“Third parties are like bees,” the intellectual historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in 1955. “Once they have stung, they die.” It’s an aphorism that aptly describes the anti-slavery and anti-immigrant parties of the mid-nineteenth century, the Populists and Progressives who ushered out the Gilded Age, as well as more recent third-party standard bearers, from George Wallace to Ross Perot. All of these movements and figures influenced American politics dramatically, before fading away and leaving the basic two-party duopoly intact.

Of late, though, our potential third parties have been skipping the stinging part and going straight to the dying. This was true of Unity ’08, the much-ballyhooed attempt by former Democratic and Republican politicos to put up an independent alternative to Barack Obama and John McCain. Despite enjoying a wave of free publicity and boasting Sam Waterston of “Law & Order” as their spokesman, the Unityers never even came close to conjuring up a plausible candidate or platform, and their movement fizzled out amid attempts to entice an unwilling Michael Bloomberg into the lists.

WASHINGTON -- Four years ago this week, a young and inspirational senator who promised to turn history's page swept the Iowa caucuses and began his irresistible rise to the White House.

Barack Obama was unlike any candidate the country had seen before. More than a mere politician, he became a cultural icon, "the biggest celebrity in the world," as a John McCain ad accurately if mischievously described him. He was the object of near adoration among the young, launching what often felt like a religious revival. Artists poured out musical compositions devoted to his victory in a rich variety of forms, from reggae and hip-hop to the Celtic folk song. (My personal favorite: "There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama.") Electoral contests rarely hold out the possibility of making all things new, but Obama's supporters in large numbers fervently believed that 2008 was exactly such a campaign.

President Obama was eager to meet real, suffering Americans in the troubled Midwest, and when he got there he promised "to do everything" he could to address the economic crisis that he had "inherited," one that he said was "as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression."

The date was February 9, 2009; the place was Elkhart, Ind. It was the newly inaugurated president's first trip out of Washington. This week, as Obama returns to the Midwest for another attempt at assuaging the nation's economic distress, the issue that he once said he had inherited--and few people disagreed with that assessment then--is seen by more and more people as his own problem.

Barack Obama has been President of the United States for 100 days now. Are you still happy with the vote you cast on Election Day 2008? Feel free to discuss after you answer the poll question.

A very telling spat erupted within the Republican Party recently. Meghan McCain, former presidential nominee John McCain's 24 year old daughter, wrote a blog entry for The Daily Beast that questioned the nasty tone and habitual meanness that fellow female conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham conduct themselves with in their various media outlets.

To Coulter's credit, and God knows I give her very little, she did not respond to McCain's criticism. I would have preferred if she had responded in a respectful way but, given what Ingraham said, Coulter gets points for inaction. Laura Ingraham's response to McCain's criticism was to characterize the young woman as a "Valley Girl gone awry" and "a plus-sized model." Aside from not knowing what in the 9th level of Hell the latter has to do with a political discussion, both disgust me and make me want to call in to Ingraham's show and ask her what point she was trying to make because it clearly got lost in translation.

However, the more I thought about it the more I realized that those particular insults are right in line with spoiling a female conservative commentator because the mostly male talk radio crowd and the ultra-conservative males all have one thing in common: if they're going to listen to a female they want to be able to drool over her. Ingraham's first salvo was an easy cheapshot: portray Meghan McCain as a ditzy dumb blonde from Sodom & Gomorrah (wait, sorry, California to those of you speaking Ingrahamese) and she can be automatically discounted as an ignorant Left Coast Liberal. Body shots to Meghan McCain's intellectual reputation? Check. The second statement, however, is by far the single most pernicious and nauseating thing that I have heard come out of a conservative commentator's mouth since Rush Limbaugh's television "joke" in which he says everyone knows that the Clintons have a White House cat named Socks. He then asks if people knew they had a White House dog. The punchline is that he holds up a picture of a thirteen year old Chelsea Clinton. Ingraham's sorry retort was basically saying "Hey, a fat girl's criticizing me! Who's gonna listen to some chubby chick?"

The whole point of Ingraham's statements were to illustrate that 1) Meghan McCain doesn't have a brain and 2) Even if she has a brain, she's fat so who would want anything to do with her anyway? This cuts to the quick of the problem with the Republican Party collectively. The party objectifies women to an obscene degree. Meghan McCain is, to my mind, pretty and smart. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter in this current showdown. The Republican Party has a clear history of objectifying women in their ranks and one only need to look back at last November to find concrete proof.

Sarah Palin, the rising star of the Republican Party and Vice Presidential nominee in 2008, was lauded as a big deal. Once her name and face got out among the public, what did I hear? What else did I expect to hear... she was a sex object and that overrode any and all questions about her fitness for office. The earliest and most lasting label attached to her was "GILF": Governor I'd Like to F***. Talking to some Republicans that I was working the polls with on Election Day, they regaled me with stories of how when Palin visited West Chester, Ohio that grown men were using a camcorder to ogle her ass and legs and spent the entire political rally talking about the multiple sundry things they would like to do to her. Better yet, some of the young bucks that were doing the physical labor tried (and thankfully failed) to create a hole in the stage so that they could obtain an upskirt shot of Palin: a bit of privacy that no one deserves to have taken away from them. Not only that, but the clamor among men was so loud that a pornography film from Hustler was made entitled "Nailin' Palin." Also, the gun community was all abuzz about how absolutely hot it was that Sarah Palin not only carried firearms but hunted animals with them and, apparently, brought many men close to climax simply by being photographed with her heavy artillery.

So we get to Ingraham trying to discredit Meghan McCain. It would seem that unless you are considered a hot and attractive woman that you cannot hold a position in the Republican Party, much less voice it. Ingraham's response indicates that she knows what her audience likes: articulate women that are bombshells (comparatively at least) that dress like sluts. Meghan McCain does not dress like a slut so, unfortunately, she is going to be tarred and feathered for saying anything besides the party line.

And so we have arrived at Bizaro World: a party that is angry with liberals for destroying family values and not outlawing pornography caters to a base that consumes ever-increasing amounts of pornography and will only listen to a woman and take her seriously if she sates the needs of their sexual fantasy world.

I've been gone from the Republican Party since May, 2006 and all I have to say is this: What the f***?

For a very simple and basic crash course in reality economics, everyone should watch Rachel Maddow's excellent 'bullpucky' video which shows the Republicans in action and the unrealistic manner in which they - who have GOT jobs- are behaving in America's biggest crisis for three decades.

