
This is an evil article – though it sums up the feel perfectly!!
Democrats have seen Gore and Kerry lose ~ as there are two weeks left ~ this is not the time to boast.
Though fighting words like when Obama said – ‘that’s why we are going to BEAT you come Nov,’ — sounds good to me!
The Democrats are poised on the brink of victory. And they cannot stand it. The news is too good. Something has to go wrong.
On Saturday, Charlie Cook, an independent analyst and author of the Cook Report, wrote: “This election isn’t over, but it is looking very bad for Republicans — and seems to be getting worse.”
This plunged the Democrats into a deep gloom. Good news is always bad news for them.
On Monday, CNN’s John King announced: “Most top [people] in the McCain campaign now believe New Mexico and Iowa are gone, that Barack Obama will win New Mexico and Iowa. They are now off the dream list of the McCain campaign. More interestingly, most top people inside the McCain campaign think Colorado is gone.”
Democratic pessimism deepened when, that same day, Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray wrote in The Washington Post: “In the 13 battleground states that require voters to register by party, there are nearly 1.5 million more Democrats than at this time in 2004. The comparable Republican numbers, by contrast, have fallen by 61,000 during that time. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by more than 3.3 million in these same 13 battleground states, roughly double the edge — 1.8 million — they enjoyed over the GOP four years ago.”
“We have been on the precipice of victory before,” Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama spokesman, told me. “You have never seen a more superstitious campaign than ours. We do not talk about victory.”
Talk about it, no. Plan for it, yes.
Can it get worse for the Democrats? Yes! On Tuesday, The Associated Press wrote: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent $87.5 million last month and began October with nearly $134 million in the bank. The numbers illustrate his vast financial advantage over John McCain, his Republican rival, in the final stretch of the contest. McCain ended September with $47 million in the bank.”
The story went on to note that Obama “spent $65 million in advertising in September to McCain’s $22 million. In October, he has outspent McCain 4-to-1 in advertising.”
Awful news. Obama has a money problem. And you know what it is? He might run out of time to spend all the money he has! Election Day might come and go before Obama can spend the $5 million a day he is now raising. (If this does happen, I suggest he borrow a page from Oprah and buy everyone in America a Pontiac. Just as a gesture.)
Obama himself has reacted to the dismal drumbeat of good news. At a fundraising concert in Manhattan last Thursday featuring Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Obama got up and said: “Don’t underestimate the capacity of Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up.”
Which is the prevailing mood in the top echelons of the Democratic Party right now. The McCain campaign cannot possibly be as hapless as it looks, party leaders feel. It is lulling the Democrats into complacency. The Republicans have to have an October surprise, because the Republicans always have an October surprise.
Besides, the robocalls could work. Never underestimate the power of the robocalls. Because people really like getting robocalls, right?
And rumors are now flying that McCain has proof that when Obama was in the second grade he once ate paste.
You are at home, it is dinnertime (which is when they call you because they figure you are at home then), and you are either trying to relax or get the kids fed, and the phone rings and it is this recorded voice saying: “I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.”
And does that make you feel more or less positive about John McCain? Does it persuade you that McCain has a plan to save the economy? Or to help you pay your mortgage? Or that he has a steady hand on the tiller?
For the robocalls to be effective, the Republicans would need Bill Ayers to plant bombs today and not when Barack Obama was 8 years old. They need Ayers to plant bombs in key states right now with stickers on them that say: “I am Barack Obama, and I endorse this bomb.”
But McCain may have found his October surprise after all. In Bensalem, Pa., on Tuesday, McCain said: “Now, I’m not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states. But I think I may have detected a little pattern with Sen. Obama. It’s pretty simple, really. When he’s campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies, and when he’s campaigning in Tampa Bay, he ‘shows love’ to the Rays.”
And rumors are now flying that McCain has proof that when Obama was in the second grade he once ate paste.
The Democrats are fearful of all this. The Democrats are always fearful.
“We have been on the precipice of victory before,” Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama spokesman, told me. “You have never seen a more superstitious campaign than ours. We do not talk about victory.”
Talk about it, no. Plan for it, yes.
Source: Politico
Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Sue Shellenbarger quotes Doug Wead, author of two books on presidential families, noting that both Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., fit a certain presidential pattern of “Mama’s boys with absent fathers who were perceived by the sons as high achievers.”
Obama’s tale is more complicated, because in addition to being abandoned by his father, Barack Obama Sr., at the age of two, his mother also left Obama Jr. in the care of her parents while she went off gallivanting around the world.
Indeed, on the stump Obama seems to mention his ailing grandmother, 85-year-old Madelyn Dunham, whom he will be visiting in Hawaii Friday, far more often than he references his mother and father combined.
McCain’s pop, Admiral John Sidney McCain Jr., was largely absent as his wife raised (now Sen.) John Sidney McCain III.
