Gazette Backs Abrams
Maryland Politics Watch recently ran a very informative series called "Crisis at the Gazette," where they detailed the deterioration of our local newspaper over recent years. It was in three parts, which you can find HERE. The Gazette has always had excellent, unbiased coverage of the controversies we've been involved in, that is, the sex-ed controversy and the nondiscrimination bill, but there are troubles in the home office, it sounds like.
Even so, I was somewhat surprised to see them endorsing Steve Abrams for county school board. In an article discussing the various races, they had this to say:
We remember that Abrams was the one board member who voted against the new sex education curriculum. His statements at the time indicated that he actually supported the curriculum, but voted against it because he felt "political pressure" to vote for it. I can imagine it is uncomfortable feeling pressure, but I would think an experienced official would set that aside and make a rational decision based on the facts and his own beliefs.
Not to say he isn't an excellent role model for our county's students, we also remember Abrams, who was Republican but switched parties, getting into a fist-fight with another Republican official, a black man, allegedly calling him "boy," over some money that one had lent the other.
Abrams' opponent is Laura Berthiaume, who is endorsed by the Montgomery County Education Association on what is called the "apple ballot." Apple ballot candidates usually win, but it's not a sure thing, and in this case Abrams does have name recognition working for him. It is also a very quiet election season, with almost all the attention focused onSarah Palin the presidential campaigns and little on local races such as this -- it seems to me this favors the candidate whose name looks familiar on the ballot.
Berthiaume ran for state delegate as a Democrat in 2006 but didn't win.
Abrams is in his third non-consecutive term on the MoCo school board and served five terms on the Rockville city council. In 2006 he ran for Comptroller, but lost in the Republican primary.
Even so, I was somewhat surprised to see them endorsing Steve Abrams for county school board. In an article discussing the various races, they had this to say:
For the District 2 seat, experience gives Abrams an edge over Berthiaume. While his astringent style can be offensive to some, Abrams has absorbed much in three terms on the board and isn't reluctant to mix it up on touchy issues, such as changing school transfer policies, or taking on a powerful superintendent. His effectiveness could benefit from a softer, less dismissive approach to some groups and factions.
In addition to making wrenching budget choices, this board has another vital task — begin the groundwork for a search for a new superintendent, as it is widely presumed that Jerry Weast won't seek a new contract.
Kauffman's freshness, and Abram's experience, will complement the five other board members in staring down the most formidable challenges in years. Clear choices for school board seats
We remember that Abrams was the one board member who voted against the new sex education curriculum. His statements at the time indicated that he actually supported the curriculum, but voted against it because he felt "political pressure" to vote for it. I can imagine it is uncomfortable feeling pressure, but I would think an experienced official would set that aside and make a rational decision based on the facts and his own beliefs.
Not to say he isn't an excellent role model for our county's students, we also remember Abrams, who was Republican but switched parties, getting into a fist-fight with another Republican official, a black man, allegedly calling him "boy," over some money that one had lent the other.
Abrams' opponent is Laura Berthiaume, who is endorsed by the Montgomery County Education Association on what is called the "apple ballot." Apple ballot candidates usually win, but it's not a sure thing, and in this case Abrams does have name recognition working for him. It is also a very quiet election season, with almost all the attention focused on
Berthiaume ran for state delegate as a Democrat in 2006 but didn't win.
Abrams is in his third non-consecutive term on the MoCo school board and served five terms on the Rockville city council. In 2006 he ran for Comptroller, but lost in the Republican primary.
posted by JimK at 9:50 AM
100 Comments:
"allegedly"
TTF has a surprising amount of trouble with this seemingly simple term.
They seem to think it means "factually".
How can one "teach the facts" when one doesn't know what a fact is?
How can someone leads a war on terrorists when they are friends with terrorists?
Gay agenda echoes....
Jim,
You left out one salient fact in Abrams' favor. The man with whom he was tussling, the Montgomery County Republican leader (Abrams was a Republican at the time), was none other than our dear friend, the Hitler-saluting, hate-mongering Adol Owens-Williams.
Anon, the newspapers reported that Abrams called this black man "boy," but I wasn't there to see it and I don't know if it's a fact or not. The reporter got confirmation from a third person that the word had been used, but it is still hearsay. This is exactly when the word "allegedly" comes in useful.
JimK
Even if the incident was factual, who knows if the racist connotation was accurate.
Context is key. "Boy" can actually be used without any racial connotation.
This country is so hung up on race. Hopefully, if a black man is elected President, we can move beyond this hypersensivity.
You guys are out to get him because he voted responsibly on your pet cause. This county, however, badly needs some check on the one-party state.
I will be honest, I don´t like black people.
I'm surprised a TTFer would make that last statement but there's probably a lot about TTF we don't know.
Realpolitics is showing four new polls released today and these latest polls average 4.5 point lead for Obama.
With the speed by which this lead is approaching zero, McCain should be able to deliver a knock out punch next Wednesday. He's got all the material he needs. If McCain loses, it'll be his own fault.
btw, One of the big lies told by Obama and Biden in their debates is that McCain's health care proposal will be a tax increase. This is a flat-out lie.
The worse thing is they continue to tell this lie on TV at every commercial break.
Why hasn't the media exposed this?
Do all you think it's alright?
Abrams is a mixture of McCain and Lieberman. He can never decide quite what or who he is, having switched political parties several times. Mr. Abrams is interested in only one thing: the advancement of Mr. Abrams.
And, Mr./Mrs./Ms/Dr. Anonymous: the term "boy" when used in the presence of a black man is highly offensive. ("Context is key. "Boy" can actually be used without any racial connotation.") But then, you have the empathy of a slug...what do you know?
(and, once again, we are NOT interested in your political views here...go elsewhere. You are very much like Ms. Palin...it is impossible for you to stick to a subject about which you know nothing.)
Citizen
Barack Obama claims he doesn't know William Ayers well but in Ayers' book, A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers mentions Obama as one of his neighborhood friends in the same paragraph with Louis Farrakhan. The book came out in 1998. It takes about 2-3 years to write and publish a book, so this friendship can be placed going back to at least 1995. The evidence comes straight from William Ayers.
Wow!
Caught red-handed in another lie.
You want to talk guilt by association?
Try this.
McCain voted with George W. Bush 90% of the time. GWB passed Nixon and Truman, and has become the least popular President of all-time.
McCain=Bush
McCain's association with the Keating Five
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1989-11-29/news/mccain-the-most-reprehensible-of-the-keating-five/1
McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five
The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate
By Tom Fitzpatrick
published: November 29, 1989
You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker. Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.
He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.
Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.
So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as "the madding crowd." It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.
Like the old song, that now seems "Long ago and far away."
Since Keating's collapse, you find yourself doing obscene things to save yourself from the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation. As a matter of course, you engage in backbiting behavior that will turn you into an outcast in the Senate if you do survive.
They say that if you put five lobsters into a pot and give them a chance to escape, none will be able to do so before you light the fire. Each time a lobster tries to climb over the top, his fellow lobsters will pull him back down. It is the way of lobsters and threatened United States senators.
And, of course, that's the way it is with the Keating Five. You are all battling to save your own hides. So you, McCain, leak to reporters about who did Keating's bidding in pressuring federal regulators to change the rules for Lincoln Savings and Loan.
When the reporters fail to print your tips quickly enough--as in the case of your tip on Michigan Senator Donald Riegle--you call them back and remind them how important it is to get that information in the newspapers.
The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate. The outcome will be decided, not in a courtroom, but probably on national television.
Those who survive will be the sociopaths who can tell a lie with the most sincere, straight face. You are especially adept at this.
Last Friday night, on The John McLaughlin Show, which features well-known Washington journalists, the subject of the Keating Five was discussed. Panelist Jack Germond suggested that three of the Keating Five were probably already through in politics.
So you spend your days desperately trying to make sure you will be one of the survivors. You keep volunteering to go on radio and television stations to protest your innocence. Last week you made ABC's Nightline.
Not long before that you somehow managed to get James Kilpatrick, the national columnist, to write a favorable paragraph about you. Last Sunday morning, you made it to national television again; this time on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley. You smiled at the panel with your usual studied insouciance. Sitting next to you was Senator John Glenn of Ohio.
Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and George Will were the interrogators.
It was a sobering scene. There you sat with Glenn, both sweating before the cameras, waiting to answer questions: two badly tarnished American icons.
No one forgets that Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. You won't let anyone forget that you were a prisoner of war. But you have played that tune too long. By now your constant reminders about your war record make you seem like a modern version of Arthur Miller's tragic failure Willy Loman.
Clearly, both you and Glenn sold your fame for Charles Keating's money.
It was a Faustian bargain. It was also a bad joke on the rest of us and a disaster for many old people who lost their life's savings to Keating.
The money was never really Keating's to give. But he never would have got his hands on it if you and the rest of the Keating Five didn't halt the government takeover for two long years while Keating's people continued their looting.
And now, the tab for the Savings and Loan heist must be paid from taxpayer pockets.
On Sunday, Senators Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, and Riegle refused offers to appear on the Brinkley show. What must we make of that?
You, the closest of them to Keating and the deepest in his debt, have chosen the path of the hard sell. You may even make it out of the pot, but to many, your protestations of innocence taste like gall.
You are determined to bluff your way. You will stick to your story that you were acting to help a constituent and intended to do nothing improper. The very fact you attended the meeting makes you guilty, just as every man who entered the Brinks vault went to prison.
You insist that an accounting firm Keating hired told you Lincoln was sound. Alan Greenspan, who Keating also hired, wrote a report saying it was sound. Why shouldn't you believe the people Keating hired? You were, after all, fellow employees.
Perhaps you might silence your own conscience about all this someday.
Just keep telling everyone that it was your wife's money invested in that shopping center with Keating and that you knew nothing about it.
Keep saying that cynical newspaper people don't understand that every move you make has always been for the enrichment of Arizona . . . the education of our Native Americans on the reservations . . . for the love of the elderly in Sun City and Green Valley.
Keep telling them that it wasn't that you were bought off but that Charlie Keating got special help only because he was one of the biggest employers in the state.
Just keep sitting there and staring into the camera and denying that Keating bought you for money and jet plane trips and vacations.
So what if he gave you $112,000? Just keep smiling at the cameras and saying you did nothing wrong.
Maybe the voters will understand you took those tiring trips to Charlie's place in the Bahamas in their behalf. Certainly, they can understand you wanted to take your family along. A senator deserves to travel on private jets, removed from the awful crush of public transportation.
You sought out a master criminal like Keating and became his friend. Now you've discarded him. It shouldn't be surprising that you are now in the process of selling out your senatorial accomplices.
You're John McCain, clearly the guiltiest, most culpable and reprehensible of the Keating Five. But you know the power of television and you realize this is the only way you can possibly save your political career.
.......................................
http://www.slate.com/id/1004633/#
Is John McCain a Crook?