Last month the unemployment figures reached a record high of nearly 600,000 losses. That folks means, for every single day during January, 1,643 people lost their jobs; for every single hour that some Republican Senators were having their lavish lunch, unaware of the real world, 68 people were just being laid off. That is just over one person per minute without a job to go to at the start of 2009. But we still see Republican Senators saying how there is no need to hurry! They have to take their time to avoid errors in the Bill. In fact, with their jobs being secure, they alone appear to have all the time in the world!

They also seem to be hung up on the fact that there is too much spending in the Stimulus Package, there should be more tax refund, they cry. Ye gods, for the dimwitted among them, ANY government spending is a STIMULUS! It creates jobs until the economy can create them itself. Let's take a look at the basic holes in their tax argument.

I am no economist, and simply giving tax relief to everyone is a great idea, but any blind person can see that the limitations are major:
1. You have to have a JOB to get a tax refund and millions have lost their jobs over the last year.

2. A tax refund is a ONE-OFF activity. It will not be repeated and there is no guarantee it will be spent, when spending is needed to boost the economy.

3. In fact most people are likely to save the tax relief for a rainy day because there is NO CONFIDENCE in the economy just now and so it is likely to act as a cushion for the future, not a stimulus for the present.

4. Stimulating the economy in providing jobs is the only way to get people to SPEND because they will be having regular money each week and their confidence in spending will gradually improve.

5. You cannot avoid spending in an economic crisis as big as this global one because, if anything else were the answer, it would have been curing itself by now!! It wouldn't need urgent government action.

The Stimulus Bill has it exactly right: more spending to tax cuts, because short-term JOBS are the essential requirements here, to stimulate long-term growth.

The Republican Senators in the US Senate remind me of Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. Watching John McCain pronouncing on the same old failed arguments showed that they seem to have forgotten one essential thing while trying to tear the Bill apart for their selfish and partisan ends: If the people wanted THEIR limiting kind of politics and arguments, their shortsighted rhetoric, their way of doing things on Capitol Hill, they would have been voted back in.

You lost Republicans. Yes, genuinely lost! You are not the government in power anymore so stop acting as if you are. Now is NOT the time for partisan politics. Now is the time to get behind the leader America voted for, and his policies, rescue your country and THEN attack Obama from a position of strength. At the rate you are going, there won't be a country to rescue!!

Senators, you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. If you are not part of the solution, get out of the way for the others who are. Better still, go for immediate training with Rachel Maddow's video. It could really open up your eyes to the reality of NOW.

And by the way, another 4 people have just lost their jobs in the time it takes to read this!

No need to hurry, of course. :o(

You cannot miss this! Too funny - and true!

YouTube - Real Time with Bill Maher - New Rules. 14.11.08

Barack Obama ended his campaign so flush with cash he's telling staffers to keep the change - and then some.

Long-suffering political footsoldiers who toiled tirelessly, at least since September, to put Obama in the White House recently learned they will be getting extra paychecks worth a month's salary, the Daily News has learned.

And boy, are they grateful.

"I think it's a very nice gesture for people who slaved away and sacrificed for the past year," said one pleased ex-staffer...

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I was watching Real Time With Bill Maher last night, as I do each week, and listening to the discussion. It wasn't great (the panel was Martin Short, Ben Affleck and Bernie Sanders) but it did crystallize something that had been bothering me. It was about the McCain campaign and this nebulous feeling that had been troubling me. On a quick tangent, some guests occasionally get too "left" for me and I find the show boring but I really enjoy it when they have a good mix of liberals and conservatives on there because it's HBO and they can say whatever they want. Also I think that Maher hits the mark with his social/political commentary many times at the end of his New Rules segment.

So, Maher was discussing McCain and his campaign. Maher revealed that he had backed John McCain in 2000 not just in the primary but to win the entire ball of wax. I also backed John McCain in that fateful 2000 primary that pitted him against George W. Bush. Thinking about McCain's campaign then and his campaign now and the differences and the foolish and costly mistakes being committed now, it began to dawn on me why his campaign is so dysfunctional in 2008 when it was not expected to be.

My conclusion was that McCain does not have in him the candidate that he is trying to be and that he would need to be to win this election. In 2000, there was a full-throated rejection of the radical right and its shepherds like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. He called them agents of intolerance. This time around, he gave the commencement speech at Liberty University in 2006, Falwell's baby, and is on as friendly of terms as he can get with Robertson since Robertson is a force in right wing politics in Virginia and McCain is on the verge of being the first Republican to lose Virginia since Goldwater lost it to Lyndon B. Johnson. Robertson's ministry is based in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

The Bush-Rove strategy of winning an election necessitates that the candidate be agreeable to running advertisements that not only bend the truth but snap it, urinate on it and then do an Irish jig on it. McCain is consciously willing to do this, allowing robo calls and his VP candidate to tell the public at large that Obama pals around with terrorists, but unconsciously he is clearly not on board with what is necessitated for a campaign of such scope. This was evidenced when a woman at a Minnesota rally stood up and said she did not trust Obama because he was an Arab and McCain took her microphone and said there was nothing to be feared from an Obama presidency. The campaign's character attacks were working with that woman and then McCain took the microphone from her and defused the damage his campaign had done to Obama's character in Minnesota. Even though it was the honorable thing to do, it wasn't the company line. His campaign had worked hard to scare that woman into voting for McCain and he wiped out all that work by assuring the crowd that Obama is not an Arab.

The irony of John McCain's campaign is that he did not know which candidate he wanted to be until the concession speech when he switched back to the old John McCain. Perhaps if he had switched back to the old McCain sooner he might have won.

For the first time in 32 years, Democrats got more than 50 percent of the country to vote for their candidate in a national election, and now they want to lecture the Republican Party on how to win elections. Liberal Republicans have joined them, both groups hoping no one will notice that we just lost this election by running the candidate they chose for us.

...

So "reformist" evidently means a Republican who is liberal on social issues. My term for that is "Joe Lieberman." Whatever the merit of being liberal on social issues, both Joe Lieberman and the Republican Party's history suggest that the winning formula is the exact opposite combination.

(Video) McCain Aides Spill the Dirt: Irked Over Unauthorized Palin Shopping Spree

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Actually, the Palin scapegoating began before the polls even opened, with top McCain staffers complaining that the Alaska governor was a "diva" given to straying "off message."

Nonsense.

True, she turned out not to be the magic bullet Republicans had hoped for.

Then again, John McCain turned out not to be the asset Republicans had hoped for. Terming his performance - and that of the campaign itself - lackluster sort of understates the case.

Moreover, McCain & Co. knew there was a risk with Palin (including in giving away one of their strongest arguments against Obama: his lack of experience).

"I have been guilty of cussing this country out 'cause we have not always shown our best and put our best foot forward."