But the Obama memoir is titled “Dreams From My Father,” and McCain’s is “Faith of My Fathers.”
Daddy issues, anyone?
McCain wrote of his father as “a distant, inscrutable patriarch” who suffered from alcoholism.
Do you need to have grown up in a dysfunctional home, without the love of two parents, in order to become a successful presidential candidate?
Wead set out to find if the parents of presidents had some special secret when he began “The Raising of a President.” Instead, he tells Shellenbarger, he discovered the moms and dads of POTUSes past “were as neurotic and possessive and awful as anybody’s.”
In fact, Wead found most interesting “how these presidents were able to transcend these experiences or re-invent them as inspirational.”
Or as a family therapist tells Shellenbarger, “When you don’t have two nice parents who are very supportive…you seek out and find sources of resilience and transcendence — and you become amazing.”
So go ahead, ignore your kids, marry the alcoholic, leave your kid in the care of his grandparents for years — you might be setting them on a path to the White House.
— jpt
Source: ABC
John McCain called out fellow Republicans who have questioned running mate Sarah Palin’s credentials. Photo: AP
“What’s their problem?” McCain asked during an interview with radio host Don Imus.
“She is a governor, the most popular governor in America,” McCain said. “I think she is the most qualified of any that has run recently for vice president.”
“I’m amazed. I’m amazed. Which is better? Serve 35 years in the United States Senate and say you’ve got to divide Iraq into three different countries, or be governor of a state and a reformer and give people their tax dollars back and bring about reform in the way that your state does business? Which is better?”
Several leading conservatives, including columnists Kathleen Parker of National Review and David Brooks of the New York Times, have questioned McCain’s judgment in selecting Palin.
Parker called Palin “out of her league” in a September column urging the Alaska governor to drop out of the race. Brooks, meanwhile, called Palin “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party” during a forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine earlier this month.
McCain dismissed their criticisms and credited Palin for energizing the conservative base in a year in which the GOP faces “a stiff headwind.”
“She has ignited our crowds,” McCain said. “She has a wonderful family, a great husband, great values and she shares my worldview.”
“I’m entertained at the elitist attitude towards a person who is proven leader.”
Looking back on Palin’s early interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric, McCain said Palin did well and derided the press for asking “gotcha” questions.
“She did a great job in those interviews. If you want to go with the gotcha questions that’s fine, that’s fine, I understand that. I get them all the time,” the Arizona senator said. “It’s easy to make fun of people and ask them gotcha questions. That’s fine. I understand how the game is played. But don’t think the American people buy that baloney.”
McCain also mocked suggestions that Palin has to face tough interviews on the Sunday shows in order to prove herself to voters.
“That’s hilarious. With thousands of people showing up at town hall meetings, I’ve never had a person show up and ask when she is going on ‘Meet the Press.’ Not one.”
With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the Republican conceded that he is trailing Barack Obama but seemed optimistic about his chances.
“We’re doing fine. We have a lot of enthusiasm out there. We’re working hard and enjoying the rallies and having fun. I’m very confident,” he said. “I think we’re behind, but it’s within the margin of error and we’re coming up. All the indicators are that we’re coming up.”
Source: Politico
WASHINGTON – Asked by a third-grader what a vice president does, Republican candidate Sarah Palin responded that the vice president is the president’s “team mate” but also “runs the Senate” and “can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes.”
While aimed at a typical 8-year-old, Palin’s explanations oversimplify the Constitution’s definition of the duties of the vice president and don’t match the office’s traditional role in Senate activities.
The vice president’s main duty is to replace the president if the president dies, resigns, is removed from office or can no longer carry out his or her duties for other reasons. The Constitution names the vice president as the president of the Senate but allows the vice president to cast a vote only to break a tie.
The vice president, as a member of the executive branch of the government, has no official role in developing legislation or determining how it is presented to or debated by the Senate, which is part of the legislative branch. In all meaningful ways, the leader of the majority party runs the Senate.
Traditionally, the vice president appears in the Senate for ceremonial events and in case of a tie vote. Although the vice president can preside over the Senate, vice presidents have left that day-to-day chore to senators themselves. In the past, each president has determined the role of the vice president in an administration.
The subject of the vice president’s duties came up as Palin sat for an interview with KUSA-TV in Denver, which has a feature called “Question from the Third Grade.” The interviewer asked, “Brandon Garcia wants to know, ‘What does the vice president do?'”
“That’s a great question, Brandon, and a vice president has a really great job, because not only are they there to support the president’s agenda, they’re like the team member, the team mate to that president,” Palin said.
“But also, they’re in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job,” she said.
Sarah Palin still doesn’t know what a Vice President (VP) does:
Source: AP
Double standards – no tax cuts for the poor and middle class workers – no that’s ‘socialist’ – but Palin paid for flights and luxury hotel stays for her children all at tax payers expense.