Chris Suellentrop
Posted Friday, Feb. 18, 2000, at 2:35 PM ET
The controversial George W. Bush-sponsored poll in South Carolina mentioned John McCain's role in the so-called Keating Five scandal, and McCain says his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." What exactly did McCain do?
In early 1987, at the beginning of his first Senate term, McCain attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from a number of U.S. senators.
At Keating's behest, four senators--McCain and Democrats Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, and John Glenn of Ohio--met with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on April 2. Those four senators and Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., attended a second meeting at Keating's behest on April 9 with bank regulators in San Francisco.
Regulators did not seize Lincoln Savings and Loan until two years later. The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million.
In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the meetings between the senators and the regulators. McCain, Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, and Riegle became known as the Keating Five.
(Keating himself was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Last year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.)
McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."
But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)
After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.
And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.
The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990, and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.
In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain and Glenn to be the least blameworthy of the five senators. (McCain and Glenn attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators.) McCain was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment," the committee said, and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." McCain considered the committee's judgment to be "full exoneration," and he contributed $112,000 (the amount raised for him by Keating) to the U.S. Treasury.
that's much better than
Ayers=Bin Laden
Ayers=Obama
therefore
Obama=Bin Laden
Obama Bin Laden
This is more than "guilt by association". Obama seems to be drawn to people who hate America and some who are willing to violently attack American society.
And he seems willing to lie about his past associations.
Guilty conscience, as it were.
There's his pastor of 20 years who calls for God to damn America.
There's his wife who only recently became proud to be an American.
There's his neighborhood buddy who says, if he could change just one thing, it would be to bomb America more.
And Obama is mad at America for overthrowing his namesake, Hussein.
How can we hire this guy for President?
Tempting fate, DailyKos and other bloggers leaning left have suggested Obama might win big on November 4. The word "landslide" has been bandied about.
But one pollster ain't buying it. John Zogby insists this race is still too close to call. "I don't think Obama has closed the deal yet," he told the Boston Herald.
Zogby's latest poll has Obama leading McCain 48-45 percent. The margin of error is about three percent, making it a statistical dead heat. Zogby says he's seen these kinds of numbers before:
Zogby said the race mirrors the 1980 election, when voters didn't embrace Ronald Reagan over then-President Jimmy Carter until just days before the election.
"The Sunday before the election the dam burst," Zogby said of the 1980 tilt. "That's when voters determined they were comfortable with Reagan."
Zogby says believe it or not there is still a significant group of people -- holding down what he calls "the big middle" -- who remain undecided. These are voters who might not make up their minds until they walk into the booth on Election Day and they are the monkeywrench in the mechanism of electoral polling.
More flip flopping from That One:
"During the other night's second presidential debate, Sen. John McCain made some news by proposing a federal bailout of home mortgages in an effort to help "stabilize home values." The plan, which McCain admitted would be "expensive" would allow the U.S. Treasury to buy distressed mortgages directly from the holders and renegotiate a new fixed-rate loan at the home's current market-adjusted value. The idea is to help struggling homeowners stay in their houses while at the same time boosting confidence in the real estate markets, which McCain said was at the root of the economic crisis.
Sen. Barack Obama did not initially react to McCain's bold stroke, but today, his campaign rejected the idea out of hand. Obama economic adviser Jason Furman said that the plan was simply too expensive. "John McCain's plan to overpay for bad mortgages by handing taxpayer dollars over to big financial institutions is erratic policy-making at its worst, and its not the change we need to strengthen our economy, create new jobs and keep Americans in their homes. The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess, some of whom even committed fraud." That's a pretty strong condemnation of the McCain plan.
The trouble for Obama, however, is that he was advocating much the same idea just two weeks ago.
On September 24th, at the height of the financial crisis, Sen. Obama said that the very mortgage bailout plan McCain embraced at the debate last night was worthy of consideration.
"We should consider giving the government the authority to purchase mortgages directly instead of simply purchasing mortgage-backed securities.
I would encourage Treasury to study the option of buying individual mortgages like we did successfully in the 1930s."
On home mortgages, Obama was for buying them before he was against it.
This incident, a question asked at a recent McCain campaign rally, has been going around the Internet today, and for good reason. It seems to sum up, in one neat package, much of the dynamic of the presidential campaign right now. There’s the fear on the right that an Obama administration may now be inevitable — and anger over that prospect — combined with the results of the McCain campaign’s recent tactics and the conversation in conservative media right now.
Here’s the exchange. A video of it, which you really should watch to fully appreciate this (make sure to note the picture of Bill Ayers that Fox News includes at the right of the screen), is at the bottom of this post.
Question: I’m mad. I’m really mad. And what’s going on won’t surprise you. It’s not the economy. It’s the socialists taking over our country.
[Applause]
Sit down. I’m not done.
[Applause]
Thank you.
McCain: You’re going — you’re going to have to give me …
Question: When I see …
McCain: Go ahead.
Question: Let me finish, please.
McCain: Yes, sir.
[Laughter]
McCain: Excuse me.
[Laughter]
Question: Thank you. I think it’s so important in today’s country what we’re really missing in what’s going on. When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run this country, we’ve got to have our head examined. It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad. So go get them.
Audience: USA, USA, USA.
McCain: Well, I — I think I got the message.
Could I — could I just say the gentleman is right. The Democrats have been in the majority for the last two years. Have you seen any improvement? The point is — but Americans are angry, sir. They’re angry and frustrated. And that’s why we’ve got to act, and we’ve got to act together because all of us are Americans first.
Watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT8OFncxEkc
That One what, Mr. McPalin?
WAUKESHA, Wis. -Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday that questions about Democratic rival Barack Obama's association with a former war protester linked to Vietnam-era bombings are part of a broader issue of honesty.
In his strongest personal criticism since his campaign began casting Obama as an unknown and unacceptable candidate, McCain told supporters that Obama had not been truthful in describing his relationship with former radical William Ayers. The Arizona senator also said Obama himself has "a clear radical, far-left pro-abortion record."
McCain and the Republican National Committee also launched new Web and TV ads about Obama and Ayers.
Loud cheers from 4,000 people gathered at a sports complex near Milwaukee greeted McCain's attacks over Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground, a Vietnam protest group that bombed government buildings 40 years ago. Obama has noted that he was a child at the time and first met Ayers and his wife, ex-radical Bernadine Dohrn, a quarter-century later.
"Look, we don't care about an old, washed-up terrorist and his wife," McCain said. "That's not the point here."
"He's a terrorist!" a man in the audience yelled.
"We need to know the full extent of the relationship," McCain replied. Later, McCain told ABC News: "It's a factor about Sen. Obama's candor and truthfulness with the American people."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/?source=newsletter
Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals
Extremists Mark Chryson and Steve Stoll helped launch Palin's political career in Alaska, and in return had influence over policy. "Her door was open," says Chryson -- and still is.
By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert
Oct. 10, 2008 |
On the afternoon of Sept. 24 in downtown Palmer, Alaska, as the sun began to sink behind the snowcapped mountains that flank the picturesque Mat-Su Valley, 51-year-old Mark Chryson sat for an hour on a park bench, reveling in tales of his days as chairman of the Alaska Independence Party. The stocky, gray-haired computer technician waxed nostalgic about quixotic battles to eliminate taxes, support the "traditional family" and secede from the United States.
So long as Alaska remained under the boot of the federal government, said Chryson, the AIP had to stand on guard to stymie a New World Order. He invited a Salon reporter to see a few items inside his pickup truck that were intended for his personal protection. "This here is my attack dog," he said with a chuckle, handing the reporter an exuberant 8-pound papillon from his passenger seat. "Her name is Suzy." Then he pulled a 9-millimeter Makarov PM pistol -- once the standard-issue sidearm for Soviet cops -- out of his glove compartment. "I've got enough weaponry to raise a small army in my basement," he said, clutching the gun in his palm. "Then again, so do most Alaskans." But Chryson added a message of reassurance to residents of that faraway place some Alaskans call "the 48." "We want to go our separate ways," he said, "but we are not going to kill you."
Though Chryson belongs to a fringe political party, one that advocates the secession of Alaska from the Union, and that organizes with other like-minded secessionist movements from Canada to the Deep South, he is not without peculiar influence in state politics, especially the rise of Sarah Palin. An obscure figure outside of Alaska, Chryson has been a political fixture in the hometown of the Republican vice-presidential nominee for over a decade. During the 1990s, when Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin's campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.
Palin backed Chryson as he successfully advanced a host of anti-tax, pro-gun initiatives, including one that altered the state Constitution's language to better facilitate the formation of anti-government militias. She joined in their vendetta against several local officials they disliked, and listened to their advice about hiring. She attempted to name Stoll, a John Birch Society activist known in the Mat-Su Valley as "Black Helicopter Steve," to an empty Wasilla City Council seat. "Every time I showed up her door was open," said Chryson. "And that policy continued when she became governor."
When Chryson first met Sarah Palin, however, he didn't really trust her politically. It was the early 1990s, when he was a member of a local libertarian pressure group called SAGE, or Standing Against Government Excess. (SAGE's founder, Tammy McGraw, was Palin's birth coach.) Palin was a leader in a pro-sales-tax citizens group called WOW, or Watch Over Wasilla, earning a political credential before her 1992 campaign for City Council. Though he was impressed by her interpersonal skills, Chryson greeted Palin's election warily, thinking she was too close to the Democrats on the council and too pro-tax.
But soon, Palin and Chryson discovered they could be useful to each other. Palin would be running for mayor, while Chryson was about to take over the chairmanship of the Alaska Independence Party, which at its peak in 1990 had managed to elect a governor.
The AIP was born of the vision of "Old Joe" Vogler, a hard-bitten former gold miner who hated the government of the United States almost as much as he hated wolves and environmentalists. His resentment peaked during the early 1970s when the federal government began installing Alaska's oil and gas pipeline. Fueled by raw rage -- "The United States has made a colony of Alaska," he told author John McPhee in 1977 -- Vogler declared a maverick candidacy for the governorship in 1982. Though he lost, Old Joe became a force to be reckoned with, as well as a constant source of amusement for Alaska's political class. During a gubernatorial debate in 1982, Vogler proposed using nuclear weapons to obliterate the glaciers blocking roadways to Juneau. "There's gold under there!" he exclaimed.
Vogler made another failed run for the governor's mansion in 1986. But the AIP's fortunes shifted suddenly four years later when Vogler convinced Richard Nixon's former interior secretary, Wally Hickel, to run for governor under his party's banner. Hickel coasted to victory, outflanking a moderate Republican and a centrist Democrat. An archconservative Republican running under the AIP candidate, Jack Coghill, was elected lieutenant governor.
Hickel's subsequent failure as governor to press for a vote on Alaskan independence rankled Old Joe. With sponsorship from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Vogler was scheduled to present his case for Alaskan secession before the United Nations General Assembly in the late spring of 1993. But before he could, Old Joe's long, strange political career ended tragically that May when he was murdered by a fellow secessionist.