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"Well, this evening, the country has proved my old man wrong and we're the better for it."...

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The U.S. military said Wednesday it was investigating claims a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan hit a wedding causing civilian deaths, as President Hamid Karzai urged U.S. election winner Barack Obama to bring an end to civilian deaths.

...a villager at the scene, reported that 33 women and children -- all members of a wedding party -- were killed during a U.S. fight with the Taliban.

"If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan,"

Afghan and United Nations officials said 90 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in the August 22 strike.

The U.S. military initially denied any civilians were killed but a subsequent investigation prompted by cell phone pictures showing dozens of bodies conceded that 33 civilians were killed.

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The election of Barack Obama as president brings the Rev. Jackson to tears.

Watch now

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A dying Florida man fulfilled his last wish on the way to the hospital when he stopped to mail his absentee ballot.

Lloyd Chamberlain died a few days ago during a triple bypass operation.

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America voted in record numbers, standing in lines that snaked around blocks and in some places in pouring rain. Voters who queued up Tuesday and the millions who balloted early propelled 2008 to the highest turnout in generations, maybe a century.

Preliminary projections based on 83 percent of the country's precincts tallied, indicate that more than 131 million Americans will have voted this year, easily outdistancing 2004's 122.3 million, which had been the highest grand total of voters before.

That puts the 2008 turnout rate of eligible voters hovering around 64 percent, experts said.

That's the best in at least 44 years, maybe more depending on who is doing the counting and how they count.

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Four employees hired by a temporary staffing agency to encourage absentee voting for Republican presidential candidate John McCain say they were instructed to tell people they were GOP volunteers.

I had to stand for nine hours, but it got me within ten feet of Barack Obama when he gave his speech... and it was worth every second. His final stump speech was strong and dignified. When the audience booed, he responded "Don't boo, just vote," and he noted with humor that Dick Cheney emerged from this undisclosed location to say that he was "delighted" to endorse McCain for president. Not only that, but he lauded McCain as someone that had served our country honorably and was not a bad person, he was just wrong on the issues. It was impressive, it was determined and it was presidential in tone. It was, in an understatement, great.

Seeing Obama in person made me understand why high profile conservatives have taken to derisively calling Barack Obama "The One." The reason they do it is because they both recognize and fear Obama's greatness. They should recognize it because they have seen it before in the man they have turned into legend, the father of the modern conservative movement: Ronald Reagan. Not since Reagan has a presidential candidate appealed to such a demographically wide swath of Americans. Not since Reagan has a candidate aroused such enthusiasm and activism by as many people. If you are a conservative, you know by experience or lore what it was like during Reagan's time: he tamed the Democrats in Congress, nothing stuck to him and it was good being a Republican because you were on the top of the political food chain.

"The One" has been coined as the Right's new way of referring to Obama in a critical manner because they see in him the same characteristics that kicked off the conservative revolution in 1980 that they greatly enjoyed until 2006: like Reagan, he is photogenic... there's not a camera that does not love the man. Also, like Reagan, Obama is calm and unflappable. He has not been coined "No Drama Obama" for nothing. Again, like Reagan, he has proven over and over again when people say that he can't because he is a lightweight (one was a former actor, the other just a state senator before ascending to the heights of competing for the presidency) that he can and indeed is no lightweight. Their politics are different, but their character, demeanor and potential for greatness the same.

...many commentators resented his unflappable calm, his unshakable optimism, his irrepressible good humor, his failure to understand that he really wasn't up to the job.

Did you think that was part of a speech about Barack Obama? It most certainly could be as these have been hallmarks of Obama over nearly two years of campaigning and fighting for the greatest office in the land. But no, that is a portion of a speech made by Jeane Kirkpatrick about Ronald Reagan that is posted at the American Enterprise Institute's website. In fact, most of Reagan's critics were saying about him in 1980 the same things they are saying about Barack Obama now: he'll be a failure in office if the American people are foolish enough to elect such an inexperienced person to the Oval Office.

The reason that The Right has taken to calling Obama "The One" with such contempt and rancor in their voice is the same reason they light up when they talk about Ronald Reagan, Reagan Democrats, putting Reagan on the dime, etc. They see Reagan's leadership qualities in Obama, Obama poised right where Reagan was 28 years ago, and they are jealous. They are jealous that the next great American leader is aligned with the left and not with the right. They have political penis envy and calling Obama "The One" is their way of going out and buying a sports car to assuage their hurt feelings.

I am going to end with a quote that Jeane Kirkpatrick also used in her Reagan speech:

A leader is a dealer in hope. - Napoleon Bonaparte

I have been told many times by many people that do not like Barack Obama or that are not voting for him (there is a difference) that his talk of "hope" and "change" is all pap. If that is true, then Reagan's belief that morning could come in America again and his peddling of that notion in the midst of the advance of our enemies, the retreat of our economy and the stagnation of the American can-do attitude was all pap too. In reality, all great presidents are dealers in hope whether it is Abraham Lincoln being determined that the country would continue on as one entity and assuring the North of that, FDR giving his inaugural address and fireside chats to convince the American people that they were tough enough to not only survive but thrive in the Great Depression and World War II or Ronald Reagan selling the idea that the Soviets could be beaten, our economy revived and our reputation restored after Iran took our hostages. The qualities of a great leader have not changed since ancient times... it is simply with chagrin that our brothers and sisters on the right recognize these qualities in our candidate and not their's.

Like Barack said last night: don't boo, vote. Let's get the job done for him and then start rolling up our sleeves to get the job done for America. With a man that peddles hope like Lincoln, FDR and Reagan, America can be a shining light upon a hill again... the example for all the world to see and emulate.

In the hours before Election Day, as inevitable as winter, comes an onslaught of dirty tricks — confusing e-mails, disturbing phone calls and insinuating fliers left on doorsteps during the night.

The intent, almost always, is to keep folks from voting or to confuse them, usually through intimidation or misinformation. But in this presidential race, in which a black man leads most polls, some of the deceit has a decidedly racist bent.

Complaints have surfaced in predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia where fliers have circulated, warning voters they could be arrested at the polls if they had unpaid parking tickets or if they had criminal convictions.

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She unwittingly took a prank call from a Canadian comedian posing as France's President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The caller, using an exaggerated French accent, dropped a lot of hints along the way that it was a joke, but Palin seemingly did not pick up on them

Listen now

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Careful what you wish you may regret it,
Careful what you wish you just might get it!

- Metallica, King Nothing

This is, for all practical purposes, my lone article for the general election (post-Convention, of course). The main reason for that is because writing articles in the final weeks of a presidential contest is like whispering into a vacuum cleaner - it just adds to the noise.