In this Feb. 11, 2007 file photo, Todd Palin, husband of Republican vice president candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, right, holds their daughter Piper, as the Gov. Palin talks, left, before the start of the Iron Dog snowmachine race in Big Lake, Alaska. Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports that justified their presence as official business. (AP Photo/Al Grillo, File)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.
The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor’s children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.
As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters _ Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 _ by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor’s schedule.
But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.
[…….]
The organizer of an American Heart Association luncheon on Feb. 15 in Fairbanks said Palin asked to bring daughter Piper to the event, and the organizer said she was surprised when Palin showed up with daughters Willow and Bristol as well.
The three Palin daughters shared a room separate from their mother at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks for two nights, at a cost to the state of $129 per night.
The luncheon took place before Palin’s husband, Todd, finished fourth in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, also in Fairbanks. The family greeted him at the finish line.
When Palin showed up at the luncheon with not just Piper but also Willow and Bristol, organizers had to scramble to make room at the main table, said Janet Bartels, who set up the event.
“When it’s the governor, you just make it happen,” she said.
The state is already reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for more than 300 nights she slept at her own home, 40 miles from her satellite office in Anchorage.
Tony Knowles, a Democratic former governor of Alaska who lost to Palin in a 2006 bid to reclaim the job, said he never charged the state for his three children’s commercial flights or claimed their travel as official state business.
Knowles, who was governor from 1994 to 2002, is the only other recent Alaska governor who had school-age children while in office.
“There was no valid reason for the children to be along on state business,” said Knowles, a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. “I cannot recall any instance during my eight years as governor where it would have been appropriate to claim they performed state business.”
Knowles said he brought his children to one NGA event while in office but didn’t charge the state for their trip.
In February 2007, the three girls flew from Juneau to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. Palin charged the state for the $519.30 round-trip ticket for each girl, and noted on the expense form that the daughters accompanied her to “open the start of the Iron Dog race.”
The children and their mother then watched as Todd Palin and other racers started the competition, which Todd won that year. Palin later had the relevant expense forms changed to describe the girls’ business as “First Family official starter for the start of the Iron Dog race.”
The Palins began charging the state for commercial flights after the governor kept a 2006 campaign promise to sell a jet bought by her predecessor.
Palin put the jet up for sale on eBay, a move she later trumpeted in her star-making speech at the Republican National Convention, and it was ultimately sold by the state at a loss.
That left only one high-performance aircraft deemed safe enough for her to use _ a 1980 twin-engine King Air assigned to the public safety agency but, according to flight logs, out of service for maintenance and repairs about a third of the time Palin has been governor.
Source: AP
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.
Politico asked the McCain campaign for comment, explicitly noting the $150,000 in expenses for department store shopping and makeup consultation that were incurred immediately after Palin’s announcement. Pre-September reports do not include similar costs.
Spokeswoman Maria Comella declined to answer specific questions about the expenditures, including whether it was necessary to spend that much and whether it amounted to one early investment in Palin or if shopping for the vice presidential nominee was ongoing.
“The campaign does not comment on strategic decisions regarding how financial resources available to the campaign are spent,” she said.
The business of primping and dressing on the campaign trail has become fraught with political risk in recent years as voters increasingly see an elite Washington out of touch with their values and lifestyles.
In 2000, Democrat Al Gore took heat for changing his clothing hues. And in 2006, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was ribbed for two hair styling sessions that cost about $3,000.
Then, there was Democrat John Edwards’ $400 hair cuts in 2007 and Republican McCain’s $520 black leather Ferragamo shoes this year.
A review of similar records for the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee turned up no similar spending.
But all the spending by other candidates pales in comparison to the GOP outlay for the Alaska governor whose expensive, designer outfits have been the topic of fashion pages and magazines.
What hasn’t been apparent is where the clothes came from – her closet back in Wasilla or from the campaign coffers in Washington.
The answer can be found inside the RNC’s September monthly financial disclosure report under “itemized coordinated expenditures.”
It’s a report that typically records expenses for direct mail, telephone calls and advertising. Those expenses do show up, but the report also has a new category of spending: “campaign accessories.”
September payments were also made to Barney’s New York ($789.72) and Bloomingdale’s New York ($5,102.71).
Macy’s in Minneapolis, another store fortunate enough to be situated in the Twin Cities that hosted last summer’s Republican National Convention, received three separate payments totaling $9,447.71.
The entries also show a few purchases at Pacifier, a top notch baby store, and Steiniauf & Stroller Inc., suggesting $295 was spent to accommodate the littlest Palin to join the campaign trail.
An additional $4,902.45 was spent at Atelier, a high-class shopping destination for men.
Source: Politico
Out Foxing Karl Rove 
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