Hickel rejoined the Republican Party the year after Vogler's death and didn't run for reelection. Lt. Gov. Coghill's campaign to succeed him as the AIP candidate for governor ended in disaster; he peeled away just enough votes from the Republican, Jim Campbell, to throw the gubernatorial election to Democrat Tony Knowles.
Despite the disaster, Coghill hung on as AIP chairman for three more years. When he was asked to resign in 1997, Mark Chryson replaced him. Chryson pursued a dual policy of cozying up to secessionist and right-wing groups in Alaska and elsewhere while also attempting to replicate the AIP's success with Hickel in infiltrating the mainstream.
Unlike some radical right-wingers, Chryson doesn't put forward his ideas freighted with anger or paranoia. And in a state where defense of gun and property rights often takes on a real religious fervor, Chryson was able to present himself as a typical Alaskan.
He rose through party ranks by reducing the AIP's platform to a single page that "90 percent of Alaskans could agree with." This meant scrubbing the old platform of what Chryson called "racist language" while accommodating the state's growing Christian right movement by emphasizing the AIP's commitment to the "traditional family."
"The AIP is very family-oriented," Chryson explained. "We're for the traditional family -- daddy, mommy, kids -- because we all know that it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we don't care if Heather has two mommies. That's not a traditional family."
Chryson further streamlined the AIP's platform by softening its secessionist language. Instead of calling for immediate separation from the United States, the platform now demands a vote on independence.
Yet Chryson maintains that his party remains committed to full independence. "The Alaskan Independence Party has got links to almost every independence-minded movement in the world," Chryson exclaimed. "And Alaska is not the only place that's about separation. There's at least 30 different states that are talking about some type of separation from the United States."
This has meant rubbing shoulders and forging alliances with outright white supremacists and far-right theocrats, particularly those who dominate the proceedings at such gatherings as the North American Secessionist conventions, which AIP delegates have attended in recent years. The AIP's affiliation with neo-Confederate organizations is motivated as much by ideological affinity as by organizational convenience. Indeed, Chryson makes no secret of his sympathy for the Lost Cause. "Should the Confederate states have been allowed to separate and go their peaceful ways?" Chryson asked rhetorically. "Yes. The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War, or the War Between the States -- however you want to refer to it -- was not about slavery, it was about states' rights."
Another far-right organization with whom the AIP has long been aligned is Howard Phillips' militia-minded Constitution Party. The AIP has been listed as the Constitution Party's state affiliate since the late 1990s, and it has endorsed the Constitution Party's presidential candidates (Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin) in the past two elections.
The Constitution Party boasts an openly theocratic platform that reads, "It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions and to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations." In its 1990s incarnation as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, it was on the front lines in promoting the "militia" movement, and a significant portion of its membership comprises former and current militia members.
At its 1992 convention, the AIP hosted both Phillips -- the USTP's presidential candidate -- and militia-movement leader Col. James "Bo" Gritz, who was campaigning for president under the banner of the far-right Populist Party. According to Chryson, AIP regulars heavily supported Gritz, but the party deferred to Phillips' presence and issued no official endorsements.
In Wasilla, the AIP became powerful by proxy -- because of Chryson and Stoll's alliance with Sarah Palin. Chryson and Stoll had found themselves in constant opposition to policies of Wasilla's Democratic mayor, who started his three-term, nine-year tenure in 1987. By 1992, Chryson and Stoll had begun convening regular protests outside City Council. Their demonstrations invariably involved grievances against any and all forms of "socialist government," from city planning to public education. Stoll shared Chryson's conspiratorial views: "The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over," Stein told a reporter.
Chryson did not trust Palin when she joined the City Council in 1992. He claimed that she was handpicked by Democratic City Council leaders and by Wasilla's Democratic mayor, John Stein, to rubber-stamp their tax hike proposals. "When I first met her," he said, "I thought she was extremely left. But I've watched her slowly as she's become more pronounced in her conservative ideology."
Palin was well aware of Chryson's views. "She knew my beliefs," Chryson said. "The entire state knew my beliefs. I wasn't afraid of being on the news, on camera speaking my views."
But Chryson believes she trusted his judgment because he accurately predicted what life on the City Council would be like. "We were telling her, 'This is probably what's going to happen,'" he said. "'The city is going to give this many people raises, they're going to pave everybody's roads, and they're going to pave the City Council members' roads.' We couldn't have scripted it better because everything we predicted came true."
After intense evangelizing by Chryson and his allies, they claimed Palin as a convert. "When she started taking her job seriously," Chryson said, "the people who put her in as the rubber stamp found out the hard way that she was not going to go their way." In 1994, Sarah Palin attended the AIP's statewide convention. In 1995, her husband, Todd, changed his voter registration to AIP. Except for an interruption of a few months, he would remain registered was an AIP member until 2002, when he changed his registration to undeclared.
In 1996, Palin decided to run against John Stein as the Republican candidate for mayor of Wasilla. While Palin pushed back against Stein's policies, particularly those related to funding public works, Chryson said he and Steve Stoll prepared the groundwork for her mayoral campaign.
Chryson and Stoll viewed Palin's ascendancy as a vehicle for their own political ambitions. "She got support from these guys," Stein remarked. "I think smart politicians never utter those kind of radical things, but they let other people do it for them. I never recall Sarah saying she supported the militia or taking a public stand like that. But these guys were definitely behind Sarah, thinking she was the more conservative choice."
"They worked behind the scenes," said Stein. "I think they had a lot of influence in terms of helping with the back-scatter negative campaigning."
Indeed, Chryson boasted that he and his allies urged Palin to focus her campaign on slashing character-based attacks. For instance, Chryson advised Palin to paint Stein as a sexist who had told her "to just sit there and look pretty" while she served on Wasilla's City Council. Though Palin never made this accusation, her 1996 campaign for mayor was the most negative Wasilla residents had ever witnessed.
While Palin played up her total opposition to the sales tax and gun control -- the two hobgoblins of the AIP -- mailers spread throughout the town portraying her as "the Christian candidate," a subtle suggestion that Stein, who is Lutheran, might be Jewish. "I watched that campaign unfold, bringing a level of slime our community hadn't seen until then," recalled Phil Munger, a local music teacher who counts himself as a close friend of Stein.
"This same group [Stoll and Chryson] also [publicly] challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name," Stein bitterly recalled. "So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, 'Well, you could have forged that.'"
When Palin won the election, the men who had once shouted anti-government slogans outside City Hall now had a foothold inside the mayor's office. Palin attempted to pay back her newfound pals during her first City Council meeting as mayor. In that meeting, on Oct. 14, 1996, she appointed Stoll to one of the City Council's two newly vacant seats. But Palin was blocked by the single vote of then-Councilman Nick Carney, who had endured countless rancorous confrontations with Stoll and considered him a "violent" influence on local politics. Though Palin considered consulting attorneys about finding another means of placing Stoll on the council, she was ultimately forced to back down and accept a compromise candidate.
Emboldened by his nomination by Mayor Palin, Stoll later demanded she fire Wasilla's museum director, John Cooper, a personal enemy he longed to sabotage. Palin obliged, eliminating Cooper's position in short order. "Gotcha, Cooper!" Stoll told the deposed museum director after his termination, as Cooper told a reporter for the New York Times. "And it only cost me a campaign contribution." Stoll, who donated $1,000 to Palin's mayoral campaign, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview. Palin has blamed budget concerns for Cooper's departure.
The following year, when Carney proposed a local gun-control measure, Palin organized with Chryson to smother the nascent plan in its cradle. Carney's proposed ordinance would have prohibited residents from carrying guns into schools, bars, hospitals, government offices and playgrounds. Infuriated by the proposal that Carney viewed as a common-sense public-safety measure, Chryson and seven allies stormed a July 1997 council meeting.
With the bill still in its formative stages, Carney was not even ready to present it to the council, let alone conduct public hearings on it. He and other council members objected to the ad-hoc hearing as "a waste of time." But Palin -- in plain violation of council rules and norms -- insisted that Chryson testify, stating, according to the minutes, that "she invites the public to speak on any issue at any time."
When Carney tried later in the meeting to have the ordinance discussed officially at the following regular council meeting, he couldn't even get a second. His proposal died that night, thanks to Palin and her extremist allies.
"A lot of it was the ultra-conservative far right that is against everything in government, including taxes," recalled Carney. "A lot of it was a personal attack on me as being anti-gun, and a personal attack on anybody who deigned to threaten their authority to carry a loaded firearm wherever they pleased. That was the tenor of it. And it was being choreographed by Steve Stoll and the mayor."
Asked if he thought it was Palin who had instigated the turnout, he replied: "I know it was."
By Chryson's account, he and Palin also worked hand-in-glove to slash property taxes and block a state proposal that would have taken money for public programs from the Permanent Fund Dividend, or the oil and gas fund that doles out annual payments to citizens of Alaska. Palin endorsed Chryson's unsuccessful initiative to move the state Legislature from Juneau to Wasilla. She also lent her support to Chryson's crusade to alter the Alaska Constitution's language on gun rights so cities and counties could not impose their own restrictions. "It took over 10 years to get that language written in," Chryson said. "But Sarah [Palin] was there supporting it."
"With Sarah as a mayor," said Chryson, "there were a number of times when I just showed up at City Hall and said, 'Hey, Sarah, we need help.' I think there was only one time when I wasn't able to talk to her and that was because she was in a meeting."
Chryson says the door remains open now that Palin is governor. (Palin's office did not respond to Salon's request for an interview.) While Palin has been more circumspect in her dealings with groups like the AIP as she has risen through the political ranks, she has stayed in touch.
When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP's ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP's state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an "all-Alaska" liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. "I made her governor," he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin's bid for vice president.
Just months before Palin burst onto the national stage as McCain's vice-presidential nominee, she delivered a videotaped address to the AIP's annual convention. Her message was scrupulously free of secessionist rhetoric, but complementary nonetheless. "I share your party's vision of upholding the Constitution of our great state," Palin told the assembly of AIP delegates. "My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty can expand. I know you agree with that ... Keep up the good work and God bless you."
When Palin became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, her attendance of the 1994 and 2006 AIP conventions and her husband's membership in the party (as well as Palin's videotaped welcome to the AIP's 2008 convention) generated a minor controversy. Chryson claimed, however, that Sarah and Todd Palin never even played a minor role in his party's internal affairs. "Sarah's never been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party," Chryson insisted. "Todd has, but most of rural Alaska has too. I never saw him at a meeting. They were at one meeting I was at. Sarah said hello, but I didn't pay attention because I was taking care of business."
But whether the Palins participated directly in shaping the AIP's program is less relevant than the extent to which they will implement that program. Chryson and his allies have demonstrated just as much interest in grooming major party candidates as they have in putting forward their own people. At a national convention of secessionist groups in 2007, AIP vice chairman Dexter Carter announced that his party would seek to "infiltrate" the Democratic and Republican parties with candidates sympathetic to its hard-right, secessionist agenda. "You should use that tactic. You should infiltrate," Carter told his audience of neo-Confederates, theocrats and libertarians. "Whichever party you think in that area you can get something done, get into that party. Even though that party has its problems, right now that is the only avenue."