But it's important to bundle some of the election together into one neat ball of understanding: the two most damaging words in American history will be "President Obama" (seemingly conventional wisdom indicates that Wall Street is going to take a belly flop at the news). And why is that?

It mostly stems from the fact that Obama is a polished, nice looking used car salesman. Buy this car and I'll throw in free rust protection and a free car washes for a year. But what's under the hood? Oh, good stuff, my man! If you buy a car from that other guy it won't be as good - he's not offering the same give-aways. Buy my car and I promise that someone will chauffer you around in it. But, um...what's under the hood? What about it's previous owners? I heard that Bill Ayers used to own this car. I'm not too keen on that. You weren't even born yet when Ayers got his groove on. Who wouldn't want to be affiliated with someone so respected in academia? Go ahead - look at the tire. Just don't kick it (like that Joe guy did). And so on...and so forth...

Yes, Obama is a master salesperson. He is a professional campaigner and has boldly embraced every left-wing initiative to grow the federal government. He wants to buy this election.

How does he do that?

Remember that so-called "amnesty bill" that President Bush and Senator McCain and dozens of other conservative Republicans supported? The one that was brought down by the hard-right hot air machine? The same one where I said that if we don't do this now, we may very well have a President Hillary or Obama do it for us, with eager support from the Pelosi-Reid union in Congress. And when this happens we will never again be allowed to abuse the term "amnesty" because real amnesty will be a reality in the next year or two (after we see government entitlements extended to illegals). This all-or-nothing mentality on this issue has gotten us just that - nothing. Not only nothing, but a long-term change to the how we handle the gates at the nations edge. Change We Can Believe In!

And here's the sale: kaching!! Obama and the Democrats have just rewarded millions of new voters with the gift of being beholden to their new welcomers and their new president, both in votes and contributions. This kind of sale will also be applied to felons serving time and millions of young people lining up to be indoctrinated by the Obama theme.

Obama and the Democrats stand to buy themselves electoral security for years to come. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will weaken our support for our democratic allies like Georgia and Israel. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will deal with our friends and enemies in the ways that have led to Cold War global expansion of Soviet Communism, the Killing Fields and the Peoples Republic of Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, the Second Intifada, a nuclear-armed North Korea and ultimately, a nuclear-armed Iran (Obama can finish the job started some thirty years earlier by Jimmy Carter). Change We Can Believe In!

Conservatives who have behaved in ways that suggested they had no where to go will suddenly find themselves with no where to go. We can brace for it but the reality is that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid trifecta will push through the biggest expansion of government spending, power and leftist politics this nation has ever seen. And Obama will use this opportunity to secure his own ideological philosophy through the appointment of two to four SCOTUS justices (the court of which will soon be named, The Dancing Ginsburgs). Change We Can Believe In!

As we've been told how both General Petraeus and Osama bin Laden considered Iraq to be the ultimate battlefield in the war on terror, tomorrow's election will be the ultimate battleground in the US war of politics and culture. Abortion will find a permanent home in America - Change We Can Believe In!; marriage will become obsolete - Change We Can Believe In!; national interests will take second place to international concerns - Change We Can Believe In!; our enemies will most certainly (per Joe Biden) test a President Obama - in ways they would never test a President McCain - Change We Can Believe In!; Big Government will find itself a permanent and lasting mandate to help fund every conceivable challenge and setback in life through spending and programs that once initiated, will never go away - in other words, your tax dollars are going to go to pre-school for three year olds, college for spoiled brats, health care for people regardless of economic circumstances or citizenship, doubling funding for the UN, increased foreign aid, an "army" of teachers, expansion of the Peace Corp, mandatory government service to achieve a high school diploma, higher salaries for teachers with no merit-based mechanism in place, federally funded abortions, unions doing away with secret ballots, energy programs that punish people, a welfare check for every working American who doesn't pay federal income taxes - Change We Can Pay For!

And conservatives who like their Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity or Beck...rest assure there will be drastic restrictions if not outright destruction of your favorite conservative talkers. The resurfacing 'Fairness Doctrine' may well be the first step toward silencing the opposition. - Change We Can Fall In Line With!

In my prophetic way, I pleaded with conservatives months ago to understand that they share a symbiotic relationship with the GOP - the crippling of the Republican Party will render conservatism impotent. Conservatives and Republicans will have to embrace each other again in order to at least hope for a midterm shift, in the face of all of the odds stacked against them, courtesy of the Democratic Party and the politics or purchasing elections and silencing conservative voices.

There is no Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings to fix everything. There is no fix. Even if circumstances lead conservatives back to a position of influence or power, instead of fighting for the America we have today, we will instead be fighting for the America the New Left Democrats will hand back to us. The status quo will be sharply different.

These are the thoughts I have late at night. Every generation is, in the face of aggressive progressivism, concerned about transformations that move us farther from the ideals of strength, sacrifice, family, faith, hard work and individualism. For the first time in my adult life, I am concerned. I sadly envision my children raising their kids in an America that is unrecognizable to us, one that shifts us farther away from lessons of the founding fathers, one that doesn't celebrate the family as we see it today. Today's America is an answer to the leftist shifts of much of the rest of western civilization; tomorrow's America may very well be leading the charge.

So to those honestly purport to be conservatives or Republicans, yet still think the answer is in a third party, or in staying home on election day or in making absurd comments questioning who the real conservative in the race is or prematurely writing off this election as in the bag for Obama (it is not) - it's time to put up or shut up. You can make your meaningless statement with your vote and throw the country under the bus or you can take the sure course in keeping conservatism alive and relevant and vote for John McCain.

There is no 'redo' or 'cleanup' function in tomorrows election. Come January, America will either continue to be the great country it has always been or it will "change" as promised...and those changes will be long lasting and damaging.

Believe It.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism of the Pew Research Center (which has never been accused of harboring conservative sympathies) concludes: "Coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable - and has become more so over time."

How unfavorable?

According to Pew's survey of 2,412 stories from 48 news outlets during the period between the end of the conventions through the final presidential debate, negative stories about McCain outweighed positive ones "by a factor of more than three to one."

Indeed, fully 57 percent of news stories on McCain were negative; only 14 percent were positive.

I read an article that estimated something like one third of all registered voters will have cast their ballots via early voting by the time that Tuesday arrives. That led me to an interesting question: is early voting going to nullify the "October Surprise"?

I just seeded a story about Obama's Kenyan aunt living illegally in Boston for the past 4 years. Normally, this would be a serious problem for a campaign. However, with two days of early voting left before Election Day exactly how much effect is it going to have?

