he's back

Part 9 of 10:
Others here.

Head of Skate

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Tactics and strategy

Astute commentary on the debate

Less astute commentary:

US Americans!

Btw - that second video has been seen over 29 *million* times.

[update] A little more:

Katie and Sarah

Quaint

Looks like they hacked

into Obama's emails too

No comment

Sarah Palin's emails

Apparently someone cracked into her yahoo account, but then tipped her off.

More info on the hacking here.

The only kind of reading I can stomach

due to election stress.

The Ugly New McCain

and

MY GAL

The Palin-Gibson Interview

SNL reality

Register to vote

Make sure you do

Google backs project to connect 3bn to net

Google has thrown its weight behind ambitious plans to bring internet access to 3bn people in Africa and other emerging markets by launching at least 16 satellites to bring its services to the unconnected half of the globe.

Ready on day 1

Change

This seems to be shaping up as a change election. The republicans have bought into that meme. The funny thing is that it would seem to be a losing proposition for Republicans, but they are good at verbal jujitsu. It is time to take on McCain at his supposed strength. This is a good start:

I fear

that I am not going to sleep well for 2 months.

In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.

Long lines expected

Democrats post big gains in voter registration

Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.

Here's hoping they turn out and their votes get counted...

Robot bartenders

in Burmingham

i dunno - call me old school, but me thinks people like to interact with people. 

The reason why Repubs rely on culture wars

Economics just ain't their bag

The stark contrast between the whiz-bang Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.

That 1.14-point difference, if maintained for eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax cut.

Dept. of Counterprogramming

Obama to appear on O'Reilly Thursday. Interesting move - it counters McCain's RNC speech on Thursday. Looking forward to watching that

I also like these ads directly talking about McCain and a woman's right to choose.

Obama’s new radio ad, airing widely in at least seven swing states, tells voters McCain “will make abortion illegal.” It’s airing as McCain courts female voters with the addition of the staunchly anti-abortion governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, to his ticket.

Democrats had, until now, sought to appeal to women primarily on economic issues such as health care and workplace discrimination; abortion rights were hardly mentioned at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week. But women’s rights groups have been urging Obama to attack McCain on the issue, pointing to polling showing that some women who support McCain think he supports abortion rights. In fact, the Arizona senator has long supported a ban on abortions, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest, and for pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother. Palin has an even firmer anti-abortion stance: She would require rape and incest victims to carry their pregnancies to term.

GoogleVet

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

Wow, just wow.

The "Eagleton Scenario"

Could Sarah Palin become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to be dropped from a major-party ticket? Joshua Green offers a look at how such a scenario would unfold.

It won't happen, but it is interesting nonetheless...

Getting ugly

Oh man. I'll just steal the whole post:

Seems that those who read US Weekly aren't big fans of Sarah Palin (R):

Also, Mark Halperin says this is the magazine's upcoming cover. Not exactly a flattering one:

UPDATE: It gets worse for Palin, OK Magazine has its own cover.

I can only imagine how many million of women these two magazines reach -- not to mention overall eyes at the checkout stands...

UPDATE #2 (5:38 pm ET): ABC News' Rick Klein offers this on the US Weekly cover:

[T]his, to me, is the clearest evidence yet that the McCain-Palin campaign is losing the battle over Palin’s image. US Weekly readers are the voters her selection was designed to attract. There’s not much to like in this early take -- and not much to indicate that the next round will be much better.

UPDATE #3 (5:43 pm ET): An excerpt from the US Weekly story:

“Within hours of McCain’s surprise introduction of the little-known, charismatic mother of five as his running mate, the scandals began to emerge as quickly as flies at a Labor Day picnic,” Mara Reinstein writes for the magazine.

“While putting to rest one scandal, Palin appeared to have opened another of even greater significance. Staunchly antiabortion (even in cases of rape) and opposed to sex-education classes (she believes in abstinence instruction for teens), ques tions began to arise about not just her judg ment, but that of McCain’s as well,” Reinstein writes.

This is really, really bad news for Palin.

Is it possible to withdraw her from the ticket? It seems that people are beginning to speculate on that. Is that possible? I suppose so... has this ever happened before? This is McCain's Miers moment.

New word

a-Palin: adj. not thought through. Example: That idea is a-Palin!

Google to launch new browser (today)

Its called Chrome

Luntz focus groups

Undicided independent voters in Minneapolis

Another week, another Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters--this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don't like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin...a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin's speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday---the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upwards when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere--which wasn't quite the truth, as we now know.

Then there was this, from a woman named Teresa, who went to the Democratic Convention as a Hillary delegate and is leaning toward voting for McCain--obviously the target audience for the Palin pick: "His age didn't really bother me until he picked Palin. What if he dies in office and leaves us with her as President? Also she leans toward the rigid right, and I always thought he was a moderate...You know, I change my mind almost every day, but right now I"m wondering where the John McCain I really liked in 2000 went, what happened to the moderate? This John McCain has the look of someone who is being manipulated--probably by Karl Rove."

Teresa still wasn't willing to vote for Obama, whom she considers too inexperienced, but she was clearly wavering. Afterwards Luntz, good Republican that he is, made the case that Palin could win all these people back with a good convention speech, but that seemed far-fetched to me. They really saw this pick as a gimmick--and one that reflected badly on John McCain's judgment.

It really seems as if she wasn't fully vetted.

But that's ok, because Biden is a Big Blowhard Doofus.