Carter pointed to Palin's political career as the model of a successful infiltration. "There's a lot of talk of her moving up," Carter said of Palin. "She was a member [of the AIP] when she was mayor of a small town, that was a nonpartisan job. But to get along and to go along she switched to the Republican Party … She is pretty well sympathetic because of her membership."
Carter's assertion that Palin was once a card-carrying AIP member was swiftly discredited by the McCain campaign, which produced records showing she had been a registered Republican since 1988. But then why would Carter make such a statement? Why did he seem confident that Palin was a true-blue AIP activist burrowing within the Republican Party? The most salient answer is that Palin was once so thoroughly embedded with AIP figures like Chryson and Stoll and seemed so enthusiastic about their agenda, Carter may have simply assumed she belonged to his party.
Now, Palin is a household name and her every move is scrutinized by the Washington press corps. She can no longer afford to kibitz with secessionists, however instrumental they may have been to her meteoric ascendancy. This does not trouble her old AIP allies. Indeed, Chryson is hopeful that Palin's inauguration will also represent the start of a new infiltration.
"I've had my issues but she's still staying true to her core values," Chryson concluded. "Sarah's friends don't all agree with her, but do they respect her? Do they respect her ideology and her values? Definitely."
jj
-- By Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert
Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers's unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?
No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.
First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?
Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.
Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.
Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.
Until now. Today, on the threshold of the presidency, Obama concedes the odiousness of these associations, which is why he has severed them. But for the years in which he sat in Wright's pews and shared common purpose on boards with Ayers, Obama considered them a legitimate, indeed unremarkable, part of social discourse.
Do you? Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not.
RCP Average 10/01 - 10/09 -- 49.1 43.4 Obama +5.7
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 1203 LV 48 43 Obama +5
Gallup Tracking 10/06 - 10/08 2761 RV 52 41 Obama +11
Rasmussen Tracking 10/06 - 10/08 3000 LV 50 45 Obama +5
Hotline/FD Tracking 10/06 - 10/08 852 LV 47 41 Obama +6
GW/Battleground Tracking 10/05 - 10/08 800 LV 48 45 Obama +3
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/04 - 10/05 658 RV 49 43 Obama +6
CBS News 10/03 - 10/05 616 LV 48 45 Obama +3
CNN 10/03 - 10/05 694 LV 53 45 Obama +8
Ipsos/McClatchy 10/02 - 10/06 858 RV 47 40 Obama +7
Democracy Corps (D) 10/01 - 10/05 1000 LV 49 46 Obama +3
Here's something to brighten some Anonymi's day: A proposal for an LGBT high school:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95565768
Enjoy.
Cynthia
"Here's something to brighten some Anonymi's day: A proposal for an LGBT high school"
I thought they already had one in New York.
Doesn't bother me in any case. There is something to be said for having all the kids with that kind of mental problem together. Better to get them help and first-class reparative therapy. Economies of scale and all that.
I would have thought you guys would object to the segregation aspect.
It goes to show you nebver can tell.
Both ramussen and reuters has Obama leading by the same 5 points today.
Strange how with all the current events breaking his way that Obama never seems to break out of the pack.
Take a local example:
In Virginia, Mark Warner the Dem leads Gilmore by 30 points and yet Obama's lead is in the low single digits.
People haven't made up their mind if Obama is safe yet. The Ayers-Wright-Rezko-Michelle factors will continue to dominate conversation.
We're edging toward showtime, folks!
What? You're going to take off your hood and be accountable? That showtime????
Red Baron said "Realpolitics is showing four new polls released today and these latest polls average 4.5 point lead for Obama...Zogby's latest poll has Obama leading McCain 48-45 percent".
LOL, all wrong. Obama's lead has continued to increase. The realpolitics average for the polls released today has him leading by 7.2%, not 4.5%, Zogby has him leading by 5%, not 3%:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
RCP Average 10/01 - 10/09 -- 49.5 43.3 Obama +6.2
Gallup Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 2784 RV 51 41 Obama +10
Rasmussen Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 3000 LV 50 45 Obama +5
Hotline/FD Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 838 LV 48 41 Obama +7
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 1203 LV 48 43 Obama +5
GW/Battleground Tracking 10/06 - 10/09 800 LV 51 43 Obama +8
Time 10/03 - 10/06 1053 LV 50 44 Obama +6
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/04 - 10/05 658 RV 49 43 Obama +6
CBS News 10/03 - 10/05 616 LV 48 45 Obama +3
CNN 10/03 - 10/05 694 LV 53 45 Obama +8
Ipsos/McClatchy 10/02 - 10/06 858 RV 47 40 Obama +7
Democracy Corps (D) 10/01 - 10/05 1000 LV 49 46 Obama +3
In your desperation to find some ray of hope you're lying and ignoring the facts. Obama's lead continues to increase as the impact of the last debate is factored in. Everytime there's an inevitable fluctuation in the numbers you get all excited over nothing. The fact is that with rare exceptions Obama's consistently lead this race from the beginning and the vast majority of the experts see no way Mccain can win.
Strange how with all the current events breaking his way that Obama never seems to break out of the pack.
When a large number of uncommitted voters move in one candidate's direction over a short period of time, it's very hard for that trend to continue. At some point, you reach the bottom of the barrel of persuadable voters. In short, there is a ceiling beyond which neither candidate is likely to go. Obama at a lead of, say, 10-12%, is at that ceiling. He's never going to lead by 20, as you seem to suggest that he should, because there are just too many unrepentant losers like yourself who will vote for John McCain despite the overwhelming evidence that he is not the better candidate.
With few exceptions over the past century, a "landslide" election usually means winning by 5-7 percent. Obama winning by this margin, again despite your belief that it should be more, would be a major and historically significant victory.
I've previously linked to authors discussing this point -- go back and find them yourself.
GA
"What? You're going to take off your hood and be accountable? That showtime????"
You know our country is having an historic election with the first African American candidate nominated by a major party. Remarkably, race has not been a factor. The individual has a slight lead in the polls and has been treated with the exact same scrutiny any white candidate would.
This is a great victory for our country in the midst of uncertain times.
And, yet, scattered here and there, like roaches in a gourmet kitchen are disgusting pests like you, trying to exacerbate racial animosity.
Scurry back to the shadows from whence you came. Maybe you insects can feed off each other.
Just to clarify:
RCP average for 10/01 - 10/09 +6.2 obama
Gallup today Obama +10
Rasmussen today Obama +5
Hotline today Obama +7
Zogby today Obama +5
GW today Obama +8
average for today 36/5= +7.2 for Obama
No matter how you slice it Obama's been increasing his lead in the few days that Red Baron's been claiming (by ignoring the better Obama polls) its going the other way. Sucks to be you Red Baron.
Red Baron roach said "The individual has a slight lead in the polls".
LOL, go back and read the links analyzing the election that good anonymous posted. A 5% lead in the average of all polls is a landslide. The latest polls show Obama leading by 7.2% - its going to be a massacre.
Bad anonymous said "Remarkably, race has not been a factor.".
Only a racist like you would think that remarkable.
I missed this earlier. Red Baron/bad anonymous said "I will be honest, I don´t like black people.".
Here he tries to project his bigotry by claiming that others are trying to exacerbate racial animosity when in reality he really is wearing a white hood.
Breaking news! Conneticut rules in favour of marriage equality! We win another one:
http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2008/10/breaking-ct-rul.html#more
"Obama at a lead of, say, 10-12%, is at that ceiling."
Obama doesn't have that kind of lead.
"He's never going to lead by 20, as you seem to suggest that he should,"
Why not? Warner's leading by 30.
"because there are just too many unrepentant losers like yourself"
Oh. Remind me. What is it that McCain supporters need to repent of?
"who will vote for John McCain despite the overwhelming evidence that he is not the better candidate"
Overwhelming? Obama has called for economic policies that echo those Herbert Hoover tried and which set off the great depression.
He also opposes oil drilling and nuclear energy to attain energy independence, has shown an inability to oppose the leaders of his party on any issue and has demonstrated an insensitivity to diplomacy on the international stage.
He has little experience and no accomplishments.
He has pandered to public opinion polls by changing his view on everything from NAFTA to domestic spying on a regular basis. His policies expire on a two-week cycle.
And, to put the cherry on the cake of his inadequacy, he has been an incessant liar in his short time as a national celebrity. The ads on health care reform that run at every commercial break on TV are not just faulty opinions, they are flat-out lies.
"With few exceptions over the past century, a "landslide" election usually means winning by 5-7 percent."
Well, yes, candidates with large electoral margins usually have a small lead which spans the breadth of the country.
Obama's special situation, however, is that one of the legs of his support is an unprecedented number of newly registered voters. Convincing these people to fill out a card while an Obama operative stands over them is one thing. Making sure they get to the voting booth is another. These people have a behavior pattern of not bothering to vote. If only one fourth of them act according to their nature, Obama's in trouble unless he has a sizable lead going into November.
Obama's sitting on a stool with a microphone, waving his hands grandly across the stars and telling the world that he has an unspecified change in mind that they can believe in.
Pull one leg off that stool and he's flat on his ass.
"I've previously linked to authors discussing this point -- go back and find them yourself."
I didn't ask for references. I'm very well read and have heard many express your faulty point of view.
It must be terrible to be both anonymous and bitter.
Look who are the SoreLosermen this time, and they haven't even lost yet!
(Oct. 10) - The unmistakable momentum behind Barack Obama's campaign, combined with worry that John McCain is not doing enough to stop it, is ratcheting up fears and frustrations among conservatives.
And nowhere is this emotion on plainer display than at Republican rallies, where voters this week have shouted out insults at the mention of Obama, pleaded with McCain to get more aggressive with the Democrat and generally demonstrated the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic.
The calendar is closing and the polls, at least right now, are not.
With McCain passing up the opportunity to level any tough personal shots in his first two debates and the very real prospect of an Obama presidency setting in, the sort of hard-core partisan activists who turn out for campaign events are venting in unusually personal terms."
I wonder if hordes of them will show up at poll counting offices, pounding, threatening, and carrying on like the losers that they are.
Pull one leg off that stool and you'd be guilty of assault and battery.
"Gallup today Obama +10"
Now even Gallup's dubious poll, that no one has replicated, is showing a declining lead for Obama. It was 11 the last two days.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Obama HQ. I'm sure it's a scene right outta the Keystone Cops.
"Bad anonymous said "Remarkably, race has not been a factor.".
Only a racist like you would think that remarkable."
You'll have to explain that a little better, you moron.
"I missed this earlier. Red Baron/bad anonymous said "I will be honest, I don´t like black people."."
I didn't say that. Some TTFer did. I assumed it was you because most if the other TTFers aren't that stupid.
"Here he tries to project his bigotry by claiming that others are trying to exacerbate racial animosity when in reality he really is wearing a white hood."
Facts speak for themselves and the fact is race is only brought up by TTFers.
Face it, they want racial tension in America.