If there had been early voting in 2000 like there is now, would that have tightened a race that Bush was winning comfortably until it came out that he hid a Maine drunk driving incident just days before the election?

I'm curious to know what Newsvine thinks about the correlation between early voting and these late-breaking, election-moving stories... or if there even is a linkage. Discuss.

Two men are "extremely sorry" for hanging an effigy of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the University of Kentucky campus, their attorney said Friday, but he said charges related to their "ill-conceived prank" were excessive.

UK student Joe Fischer, 22, and Hunter Bush, 21, pleaded not guilty to charges of disorderly conduct, burglary and theft the day after their arrest.

Their attorney, Fred Peters, told The Associated Press in an e-mail that "this incident was an ill conceived political prank."

"The two young men are extremely sorry for what they did and the embarrassment they have caused everyone," Peters said. "The charges are very extreme for what they did and we will deal with them in the courts."

The life-sized effigy was found Wednesday, hanging from a tree with a noose around its neck.

A judge set a preliminary hearing for Dec. 1.

Both men were still in the Fayette County Detention Center on Friday.

It was the second time in about a month such an effigy was found on a college campus. George Fox University, a small Christian college in Oregon, recently punished four students who confessed to hanging a likeness of Obama from a tree.

No criminal charges have been filed in other cases of political effigies displayed recently, including likeness of Barack Obama in Redondo Beach, Calif., and Clarksville, Ind. A mannequin of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin hanging in a man's yard in West Hollywood, Calif., also did not prompt charges. All those displays were taken down.

With less than a week to go before voters are expected to head to the polls in record numbers, a bogus flyer directing Republicans to vote Nov. 4 and Democrats to vote Nov. 5 has surfaced in Virginia. The state's Board of Elections said the fake has been distributed in Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, sounding louder alarms of voter fraud and intimidation across the nation.

"These tactics tend to escalate in the days before the election," said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice, adding there is concern that "we'll see more attempts like this."

Click here to see the flyer.

She said these types of misleading flyers appear each election year in an effort to suppress votes....

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The GOP vice presidential candidate addresses attacks made on the senator. Watch

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I was talking with a friend of mine that is a McCain supporter and he was saying to me that he felt that the media's treatment of McCain was poor and that it treated Obama much better. It reminded me of laments I had been hearing from conservatives since my political consciousness formed which was around the time that Bill Clinton was elected.

During Bill Clinton's time in office, I distinctly remember my Republican compatriots (I switched sides in May 2006) calling CNN names like the "Clinton News Network" and the "Communist News Network" and saying that the media had a major liberal bias. That is being said more today, during this election, than probably at any other time that I can think of. After much thought, I have come to a conclusion: the media does not have a liberal bias. In fact, it has no political bias at all. All news sources except PBS are operating under non-political conditions and their political coverage is driven with a different goal in mind.

My friend asked me if I believed that news organizations have a duty to be fair and to tell the truth and I responded that yes, indeed, news organizations do have those duties. The problem is that there are not many news organizations in America today. There are businesses that deliver news. This is an supremely important distinction.

Businesses own every major news outlet in America except the Public Broadcasting Service which is supported by donations from everyday citizens and some government assistance. Microsoft and General Electric co-own MSNBC, CNN is owned by Time-Warner, Fox News is owned by News Corporation. NBC is owned by General Electric. Disney owns ABC. Westinghouse owns CBS. Clear Channel dominates the radio station industry and its only serious competitor is CBS, which owns some radio stations of its own. That's it... there are some independent operators but no large group of Americans looks to them for news like they do to these paragons.

The reason it is a supremely important distinction that businesses are the ones providing news to the public is because, unlike news organizations, a business' number one goal is to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with this because that is what businesses are supposed to do: make money. They make money by selling advertising space to other businesses which their viewers imbibe in between receiving information from their news outlet of choice. This interconnects the information (i.e. news) that people receive and use to make decisions to nearly every Fortune 500 company since all the Fortune 500 have need to advertise their goods or services to the public.

This is where the argument that news outlets are liberal jumps the rails. The fact that all our major news outlets but one are owned by businesses and must make a profit to continue employing people creates two major issues. The first major issue is that the media outlet will put on the air what gets the most ratings because that increases their profits by increasing what each ad slot is worth. The most accessible example of this is the advent of 24/7 cable news channels. CNN came in first into a market whose viability was questionable and then it proved that not only was the market for 24/7 cable news viable, it was lucrative. CNN went on the air in 1980 and after its coverage of the first Persian Gulf War, the wheels began to turn to produce competitors for CNN. Now that the CNN coverage of Desert Storm had proven to be a smashing economic success, MSNBC and Fox News waded into the pool with CNN in 1996 after a few years of planning by their founders. The two took very different routes to become legitimate competitors of CNN.

Fox News became CNN's strongest competitor, coming to beat it in certain time slots. Many consumers viewing the news were looking for something more conservative than CNN and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was savvy enough to give it to them. They came online with more conservative television personalities like Tony Snow and Bill O'Reilly, the latter who is still at the helm of his show. Conservatives flocked to Fox News, declaring it the antidote to the leftist CNN and making News Corp. a great deal of money in the process. MSNBC took a different approach that would lead it down a different road. Because of Microsoft's teaming up with General Electric to create the channel, the Internet played a large part in the nascent news channel's growth. In the interest of objectivity, and also to underline MSNBC's more Internet-based strategy, Newsvine is a subsidiary of MSNBC. The role of the Internet in MSNBC's evolution pushed it left of CNN as well as market demands. Once Fox had satisfied conservative viewers by moving to the right of CNN, there was a void to the left of CNN and it was both the developing blogosphere of the Internet (along with the creation and strong growth of MoveOn.org during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998) and the existence of that void that made MSNBC into what it is now: the left-of-center cable news network with shows hosted by outspoken liberals like Keith Olbermann. MSNBC would stay CNN's smallest competitor ratingswise, but its Internet component gives it an advantage that neither CNN nor Fox News wields. The Internet side of things is also a weak point for CNN and Fox because MSNBC has always had Microsoft, whose knowledge of the Internet surpasses every company but Apple, to guide it while CNN and Fox News have never had guides, period.

That said, sensationalism gets ratings. The format of conservatives bringing ratings had already been demonstrated clearly by Rush Limbaugh's popularity on AM radio in the early 1990's. His popularity rose so high in conservative circles that the freshmen Republican House members after the 1994 election jokingly called themselves the "Dittohead Caucus" (so named because Limbaugh's listeners call themselves Dittoheads) and Newt Gingrich named Rush an honorary member of the United States Congress. It was but a small leap for News Corp. to conclude that they could create the same success in a more popular medium. MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News cater to their viewers' political prejudices because it reassures the viewers and the viewers will come back for more reassurance. This adds up to steady streams of advertising dollars. This, as we reviewed earlier in the article, is precisely what businesses are supposed to do: make a profit. It creates a problem when every bit of news is sensationalized to wring every bit of ratings it can out of the viewers: it presses buttons on the viewers emotions and can lead them to form polarized political attitudes and sometimes be the prelude to indecent behavior.