"Breaking news! Conneticut rules in favour of marriage equality!"
When two gays shack up, it's not a less equal form of marriage.
It's not marriage at all.
Bad anonymous said "Oh. Remind me. What is it that McCain supporters need to repent of?".
The Republican's long history of fiscal mismanagement, elimination of basic rights, freedoms, and individual protections, discrimination against minorities, attacks on the seperation of church and state, the destruction of the U.S. economy, reckless deregulation that lead to the current financial crisis, the quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased global hatred of the U.S., etc., etc.
Cue the lies blaiming the Democrats in 3, 2, 1...
Bad anonymous said "Now even Gallup's dubious poll, that no one has replicated, is showing a declining lead for Obama. It was 11 the last two days.".
LOL, take the blinders off for a minute bad anonymous. The realpolitics average of polls over the past serveral days has gone from 5.3% to 5.5% to 6% to 6.2%. The average of the polls released today has Obama's at +7.2%. Your ignoring all the polls showing an increase to focus on the one showing a decrease won't change the reality that on average Obama continues to pull away from Mccain.
CBTS, Obama has shown a tendency to gravitate toward anti-Americans and terrorists.
Americans have a few questions they would like to ask him about it.
"And nowhere is this emotion on plainer display than at Republican rallies, where voters this week have shouted out insults at the mention of Obama, pleaded with McCain to get more aggressive with the Democrat and generally demonstrated the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic."
You can tell Dems are getting worried. Formerly this year they were crowing the Republicans were disspirited and apathetic. Now that they crowds are starting to get behind the cause, the media, who campaign for Obama, are trying to paint a picture of unruly crowd.
What your trying to evoke sounds more like a scene from the Weather Underground. Obama pals around with those types.
"Pull one leg off that stool and you'd be guilty of assault and battery."
So now failure to vote for Obama is an act of violence?
Typical postmodernist crap.
Aunt Bea, that was a telling article. You can see the same seething anger in bad anonymous, he knows he's going to lose and its making him lose control and even acknowledge his hatred of blacks. He's so desperate he searches for the one or two polls that have Obama's lead declining and hides from the majority that have his lead increasing. The reality of an overal increase for Obama is just too painful for him to accept so he covers his eyes, plugs his ears and fantasizes about what he desperately wishes were true.
That's exactly right Priya. AH, or Red Baron as you call him, is as angry as the rest of them.
What this evokes is more like the bussed in GOP Hill staffers who derailed the recount in Florida. It's the same fear and desperation on their faces, and the same anger and hatred in their words.
Last weekend Governor Palin told a story about Barack Obama and William Ayers and somebody in the crowd shouted, "Kill him!" And what did the McCain campaign do about it? Nothing. And now "McHero" seems to have decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Despicable. What's he going to lurch to next?
There's something else I have noticed in the GOP rally crowd shots. There are practically no persons of color at any of them. If race is not a factor, why are GOP presidential rallies so pale?
As the founder of our "Teenage Republicans" said today: "It's not looking so good, Mr. Rigby."
I said, "Now is the time you buck up and start saying "Palin in 2012"
He said: "Are you kidding? She's an idiot."
Aunt Bea I almost feel sorry for the Republicans, they're trying so desperately to change the story from the economy to Ayers but Americans just don't care about what some radical did when Obama was a child, they're concerned, and rightfully so, with the terrible mess the Republicans have made of the economy.
The Canadian federal election is on Tuesday. At the start of the election the polls showed the Conservatives getting a majority government which would have allowed them to do what they pleased for the next four years. Fortunately those polls seemed to scare Canadians and the Conservatives have been dropping in the polls ever since and now the Liberals are just slightly behind and news just broke that the Conservatives have been lying about the cost of the war in Afghanistan. Its cost several billion more then they've been telling people. Its now clear the conservatives can't do better than a minority government which will keep them on a short leash and the Liberals may actually pull it out or in what seems to be the most likely scenario the Liberals and the NDP will form a coalition governmnt and toss Bush North out on his rear. Wish us luck.
The problem is this: the Republicans might still win. Don't forget 2004.
Next month America will choose whether to be guided by intelligence or fear. There is no guarantee they will choose intelligence. The polls are still closer than they should be.
I don't think so. In 2004 the polls had Bush leading Kerry by 1.5%. The polls consistently have Obama by over 5% - that's going to be a landslide.
As the race stacks up today:
Obama 343 electoral votes
Mccain 184 electoral votes
http://www.electoral-vote.com/icon.html
Its not even close.
Even the Republican butt kisser Fox news has Obama by 7%:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/10/10/fox_news_obama_leads_by_seven_nationally.html
one of the legs of his support is an unprecedented number of newly registered voters
You're assuming that those new voters are showing up in the polls. But they're not. Any poll using a "likely voter" screen will exclude new voters, because one qualification for a likely voter is "have you voted before?" Thus, new voters NEVER qualify as likely voters. Most of the time, this doesn't matter, because either (a) there aren't many, and/or (b) they're pretty evenly divided between the parties.
Not this year. Democratic new registration is running as much as 5 and 6 to 1 over Republican, and there are a huge number of new voters.
Again, stop being a dumb ass and actually learn something.
Had you taken the trouble to actually read any polling analysis instead of just waving around numbers, you'd know that pollsters believe that they are potentially underestimating Obama's support in this fashion by as much as 1-3% nationally.
To be fair, OTOH, there is the Bradley effect. Since that one works in your favor, I suspect you know what that is (for those who don't know, it's the tendency of white voters to say they'll vote for the black guy to a pollster, but not actually do so in the voting booth. Call it racist guilt). But assuming that both the new voter impact and Bradley both hit with full force, they'll cancel each other out and the polls will be accurate. If the Bradley effect hits and new voters fall flat, Obama's numbers will likely drop from now to the results. If it's the other way around (little or no Bradley effect and a huge wave of new voters), then Obama will win by a huge margin.
Anonymous, the Bradley effect won't be a factor, Obama's race breaks in favour of him:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/111049/Obamas-Race-May-Much-Plus-Minus.aspx
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" While 6% of voters say they are less likely to vote for Barack Obama because of his race, 9% say they are more likely to vote for him, making the impact of his race a neutral to slightly positive factor when all voters' self-reported attitudes are taken into account."
Given that as you mentioned newly registered voters aren't reflected in the polls of likely voters Obama's going to win big.
Hey, Anon,
I've lived and worked around the world, and have even met some people who don't like America. Does that make me anti-American?
I had a 9th grade grammar teacher who years later became a Jewish terrorist, and then was killed by an Arab terrorist. Does that make me a consort of terrorists?
Grow up.
"You can see the same seething anger in bad anonymous, he knows he's going to lose and its making him lose control and even acknowledge his hatred of blacks."
Hmmmm...I see that I've been judged as angry by Priya. That's kind of ironic when since I last posted at 3:30, TTFers have made 11posts directed at me, six of them by Priya. Seems like the rage is exploding from your direction. It especially infuriates Preya if I dare to suggest that Obama is not ahead. Amazing, really.
Odd that they seem to think that anyone believes the racist remark made yesterday was not made by a TTFer.
How stupid do they think the people that read this blog are?
Well, I guess they would know better than I.
"I've lived and worked around the world, and have even met some people who don't like America. Does that make me anti-American?
I had a 9th grade grammar teacher who years later became a Jewish terrorist, and then was killed by an Arab terrorist. Does that make me a consort of terrorists?"
Go into partnership with any of these people? Did any of these anti-americans or terrorists throw your first fundraising party when you decided to run for the legislature?
"Grow up."
Dana, you're elderly enough to know that in any normal year, the fact that Obama was so comfortable with these fringe characters would be an issue. Obama has been saved by a stock market crash.
A few weeks to go though.
I'm getting real angry.
hee-haw!
McCain booed after trying to calm anti-Obama crowd
By PHILIP ELLIOTT and BETH FOUHY, AP
posted: 40 MINUTES
LAKEVILLE, Minn. -The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."
A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies, and gone unchallenged by them.
McCain changed his tone Friday when supporters at a town hall pressed him to be rougher on Obama. A voter said, "The people here in Minnesota want to see a real fight." Another said Obama would lead the U.S. into socialism. Another said he did not want his unborn child raised in a country led by Obama.
"If you want a fight, we will fight," McCain said. "But we will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." When people booed, he cut them off.
"I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity," he said. "I just mean to say you have to be respectful."
Presidential candidates are accustomed to raucous rallies this close to Election Day and welcome the enthusiasm. But they are also traditionally monitors of sorts from the stage. Part of their job is to leaven proceedings if tempers run ragged and to rein in an out-of-bounds comment from the crowd.
Not so much this week, at GOP rallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and other states.
When a visibly angry McCain supporter in Waukesha, Wis., on Thursday told the candidate "I'm really mad" because of "socialists taking over the country," McCain stoked the sentiment. "I think I got the message," he said. "The gentleman is right." He went on to talk about Democrats in control of Congress.
On Friday, McCain rejected the bait.
"I don't trust Obama," a woman said. "I have read about him. He's an Arab."
McCain shook his head in disagreement, and said:
"No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with (him) on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about."
He had drawn boos with his comment: "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."
The anti-Obama taunts and jeers are noticeably louder when McCain appears with Palin, a big draw for GOP social conservatives. She accused Obama this week of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past, loose association with a 1960s radical. If less directly, McCain, too, has sought to exploit Obama's Chicago neighborhood ties to William Ayers, while trying simultaneously to steer voters' attention to his plans for the financial crisis.
The Alaska governor did not campaign with McCain on Friday, and his rally in La Crosse, Wis., earlier Friday was much more subdued than those when the two campaigned together. Still, one woman shouted "traitor" when McCain told voters Obama would raise their taxes.
Volunteers worked up chants from the crowd of "U.S.A." and "John McCain, John McCain," in an apparent attempt to drown out boos and other displays of negative energy.
The Secret Service confirmed Friday that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday, meaning Obama. There was "no indication that there was anything directed at Obama," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told AP. "We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of an abundance of caution."
Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters "it's not negative and it's not mean-spirited" to scrutinize Obama's iffy associations.
But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.
"Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as 'dangerous' 'dishonorable' and 'risky' to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate," she said.
—
Beth Fouhy reported from New York. Associated Press writer Joe Milicia contributed to this story from Cleveland
Oh, please. Thanks for calling me "elderly" -- I'd like my senior discount, if you don't mind.
I've had my share of fundraisers and I didn't vet any of them, so for all I know any could have unsavory associations from his past.
The people with whom McCain pals around -- the old-line anti-Semites, and the new-line ones such as Palin, and the homegrown terrorists who bombed OK City and run the militias in MI and elsewhere, are all Republicans, which you know well enough.