The second issue is more serious and that issue is that there is a conflict of interest when the news that these businesses are supposed to disseminate is contrary to their own or advertisers' best interests. As an example, let's say I own a cable news network and you, the reader, have bought 80% of my advertising spots. If one of my reporters comes to me with a story that says your company is selling a product that could have a negative effect on the American public's long-term health, what are my options? Run the story and put out of work the people paid with your advertising money (while allowing my less-discerning competitors to be viewed as trustworthy with negative information meaning I get no more advertising from other businesses wishing to avoid commercial ruination) or shelve the story and allow the public to take the hit? If I'm a businessman, I do the latter because I'm responsible to my employees and shareholders to make a profit. Businesses own all but one major media outlet in America. It is simple logic to deduce what things may have come to their attention and been shelved.

While this piece raises more questions than it answers, my conclusion is the following: the majority of Americans believe incorrectly that businesses who distribute news are news organizations. The reality is that all Americans who do not get their news and information from PBS are receiving it from a business whose #1 priority is not to be fair and inform the public, but to make a profit and are convinced otherwise. Until people understand whom they are receiving the news from, they will never understand how or why it is being delivered the way it is. The simple answer is there is a liberal bias in the media; the simple answer is beyond wrong.

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign...

Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited... "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul] Volcker better," he said. By contrast, John McCain's "handling of the financial crisis made me feel nervous."

Pressler, who said that he had never voted for a Democrat for president before, added, "I feel really badly. I just hate to go against someone I served with in the Senate...

A Republican political action committee on Monday is launching a new TV ad campaign in three battleground states featuring Sen. Barack Obama alongside the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in the latest salvo from a GOP-aligned group to use clips of Obama's controversial former pastor.

The ad, from the National Republican Trust PAC, features now-famous video of Wright declaring "God damn America," and the "US of KKKA."

Sen. John McCain himself has declared Wright's inflammatory statements to be off-limits for his campaign. While he has repeatedly raised questions about Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, he has refused to bring up Wright.

In April, when the North Carolina Republican Party announced an ad campaign using clips of Wright's sermons, McCain condemned the ad and asked that it be taken down.

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Sen. Barack Obama is returning to his promise of "a new politics" as he delivers what his campaign calls his "Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need" in Canton, Ohio, a lunchtime on Monday.

"In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope," he says.

With a comfortable lead in state and national polls, Obama is kicking off the final full week of his grueling two-year campaign by shelving the slam and poke of the daily grind for a reminder of the reasons he initially captured the imagination of national Democrats as a promising young unknown...

"[W]hat we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone,"...

Here are excerpts of the speech, released Monday morning by the campaign:

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McCain has cut into Obama's lead for a second day and is now just 1.1 points behind. The spread was 3.7 Wednesday and 6.0 Tuesday. The Republican is making headway with middle- and working- class voters, and has surged 10 points in two days among those earning between $30,000 and $75,000. He has also gone from an 11-point deficit to a 9-point lead among Catholics.

The HandleBar in Pensacola is offering a free beer to anyone who votes.

Customers must trade their "I Voted" stickers for the free drinks.

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...With less than two weeks before the November 4 election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, which had a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Obama has made steady gains over the last four days and has tripled his lead on McCain in the past week of polling.

"Obama's expansion is really across the board," pollster John Zogby said. "It seems to be among almost every demographic group."

The Illinois senator saw his lead among women -- who are expected to play a decisive role in this election -- increase to 18 points from 16 points on Wednesday.

And independent voters, who have been the target of intense campaign efforts by both sides, have now swung behind Obama by a 30-point margin, 59 percent to 29 percent...

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Two weeks before an election that could install the first black U.S. president, scattered ugly incidents have reflected a deep residue of racism among some segments of white America.

A cardboard likeness of Barack Obama was found strung from fishing wire at a university, the Democratic presidential nominee's face was depicted on mock food stamps, the body of a black bear was left at another university with Obama posters attached to it.

Though the incidents are sporadic and apparently isolated, they stirred up memories of the violent racial past of a country where segregation and lynchings only ended within the last 50 years.

And some feared that Obama could be a target for people who reject him on racial grounds alone. The Illinois senator leads Republican rival John McCain in polls ahead of the November 4 election and has a big following in many sections of Americans, from liberals to conservatives, black and white, poor and wealthy.

"Many whites feel they are losing their country right before their eyes," said Mark Potok, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups. "What we are seeing at this moment is the beginning of a real backlash."...

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Everyone under 30, this is our new nickname.

Compared to our parents' generation, we are being screwed. It's common knowledge that a college degree today is the equivalent of a high school degree thirty years ago. Here's a news flash: you don't have to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a high school degree. Then, after you get said degree, unless you've gone into engineering, law or medicine you have paid for this degree just to get a job that pays half what your parent received for a wage with a high school diploma a generation ago.

Conventional wisdom also says that this generation is waiting later to get married and to have children, supposedly because it is more "career-oriented" and concentrated on developing oneself. Here's the real conventional wisdom: having spouses and babies takes money and we're having to go in debt to be qualified enough to get a job. Debt that our parents were not saddled with when they married and had us. I'm already two years older than my father was when he had me and three years older than him when he got married.

Furthermore, during my lifetime taxes are likely to go up to simply pay interest on the $10 trillion debt that the United States government has run, much less pay it off. What have we gotten in return for all that money? Seniors get discounts on their drugs and companies took the jobs that were here a generation ago and shipped them overseas. However, it gets better: we have to own the bill for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as well. At the rate this is going, this generation will be lucky to procreate at all.

Then I hear pundits and others say that young voters are flocking to Obama because young voters are liberals and they'll grow out of it eventually. I've even heard people from my parents' generation argue that my generation was "coddled" because we go to college in larger numbers than any other generation. Want to know the real reason we're flocking to Obama? Because he's addressing the issues that affect us and talking about hope, a concept we've been bereft of for quite a while now. He's also talking about spending government revenue on things that benefit us, unlike past administrations who have catered to our parents and grandparents at our financial expense. They have also ignored renewable energy to the point that we are subject to the whims of countries like Saudi Arabia and terrorists that blow up oil field infrastructure all while saying global warming is a myth and is not influenced by man's activities.

If all this hope and change stuff doesn't work out, prepare to hide under a table somewhere. If my generation were collectively a person, he would have had his credit cards stolen and ran up to $50 trillion, lost his job and have no family of his own in addition to his house being torn up and damaged nearly beyond repair. If things didn't take a turn for the better, he would buy a gun, put it in his mouth and pull the trigger. If things don't take a turn for the better now, my generation is likely to do the nearest thing to generational suicide: go absolutely haywire and act out. They'll probably elect leaders that elders like even less than Obama who propose even more radical solutions to the problems facing this generation.

Obama today said that Biden was merely making the same point that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made to Bloomberg News yesterday, that "any period of transition creates a greater vulnerability, meaning there's more likelihood of distractionYou have to be concerned it will create an operational opportunity for terrorists.'' The first World Trade Center attack came in the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency; the 9/11 attack came in the first year of George Bush's...

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"Donors just weren't willing to give the money," explains LaCivita. "They were hurt badly in the market crash and they were always concerned about how McCain would react."

When Lehman Brothers went under on September 15, McCain was tied or in the margin of error in national polls. But when his poll numbers fell along with the stock market, wealthy conservatives saw little reason to invest their shrunken holdings on what was far from a sure thing.

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

And it wasn't just the economic bad news – McCain did little to help his own cause.

Two Republican sources involved in third-party groups said the Arizona senator's second debate performance in early October, a pivotal moment in the campaign when he and running mate Sarah Palin had begun to ratchet up their attacks, was deflating to some donors.

These sources said that after McCain didn't use the Nashville debate to aggressively go after Obama, one prominent conservative financier remarked: "I'm not going to bother investing anymore."

"McCain never gave a real wink and said, 'Go ahead boys,' " explained one operative close to a third-party group this year.

Another GOP strategist lamented that McCain lacked a core group of rich friends who were willing to part with their money. Harold Simmons, a Dallas billionaire, underwrote the entire cost of the initial Ayers ad for AIP – but his investment wasn't matched by other wealthy Republicans.....

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In the rural Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where the ancestors of Sen. John McCain owned enslaved Africans on a plantation, black, white and mixed-race family members unite every two years for their Coming Home Reunion, on the land where the plantation operated.

Some of McCain's black family members say they are not sure exactly where they fall on the family tree, but they do know this: They are either descendants of the McCain family slaves, or of children the McCains fathered with their slaves.

White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain.

"Why he hasn't come... read more...

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Joe Biden wonders whether Barack Obama is qualified to be commander-in-chief.

"Mark my words," Biden warned Sunday at a Democratic fund-raiser. "It will not be six months [after the inauguration] before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy."

Daniel Zubairi, a Muslim McCain grassroots organizer who told racist rally attendees in Woodbridge, Virginia that the campaign didn't "endorse that behavior," was for some reason not allowed to talk to CNN about the incident.

Anchor Rick Sanchez said Zubairi was "ready and willing" to talk, but "the McCain camp won't let him do so." ...

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Early voters in North Carolina, most of whom were black, were heckled and mocked by McCain supporters as they their cast their ballots Sunday. According to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellatoni primarily white McCain supporters shouted "terrorist" and complained that "Sundays are for church not voting" ...

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Fascinating poll of countries worldwide!

John McCain and Barack Obama are running close in Ohio, a state President Bush won the last two elections, and Andy Mance may help explain why the Republicans are having trouble pulling away as the 2008 campaign reaches its conclusion.

The Toledo businessman, a self-professed GOP moderate, says he likes McCain but has trouble with the "Joe the Plumber" story the GOP nominee's been telling nonstop for the better part of a week.

Joe the Plumber himself undercut the tale over the weekend, when Joe Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, revealed he made far less than $250,000 a year. A week earlier, he complained to Obama that the Democrat's plan to increase taxes for people earning more than that could keep him from buying the two-person plumbing company where he works.

"The $250,000 remark, I don't make $250,000," Wurzelbacher said Sunday on "Fox and Friends." "You know, I've never even come close to that, nor will I. I mean, I'd have to work, I don't know, 10 years to get that kind of money, maybe more."

Regardless, the symbolism is lost on Mance, who attended a rally McCain held Sunday just nine miles from Wurzelbacher's home. Both Mance and Wurzelbacher live in a battleground state with 20 electoral votes.

Mance, the 55-year-old owner of Executone Communications Systems, said he was in the crowd "because business has stunk for the last few years and I'm looking to see if John McCain can change that."

Afterward, he proclaimed, "I'm a small businessman and he said he would lower taxes so I could hire more people. I liked that the best."

Yet McCain's decision to make Wurzelbacher the center piece of his rally speeches, in which he accuses his Democratic rival of favoring socialistic tax-and-spend policies, rings hollow with Mance.

"I know there's no business like that that's making $250,000 a year," Mance said as he and his 14-year-old son, Austen, leaned against a metal barricade in the SeaGate Convention Center. "That whole story didn't sound kosher to me. I know that from my own business."

Executone Communications Systems is just the kind of business that both Obama and McCain say they want to help as president. It sells business phone and nurse-call systems and employs 14 people, but the number was one higher until Mance had to lay off a worker a week ago.

This year, business started slow, picked up some in the summer, but then nose-dived as a financial crisis consumed Wall Street and dried up business and consumer credit.

In a bit of class warfare, each presidential candidate has cast himself as the guardian of the middle class and small businessmen, whether with personal tax cuts, business deductions or a more hospitable regulatory climate they promise to create if elected. McCain tells crowds such small businesses employ 84 percent of American workers.

"The small businesses Senator Obama would tax provide 16 million jobs in America," the Arizona senator told the crowd. "And a sudden tax hike will kill some of those jobs at a time when we need to be creating more jobs in America. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not going to let that happen, Toledo, Ohio, or anyplace else in America."

In North Carolina, a traditionally Republican state Obama is trying to steal from McCain, the Democrat rebutted the accusation.

"I promise you this: not only will the middle class get a tax cut under my plan, but if you make less than $250,000 a year — which includes 98 percent of small business owners — you won't see your taxes increase one single dime," said the Illinois senator. "Not your payroll taxes, not your income taxes, not your capital gains taxes — nothing. That is my commitment to you."

Colin Powell will have a role as a top presidential adviser in an Obama administration, the Democratic White House hopeful said Monday.

"He will have a role as one of my advisers," Barack Obama said on NBC's "Today" in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell, a four-star general and President Bush's former secretary of state, endorsed him.

"Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that's a good fit for him, is something we'd have to discuss," Obama said.

Powell's endorsement came just hours after Obama's campaign disclosed that it raised $150 million in September — obliterating the old record of $66 million it had set only one month earlier.