Saturday October 11, 2008 06:45 EDT
John McCain’s dishonorable campaign
It kept getting worse all week. Again on Friday a McCain-Palin supporter called Barack Obama a “traitor,” and John McCain said nothing. He used to challenge racist hecklers on the trail; he used to say he wanted to run an honorable campaign. But lately he and pit bull Sarah Palin are attacking Obama personally and politically in every city, from every platform. And they seem to be savoring the disgusting hate they’re fomenting — Obama being called “terrorist,” “traitor,” “socialist.” Haters screaming “Kill him.”
Finally McCain kinda sorta stood up to a supporter in Minnesota who denounced Obama as an “Arab.” McCain replied, “No, ma’am, he’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.” At another point, he said, ”I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States,” to boos and groans from the crowd.
It’s no accident McCain stood up after several honorable Republicans and former McCain supporters began to speak out about his campaign’s hate-mongering. On Friday Michigan’s former GOP governor William Milliken started backing away from the guy he endorsed.
“He is not the McCain I endorsed,” Milliken told a local paper. “He keeps saying, ‘Who is Barack Obama?’ I would ask the question, ‘Who is John McCain?’ because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
“I’m disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues.”
Frank A. Schaeffer, a McCain friend and former supporter (McCain blurbed his book on military service), has denounced the McCain campaign in a Baltimore Sun Op-Ed he cross-posted on Open Salon.
“Stop! Think! Your rallies are beginning to look, sound, feel and smell like lynch mobs,” Schaeffer warned. Strong words, but he’s right. Even former McCain staffers like Mike Murphy and John Weaver are criticizing the tenor of the campaign. As David Gergen said on CNN Thursday night: “There is this free floating sort of whipping around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think we’re not far from that.”
On “Hardball” today the GOP’s Ed Rogers defended McCain and attacked me when I echoed Gergen and suggested the McCain-Palin demonization of Obama was creating a climate that could lead to violence. Luckily John McCain agreed with me, and disagreed with Rogers.
Update: Wow, I just watched the video, and I belatedly remembered: It was Ed Rogers who first called the Illinois senator “Barack Hussein Obama” on “Hardball” in November 2006. Wish I’d remembered this afternoon!
Joan Walsh, Salon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/10/11/current_mccainsdishonest/index.html
RCP Average 10/01 - 10/09 -- 49.4 42.8 Obama +6.6
Newsweek 10/08 - 10/09 1035 RV 52 41 Obama +11
FOX News 10/08 - 10/09 900 RV 46 39 Obama +7
Gallup Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 2784 RV 51 41 Obama +10
Rasmussen Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 3000 LV 50 45 Obama +5
Hotline/FD Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 838 LV 48 41 Obama +7
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 1203 LV 48 43 Obama +5
GW/Battleground Tracking 10/06 - 10/09 800 LV 51 43 Obama +8
Time 10/03 - 10/06 1053 LV 50 44 Obama +6
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/04 - 10/05 658 RV 49 43 Obama +6
CBS News 10/03 - 10/05 616 LV 48 45 Obama +3
CNN 10/03 - 10/05 694 LV 53 45 Obama +8
Ipsos/McClatchy 10/02 - 10/06 858 RV 47 40 Obama +7
Democracy Corps (D) 10/01 - 10/05 1000 LV 49 46 Obama +3
More evidence that the polling numbers are actually understating Obama's support:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/partisanship_and_ideology_amon.php
Cell phone only users are not only more likely to be Democrats, but they are more likely to be liberal even as compared to DEMOCRATS as a whole. Leaving out cell phone only users from polling, even after adjusting for age, party and other demographics, understates Obama's support by 2-3%.
Have a nice day.
GA
Interesting how Obama supporters feel so compelled to keep arguing that he has so much support. I really think this overkill masks an insecurity about his chances.
Virtually every campaign ever run has "pesonal" issues. Voters need to judge character and, especially, in the Presidential race.
The Democrats and their media supporters have now hit a new low as they accuse anyone who questions Obama's character of inciting violence.
The worst part is the implied racial connotations. The above posted stories are studded with gems like "lynching".
All this is irresponsible. While it seems unlikely now, imagine if McCain makes a comeback and wins the election by a slim margin. The media, after weeks of flaming this idea that McCain supporters are racist, could cause real problems.
Bottom line: Obama is running for President. It is not hateful or bigoted to question his character. We do it of all Presidents and, actually, Obama has had it pretty easy from a sympathetic press. If he wins, he will be the least qualified and accomplished person to ever become President. He's probably not the most deceitful but usually his level of lying doesn't become apparent until after taking office.
"Thanks for calling me "elderly" -- I'd like my senior discount, if you don't mind."
Just ask for it.
I doubt you'd be carded.
"I've had my share of fundraisers and I didn't vet any of them, so for all I know any could have unsavory associations from his past."
Yes, but Obama did know this guy's past. That's become clear as he has continued to lie about it.
Obama in last two days has started gaining again and if something doesn't change soon, we're about to make a huge mistake.
"The people with whom McCain pals around -- the old-line anti-Semites,"
Let's hear a few names.
"and the new-line ones such as Palin,"
A lie.
"and the homegrown terrorists who bombed OK City"
McCain's connected to McVeigh?
"and run the militias in MI"
Like who?
"and elsewhere, are all Republicans, which you know well enough."
People can register for any party they want.
I'm a registered Democrat. Does everything I say and do accrue to all Democrats?
"Anonymous" troll (he/she/it with the diarrhea-mouth syndrome): You are one sick puppy...and sooo tiresome, too. Time for you to get your own blog site where you can rant and rave as much as you like and as often as you like (which, here, seems like every 10 minutes)to your disilusioned and demented CRGer groupies.
Citizen
Interesting how Obama supporters feel so compelled to keep arguing that he has so much support. I really think this overkill masks an insecurity about his chances.
Nah, it's more like an anticipatory end zone spike. :-P
well, I guess, no matter what, it's got to be better than talking about his:
experience
accomplishments
integrity
judgment
consistency
sexism
associations
hopefully, the economy will keep distracting everyone so they don't focus on those
btw, speaking of the economy, other than raise taxes on an economy going into recession, what other ideas does Obama have
reuters is out with a fresh poll this morning showing Obama's lead has plumetted from 5 yesterday to 4today
an angry mob surrounded Obama in Hollywood, screaming demands that he get working to stop McCain's advances
Obama faced the crowd and said "relax, that's what I'm going to do".
Then, oddly, he started singing:
"when I find myself in times of trouble
mother Ann comes to me
speaking words of wisdom
'run a commercial about me'
there will be an answer
change we believe"
you know it's funny
you have this guy who's been criss-crossing the country the last two years telling everyone what a great President he'll be
yet, he's never done anything to qualify him to be President and doesn't seem to have new ideas now
and he claims to have an unspecified change in mind which we'll get the details about when he's in office
does anyone wonder when some kid is going to pop up at some campaign rally and say:
"the emperor has no clothes!" ?
Bad anonymous said "reuters is out with a fresh poll this morning showing Obama's lead has plumetted from 5 yesterday to 4today".
LOL, like that reality filter, you picked the one poll that went down and ignored the 8 that went up. Obama's lead in the poll average has jumped to a massive 7.7% from the 6.2% it was previously:
RCP Average 10/03 - 10/10 -- 49.9 42.2 Obama +7.7
Rasmussen Tracking 10/08 - 10/10 3000 LV 52 45 Obama +7
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking 10/08 - 10/10 1212 LV 48 44 Obama +4
Hotline/FD Tracking 10/08 - 10/10 808 LV 50 40 Obama +10
Newsweek 10/08 - 10/09 1035 RV 52 41 Obama +11
FOX News 10/08 - 10/09 900 RV 46 39 Obama +7
Gallup Tracking 10/07 - 10/09 2784 RV 51 41 Obama +10
GW/Battleground Tracking 10/06 - 10/09 800 LV 51 43 Obama +8
Time 10/03 - 10/06 1053 LV 50 44 Obama +6
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl 10/04 - 10/05 658 RV 49 43 Obama +6
That's the effect from the last debate kicking in. Obama's kicking Mcain butt.
Mccain/Palin 2008 Unstable/Unable
reuters is out with a fresh poll this morning showing Obama's lead has plumetted from 5 yesterday to 4today
Thanks for pointing that out Anon. It makes so much sense given that yesterday you said:
Interesting how Obama supporters feel so compelled to keep arguing that he has so much support. I really think this overkill masks an insecurity about his chances.
I'd change that to read
Interesting how Obama DETRACTERS feel so compelled to keep arguing that he has so much support SLIPPING AWAY.. I really think this MINUTIA overkill masks an insecurity about McBush/Failin's chances.
How'd you like the fresh yesterday Newsweek poll, Anon?
CAMPAIGN 2008
Pulling Away
Obama opens a double-digit lead in new NEWSWEEK poll
The global financial meltdown has caused a dramatic shift in the 2008 presidential race, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. With four weeks left in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama now leads John McCain by double digits, 52 percent to 41 percent among registered voters—a marked shift from the last NEWSWEEK poll, conducted one month ago, when the two candidates were tied at 46 percent.
Underlying Obama's surge in support: An historic boiling over of dissatisfaction with the status quo. An astounding 86 percent of voters now say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States, while a mere 10 percent say they are satisfied. That's the highest wrong track/right track ratio ever recorded in the NEWSWEEK poll.
For context on just how toxic these numbers could be for the Republic party, consider that in October, 2006, weeks before the Democrats swept control of both houses of Congress, only 61 percent of voters expressed dissatisfaction. Twenty-five percent of voters say they approve of the job President Bush is doing in the White House, a record low for any president in the NEWSWEEK poll and close to the historic low-approval rating of 22 percent the Gallup poll recorded for President Truman, in 1952. Voters are crying out for change and, for now, believe that the Democratic presidential candidate has a greater likelihood of delivering it. Asked which ticket they thought was most likely to bring about change if elected, voters said Obama-Biden over McCain-Palin 52 percent to 37 percent. A month ago, Obama-Biden led by only five points, 47 percent to 42 percent...
Bad Anonymous said "Now even Gallup's dubious poll, that no one has replicated, is showing a declining lead for Obama. It was 11 the last two days".
LOL! Its just been replicated bad anonymous, Newsweek has Obama by 11.
Tell us again about president Huckabee.
In more bad news for Mccain an independent investigator on a bipartisan panel in Alaska has found Scara Palin guilty of unlawful abuse of power:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3179330/Sarah-Palin-unlawfully-abused-power-in-feud-with-state-tooper-report-finds.html
"Anonymous said "Now even Gallup's dubious poll, that no one has replicated, is showing a declining lead for Obama. It was 11 the last two days".
LOL! Its just been replicated bad anonymous, Newsweek has Obama by 11"
Yes, and Gallup no longer agrees. Gallup has dropped to a 9 point lead.
"In more bad news for Mccain an independent investigator on a bipartisan panel in Alaska has found Sarah Palin guilty of unlawful abuse of power"
Political document. You notice they say it's unlawful but they are not recommending charges be filed.
Last thing they would want is to have their evidence scrutinized in court.
She committed no crime.
Panic in the Obama camp.
The prestigious Gallup poll, which had Obama leading by 11 two days ago and 10 yesterday, has now dropped to 9.
Obama sits alone and shakes his head.
Where did I go wrong, he thinks.
This post has been removed by the author.
No bad anonymous, in your desperation to deny reality you've got it wrong again. Gallup has Obama leading by 10% and the average of all the polls shows a continuing increase in Obama's lead to 7.6%. Your desperate denial of reality won't change it. Get used to president Obama.
Bad anonymous said "She committed no crime."
Yes she did, read the report:
"The report found that Mrs Palin violated a state ethics law prohibiting public officials from using office for personal benefit"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/sarahpalin/3179330/Sarah-Palin-unlawfully-abused-power-in-feud-with-state-tooper-report-finds.html
Any distant hopes republicans had that they might turn back the tide are completely destroyed by this revelation.
"in your desperation to deny reality you've got it wrong again. Gallup has Obama leading by 10%"
You're wrong,moron.
Here's a cut and paste from Gallup's website moments ago:
"PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 8-10 finds Barack Obama ahead by nine percentage points, 51% to 42%."
You need to keep up to date, Preya.
That's the second decline in two for Barack.
He's got something to worry about.
"anonymous said "She committed no crime."
Yes she did, read the report:
"The report found that Mrs Palin violated a state ethics law prohibiting public officials from using office for personal benefit""
Preya, this is a specious argument. There was ample cause to fire this individual. The report was prepared by Palin's enemies.
It would never hold up in court. That's why these enemies are not recommending prosecution of these "crimes".
Read analytically, Preya. i know the schools are bad up there but you need to take responsibility for your own reading skills.
Bad anonymous said "Political document.".
Not at all. It was a bipartisan panel that included four Republicans. They began the investigation before they ever knew Palin would be a part of the Republican ticket.
hopefully, the economy will keep distracting everyone so they don't focus on those
Here's some focus for you, AH.
Associations:
FactCheck.org reports:
"He Lied" About Bill Ayers?
October 10, 2008
McCain cranks out some false and misleading attacks on Obama's connection to a 1960s radical.
Summary
In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false.
In a Web ad and in repeated attacks from the stump, McCain describes the two as associates, and Palin claims they "pal around" together. But so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the street more than a year ago.
McCain says in an Internet ad that the two "ran a radical 'education' foundation" in Chicago. But the supposedly "radical" group was supported by a Republican governor and included on its board prominent local civic leaders, including one former Nixon administration official who has given $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. Education Week says the group's work "reflected mainstream thinking" among school reformers. The group was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, started by a $49 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which was established by the publisher Walter Annenberg, a prominent Republican whose widow, Leonore, is a contributor to the McCain campaign.
(FactCheck.org, which is nonpartisan, also receives funding from the Annenberg Foundation. But we are in no way connected to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which finished its work long before we came into being in late 2003.)
On the other hand, Palin has been found to have close associations with present day radicals and secessionists, especially those at the Alaska Independence Party.
Salon reports:
During the 1990s, when [Mark] Chryson directed the AIP, he and another radical right-winger, Steve Stoll, [AKA "Black Helicopter Steve," an activist with the John Birch Society] played a quiet but pivotal role in electing Palin as mayor of Wasilla and shaping her political agenda afterward. Both Stoll and Chryson not only contributed to Palin’s campaign financially, they played major behind-the-scenes roles in the Palin camp before, during and after her victory.
...When Palin ran for governor in 2006, marketing herself as a fresh-faced reformer determined to crush the GOP’s ossified power structure, she made certain to appear at the AIP’s state convention. To burnish her maverick image, she also tapped one-time AIP member and born-again Republican Walter Hickel as her campaign co-chair. Hickel barnstormed the state for Palin, hailing her support for an “all-Alaska” liquefied gas pipeline, a project first promoted in 2002 by an AIP gubernatorial candidate named Nels Anderson. When Palin delivered her victory speech on election night, Hickel stood beaming by her side. “I made her governor,” he boasted afterward. Two years later, Hickel has endorsed Palin’s bid for vice president.
Sexism:
FactCheck.org reports:
Belittling Palin?
September 11, 2008
Updated: September 12, 2008
A McCain-Palin TV ad accuses Obama of being "disrespectful" of Palin, but it distorts quotes to make the case.
Summary
The McCain-Palin campaign has released a new TV ad that distorts quotes from the Obama campaign. It takes words out of context to make it sound as though the Democratic ticket is belittling Palin:
The ad says "they said she was doing 'what she was told.' " But the Obama adviser who's being quoted didn't accuse Palin of meekly following orders. What he actually said is that she made a false claim about Obama's legislative record and added, "maybe that's what she was told."
It says "they lashed out at Sarah Palin; dismissed her as 'good looking,' " But "they" didn't lash out at all. Obama – who is the one pictured – didn't say anything like that. The only one the McCain campaign quotes is Obama's running mate, Biden, and he actually offered the remark as a compliment. Biden said the "obvious" difference between Palin and himself is "she's good looking."
The ad says Obama was "disrespectful" when he accused Palin of "lying" about her record. But the truth is Palin's claim to have "said no" to the "bridge to nowhere" is indeed a dubious one, as we and many have pointed out.
Consistency:
The Examiner reports:
A presidential campaign that has already seen its share of twists took another one today: Republican candidate John McCain said he was suspending his campaign to deal with the nation's economic crisis. McCain also said he would not attend Friday night's debate with Democratic rival Barack Obama unless an economic bailout deal is reached by then.
And as we all know, the McBush campaign never shut down any of its offices during the suspension and the debate took place as scheduled even though no "economic bailout deal" was reached by Friday, September 26, 2008.
For other McBush inconsistencies, see the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Carpetbagger Report.
Judgment:
McBush selected Sarah Palin, who was just found to have violated Alaska state ethics laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. McShame hoped selecting Palin would win over the Hillary vote but, yesterday's 11 point Obama advantage Newsweek poll found:
Supporters of Hillary Clinton, as many as a fifth of whom had at one point told pollsters they'd support McCain over Obama, now back the Democratic nominee 88 percent to 7 percent.
During the aftermath of the Keating Five debacle, McBush was criticized by the Senate Ethics Committee for having exercised "poor judgment."
The vast number and great disparity between his positions over the years he's been in office also point to his questionable judgment (see "Consistency").
Integrity:
McBush's view of the economy jumped from "the fundamentals are sound" to "we're in a crisis" in one morning. He used to be a straight talker but more and more conservatives are wondering what happened to the John McCain we knew?
William Milliken, former GOP Governor of Michigan recently said, “I’m disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues.”
Accomplishments:
Factcheck.org reported:
Barack Obama (June 3): "It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year."
The claim is true. According to Congressional Quarterly's Voting Studies, in 2007 McCain voted in line with the president's position 95 percent of the time
Experience:
The Washington Post reports:
A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street.
"Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that's exactly what I intend to do," a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. "In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we're going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place."
Yes, that's correct, its changed since I checked this AM. Gallup has Obama with a 9% lead and Newsweek has him at a 11% lead. The average of all polls has gone up and has Obama at a 7.6% lead, quite a jump from the 6.2% it was previously - your senile old man keeps getting farther and farther behind.
Bad anonymous said "The report was prepared by Palin's enemies.".
Wrong. It was prepared by a bipartisan panel that included four Republicans. They began the investigation before they ever knew Palin would be a part of the Republican ticket.".
Bad anonymous said "It would never hold up in court. That's why [they]are not recommending prosecution of these crimes.".
It'd be a slam-dunk in court. They haven't recommended prosectution because of the increasingly hostile nature of the Mccain/Palin ticket. They know if they convict her outright violence will break out and some Republican may take a shot at Obama. Its kind of rewarding bad behavior but its the unfortunate reality of the situation - Mccain/Palin supporters are losing control and this would put them over the edge.
"It was prepared by a bipartisan panel that included four Republicans."
Preya, the Republicans up there are out to get Palin. She shook up corruption on a bipartisan basis and exposed many of their friends.
"It'd be a slam-dunk in court. They haven't recommended prosectution because of the increasingly hostile nature of the Mccain/Palin ticket. They know if they convict her outright violence will break out and some Republican may take a shot at Obama. Its kind of rewarding bad behavior but its the unfortunate reality of the situation - Mccain/Palin supporters are losing control and this would put them over the edge."
This whole statement is an unbelievable fantasy. What's so sad is that Preya thinks anyone would believe it.
Does anyone else think that the report doesn't recommend prosecution because officials are afraid it will cause riots in America?
How many hours a day do the doctors let you go outside, Preya?
This post has been removed by the author.
Bad anonymous said "the Republicans up there are out to get Palin.".
LOL, rein in your paranoia, its out of control. This was an impartial bipartisan committee that had nothing to do with any corruption or people involved in corruption. She crossed the line of legality and she's been rightly called on it. If there hadn't been any corruption on Palin's part it would have been readily apparent and the panel would have been unable to connect the dots to show this pattern of crime. Instead the facts soundly demonstrate Palin's law-breaking dirty dealing.
Bad anonymous said "She shook up corruption on a bipartisan basis.".
She didn't oppose corruption, she opposed the competition for her own corrupt desires and actions. She didn't stop any corruption she just changed the person in charge of it. Her corruption has now been exposed to the world. This is the final nail in the Mccain/Palin coffin.
"Instead the facts soundly demonstrate Palin's law-breaking dirty dealing."
Really?
Could you tell me some of these facts?
I hear they say she "personally benefitted" from an action she took as governor.
Let's hear their proof.
I think they're stretching it for political purposes. I bet the law has never been applied except to refer financial "personal benefit".
The respected Rasmussen report is joining the prestigious Gallup poll in noting that McCain is steadily gaining on Obama.
Before the debate, he was behind by 8, and in today's survey, this has declined to 7.
A sinking feeling has swept Obama HQ:
"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama attracting 52% of the vote while John McCain earns 45%. This is the first update based entirely on interviews conducted after the second Presidential debate. On Tuesday morning, just before the debate, Obama was leading 52% to 44%."
Looks like That One lost that debate.
This from the highly regarded Zogby survey, which has joined the respected Rasmussen report and the prestigious Gallup poll in detecting a one point drop in Obama's lead in the poll.
Yesterday, Zogby had a 5 point lead and, today, it's a 4 point lead.
The Zogby poll is known for its accuracy.
When three polls detect the exact same movement in the polls, that's about as solid as it gets.
Obama, you can thank your buddy, Bill Ayers for your tight trace:
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama holds a 4-point lead over Republican rival John McCain in a tight race for the White House, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Saturday.
Obama leads McCain 48 percent to 44percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest four-day tracking poll, down slightly from Obama's 5-point advantage on Friday. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points."
Hope Michelle hasn't ordered any new curtains for the White House yet.
Wow!
3 of the 4 polls released today show Obama's lead declining by 1 point.
The other poll must be an outlier!
OUTLIER ALERT!
Keep dreaming bad anonymous, you've got roughly 3 weeks to fantasize before it becomes impossible for you to maintain your fantasy that Mccain's going to win.
Obama's been doing alot of voter registration:
"The latest wave of ACORN investigations has provided Republicans with a new line of criticism to use against the Democratic presidential nominee, who represented ACORN in a lawsuit in the 1990s.
Nevada authorities raided the group's state headquarters Tuesday in connection with a voter-fraud probe. The branch had submitted voter registration forms carrying the names of celebrities such as Tony Romo and Terrell Owens, both members of the Dallas Cowboys, and other voters have come forward to say that they were asked by ACORN employees to submit multiple registration forms.
"Given ACORN’s recent efforts to engage in voter fraud and to disrupt our political system, Obama’s affiliation with this group raises serious questions about his judgment and ability to lead this nation," Sen. John McCain's campaign wrote in a memo Friday.
During the Democratic primaries, Obama was endorsed by ACORN’s political action committee. And in the early 1990s, according to the McCain campaign, Obama was involved in teaching community organizing classes for the organization.
Obama’s campaign has also shelled out about $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary, Citizens Services Inc., to help with voter registration efforts.
"Sen. Obama's ties with ACORN go back a long way," Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt said on a McCain campaign conference call Friday. "Before he launched his political career in the home of Bill Ayers, he was fighting alongside ACORN. He acted as their lawyer. He has taught classes to ACORN liberal community organizers."
Republicans have also attempted to link the organization to the current financial crisis. On Friday the McCain campaign posted a Web video that accused ACORN of “bullying banks” and "forc[ing them] to issue risky home loans. The same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we’re in today."
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), whose home state also turned up improper ACORN registration forms, said Thursday that the federal government should investigate the group’s registration activities.
“I believe we are witnessing a national trend that must be fully investigated to protect the sanctity of our elections,” Blunt said in a statement."
The other three polls released today have Obama leading by an average of 8.6%. The Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby is an outlier.
spin it any way you want, preya
you can't deny that all three polls, other than the outlier poll, show Obama's lead decreasing by a full point from yesterday to today
and more scandal is on the horizon
The Zogby poll is known for its accuracy.
The Zogby poll is known for its accuracy
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Heh. Boy, it's so clear that you know absolutely nothing about polling or pollsters. That's a good one.
Zogby and ARG are the two worst pollsters around. Zogby is a wonderful self-promoter, so you know his name. Being the clueless moron that you are, you assume that if you've heard of him, he must be good.
NO -- he uses a form of internet polling which has been shown to be wildly inaccurate and he was the least accurate of all pollsters in both 2004 and 2006, along with ARG.
Try again.
"he uses a form of internet polling which has been shown to be wildly inaccurate"
yesterday, 3 out of 4 showed the same downward trend for Obama's suddenly shaky lead and Zogby was one of them
not bad
you might want to reassess
Zogby has a new poll just out a few moments ago with surveys from today included
more disintegration in Obama's lead
yesterday, his lead was 4.2%
today, it's 3.8%
much like the Big Bang, we can see where this is headed
"WASHINGTON (Oct. 11) - Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, says the negative tone of the Republican presidential campaign reminds him of the hateful atmosphere that segregationist Gov. George Wallace fostered in Alabama in the 1960s.
Republican candidate John McCain on Saturday called Lewis' remarks "shocking and beyond the pale."
The Obama campaign said the Illinois senator doesn't believe McCain or his policy criticism is at all comparable to Wallace and his segregationist policies."
Thankfully, Obama isn't encouraging this but this new Democratic/media attempt to seal the deal for Obama by portraying McCain's rallies as a angry and unruly mob may backfire.
Of course, never let it be said that "teach the facts" ever neglected a chance to spread a lie to promote liberalism.
"Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers.
Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to the dismal interview. The Tampa Tribune, for example, reported that she said: “I shoulda told them I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.”
But Milbank’s report triggered Democratic rage across the Internet with his charge that “Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness.” Some in the Clearwater crowd, he wrote, shouted abuse at reporters. Someone yelled “Kill him,” apparently a reference to Ayers; and one person shouted an epithet at a network sound man (apparently the N-word, though Milbank didn’t say) and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
Two shouting extremists in a crowd of 4,500 are two too many, of course. The question is whether these outliers offer sufficient evidence for a clearly hostile reporter to demonstrate that Palin’s rallies have gotten ugly. Florida reporters did not see the event that way. The St. Petersburg Times ran a benign story on the Palin speech. William March of the Tampa Tribune told me, “They booed Obama and the press, but that just makes it a normal Republican rally.” March admitted that he was standing further from the speaker’s stand than national press reporters, and therefore heard less, but he maintains that the rally was no hate-fest.
An early web version of Milbank’s column was headlined, “In Fla., Palin Goes for the Rough Stuff as Audience Boos Obama.” Rough stuff? There’s no evidence that Palin did anything more than challenge Obama on Ayers. In the short TV clip available at the Huffington Post, the crowd booed in response to Palin’s litany of Obama’s liberal votes in the Senate. This is pretty standard campaign behavior.
Milbank’s lone racist at the rally soon became a group (or a mob) of people shouting racial epithets. A New York Times editorial Tuesday (“The Politics of Attack”) misquoted Milbank’s Post column, claiming that one person shouted “Kill him” and “others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.” Many blogs followed suit: “Crowd at Palin Rally Hurled Racial Epithets at African American on News Crew,” read the headline at Pensito Review. This was too much for Bob Somerby, the left-leaning blogger at the Daily Howler. Calling Milbank “a highly unreliable chronicler,” Somerby taunted the Times for multiplying racists at the rally: “It’s the power of pluralization!...One example becomes much more powerful when we stick an ‘s’ on the end. In this case, one epithet-shouter turns into a group. How many people were shouting those epithets? The editors let you imagine.”
At the Huffington Post, the “Kill him” shout directed at Ayers was interpreted as an assassination threat against Obama. Another Huffington piece asked, “Is Palin Trying to Incite Violence Against Obama?” As the misreporting gathered steam on the Internet, writers became ever angrier. “The event sounds like the precursor to a lynching,” wrote a Daily Kos blogger. Another opined: “There is a time to start feeling fear.” Former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer compared Palin events with George Wallace speeches, though he gracefully conceded that “lots of journalists have worked in situations more menacing than covering Sarah Palin.”
This was a disastrous outing for the Post, the Times, and bloggers determined to view Palin appearances as brownshirt rallies. If the atmosphere is so hate-filled and racist at these events, why does the evidence come down to one shouter at one rally?"
question:
What do Obama and Osama bin Laden have in common?
answer:
They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon.
It is clear that the Anoinimoid, as usual, doesn't really believe his own spin on the polls, essentially making reference to the 2nd derivative of some polls, but is instead simply trying to arouse responses. He's copped that this is his real purpose in blogging here.
It's a good lesson in the reality of cherry-picking, though.
Was it Mark Twain who said, "There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"?
rrjr
Btw, we haven't seen any irrelevant Dinesh quotes recently; has he retired?
rrjr
John Leo (the author of some of AH's unattributed cut and paste at October 12, 2008 5:46 AM) is wrong. It was not *one* protester at *one* rally. It's been many protesters at many rallies who were whipped up into frenzies by personal attacks on Obama by Pit Bull Palin and other right wing nuts. Last week began a real uptick in personal attacks against Obama by a desperate GOP and that's when the GOP crowds began to turn ugly.
During some rallies featuring McCain and Palin, supporters have shouted "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar" and even "off with his head."
This was a direct result of the McShame campaign turning negative out of desperation:
Last weekend, Palin signaled the uptick in the criticism when she charged that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," a reference to Ayers, and that he did not see the U.S. as others did.
Also last week, on October 6, a Florida Sheriff, stalling for time at a Palin rally, waiting for Palin to finish up at a fundraiser, worked the crowd like this:
ESTERO, FL - The sheriff of Lee County refered to the Democratic nominee as "Barack Hussein Obama" today as part of his introductory remarks before Sarah Palin spoke at a rally here.
"On Nov. 4, let's leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happend," Sheriff Mike Scott told the crowd at Germain Arena.
Scott was speaking as part of a program before Palin's arrival at the rally. Palin was at a fundraiser in Naples, Fla. at the time.
And two days later on October 8:
For the second time in three days, a rally for the Republican presidential ticket invoked Democrat Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, in an attempt to add to doubts about his background, faith and campaign.
Before John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin arrived at their rally in eastern Pennsylvania, Lehigh County GOP Chairman Bill Platt twice used Obama's middle name. Neither McCain nor Palin referred to Platt's remarks when they spoke, but their campaign quickly issued a statement saying it did not condone "this inappropriate rhetoric."
The campaign issued a statement later, but from the stage, no one said anything to calm the crowd. It was not until Friday, October 10, that finally McCain began to try to calm the frenzy that GOP rhetoric had been whipping up.
McCain defended Obama at a town-hall meeting Friday in Minnesota when a supporter said he feared what would happen if Obama were elected president. McCain also cut short a woman who said Obama was an Arab, and he called his rival "a decent, family man."
Zogby actually has Obama increasing his lead from 4% to 6%. See here. Obama now leads 49-43.
When even the lame-ass Zogby has your guy going in the wrong direction, you truly have nothing left.
Have a nice day.
GA
Uh oh, AH.
The "highly regarded Zogby survey," shows Obama up by 6% today.
Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby reports:
...Obama leads McCain by 49 percent to 43 percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest four-day tracking poll, his widest lead since the poll was started on Tuesday. It was up from a 4-point lead on Saturday. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Pollster John Zogby said Obama's lead was now statistically significant.
"As we watch each day, it is clear that he has gone from a 2-point lead to a 3-point lead on up to 6 points," Zogby said. "It is certainly trending his way..."
You'll have to find another poll to cherry pick.
Zogby said McCain, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, appeared to be failing to connect with many voters on the issue of the economy, and a wave of attacks leveled against Obama by the McCain campaign also fell flat.
"Clearly the negative campaigning isn't working," Zogby said, noting that Obama was winning support among some voters in even the strongest traditional Republican voting blocs.
From Frank Rich in the NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12rich.html?hp
what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.
By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.
That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.
Bad anonymous said "This from the highly regarded Zogby survey, which has joined the respected Rasmussen report and the prestigious Gallup poll in detecting a one point drop in Obama's lead in the poll. Yesterday, Zogby had a 5 point lead and, today, it's a 4 point lead. The Zogby poll is known for its accuracy.".
And today Zogby shows a 50% increase in Obama's lead. Now tell us again about how prestigious and accurate it is now that it contradicts you delusion that Obama is losing his lead. Tell us again about how Zogby confirms Obama's lead is dramaticly increasing. Fact is the only reason you made those claims about Zogby was that it was the lowest of the polls - an obvious outlier. Now its come more in line with the other polls thus indicating it is now more accurate.
Back when the average of the polls showed a 5.3% Obama lead you were assuring us (as you did with "president Huckabee") that Obama's lead was shrinking. Well today his lead in the poll average is 7.5%, once again your predictions of certainty about the future are a riotous joke.
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