At a boisterous rally Sunday, Obama said McCain was "out of ideas and almost out of time."...

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...In Florida, Democratic lawyer Charles H. Lichtman has assembled almost 5,000 lawyers to monitor precincts, assist voters turned away at the polls and litigate any disputes that can't be resolved out of court.

``On Election Day, I will be managing the largest law firm in the country, albeit for one day,'' said Lichtman, 53, a Fort Lauderdale corporate lawyer and veteran of the five-week recount after the 2000 election when Florida eventually delivered the presidency to George W. Bush.

Obama's lawyers also have pressed allegations that Michigan Republicans planned to use mortgage-foreclosure lists to challenge voters. Indiana labor unions allied with Democratic presidential nominee Obama, an Illinois senator, are battling a Republican chairman over early voting in the state's second- largest county...

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CNN reports on Sarah Palin's connection to, and her husband, Todd Palin's membership in an Anti-American fringe group, the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) which was founded by a domestic terrorist..

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On Sunday, Obama's campaign announced he had raised more than $150 million in September alone, a previously unimaginable fundraising rate of $5 million a day. Republican rival John McCain, who chose to participate in the public system, has been limited by law to spending only $84 million in September and October.

At Obama's clip, his fundraising will easily surpass the $650 million total spent by President Bush and Democrat John Kerry combined in 2004...

"People will look back at 2008 as the year that Barack Obama once and for all destroyed public financing as we know it," said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked on McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. "It will be very difficult four years from now for any candidate to make the case that they should participate in public financing given the obvious financial advantage that Obama has received by opting out."

As a result, his campaign says, he has 3.1 million donors, with more than 600,000 new ones contributing just in September.

Obama reached them through Facebook and MySpace, by e-mail and by phone text....

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Approximately 60 million people watched the third and final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama on Wednesday night, marking what is likely the last time this election season that an audience of such proportions will be assembled to observe either of the candidates. Obama may draw comparable numbers with his October 29 nationwide half-hour commercial, but McCain will encounter serious difficulties in trying to amass such an audience again before Election Day. That being said, this is what that audience saw..

Among the things that struck me the most from the debate, this hit me like a ton of bricks: as Obama recounts that Colombian labor leaders had been assassinated John McCain rolled his eyes as if he couldn't be bothered to listen any longer. This simply capped off a problem that plagued McCain throughout all three debates and that was acting even more ill-mannered than Al Gore did during presidential debates. McCain would write while his opponent was talking, talk while he was talking, etc. which was simple disrespectful debate behavior. McCain took it to another level, however, when during the second debate he rose and wandered the stage actively while it was Obama's turn to answer. He then took it to the ultimate level when, during the third debate, as Obama referenced the murders of activists in Colombia McCain rolled his eyes. Whoever was tasked to brief McCain on polite behavior during debates should be fired.

McCain also thinks that he was tarring Obama with the "spread the wealth" line. McCain should remember that Huey Long was a serious contender with FDR for the presidential nomination until he was assassinated. Acting like Obama wants to "share the wealth" is probably going to make him look more palatable to undecided voters and not do so much to paint Obama as a socialist.

McCain made another mistake during the debate which was to say his campaign is all about fixing the economic mess. With his campaign eyeballs deep in portraying Obama as a potential terrorist sympathizer, this makes McCain look dishonest because what he's saying and what his campaign are doing are not matching up.

The real problem that has run throughout McCain and Obama's interactions is that Obama is deferential to McCain and McCain is not so to Obama. Obama has a Zen-like quality to him that David Brooks has written about that FDR and Reagan had too: they are unflappable. No matter what you say to them, they decline the bait and thus drive their opponent crazy. The third debate was just a continuation of the same problems inherent on this campaign for John McCain.

Democrat Barack Obama on Friday sought to undercut Republican John McCain's support among older voters, warning that McCain wants to cut Medicare to pay for other plans.

Obama delivered his message while campaigning in conservative southwest Virginia , but he intended for it to be heard in other battleground states, including retiree haven Florida , where McCain was making two appearances.

"When you've worked hard your whole life, and paid into the system, and done everything right, you shouldn't have the carpet pulled out from under you when you least expect it and can least afford it," Obama told a crowd of more than 8,000 gathered at the civic center in Roanoke , a Democrat-friendly city of 91,000 in a largely Republican part of the state...

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...Right-wing screeching over nefarious doings in Ohio (where Freddie Johnson of Cleveland testified that ACORN encouraged him to sign 73 voter-registration forms—all in his own name) overlooks the fact that all 73 registrations would still have allowed Freddie to vote just once. The connection between wrongful voter registration and actual polling-place vote fraud is the stuff of GOP mythology. As Rick Hasen has demonstrated, here at Slate and elsewhere, even if Mr. Mouse is registered to vote, he still needs to show up at his polling place, provide a fake ID, and risk a felony conviction to do so.

Large-scale, coordinated vote stealing doesn't happen. The incentives—unlike the incentives for registration fraud—just aren't there. In an interview this week with Salon, Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College, who has studied vote fraud systematically, noted that "between 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty others were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five were guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters." Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that U.S. attorneys, like David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired for searching high and low for vote-fraud cases to prosecute and coming up empty. Twenty-six criminal voters despite the fact that five days before the 2006 election, then-interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman exuberantly (and futilely) indicted four ACORN workers, even when Justice Department policy barred such prosecutions in the days before elections. RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has said he is unaware of a single improper vote cast because of bad cards submitted in the course of a voter-registration effort. Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset says, "[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?"

There is no such thing as vote fraud. The think tank created to peddle the epidemic has evaporated. A handful of cases have been prosecuted. Then why is Sarah Palin shooting off e-mails contending that "we can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election?" Why is former Sen. John Danforth announcing, all statesmanlike, that the whole 2008 election "has been tainted?" Why is Ted Olson, the Republican National Lawyers Association lawyer of the year, claiming that "[ACORN] acknowledged having to get rid of a thousand people or more who were participating in voter fraud efforts." These people know the difference between registration fraud and vote fraud. Why continue to suggest they are the same thing?

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Some news audiences are more politically savvy than others, according to a new poll, with readers of The New Yorker and similar high-brow magazines being the most knowledgeable.

The survey, conducted between April 30 and June 1 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, measured the political knowledge of 3,612 U.S. adults. Participants were asked to name the controlling party of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. secretary of state and Great Britain's prime minister.

Overall, just 18 percent of participants answered all three questions correctly...

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Florida's governor says his fellow Republicans may be exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there's only been a scattering of isolated incidents.

Crist said in the closing days of any campaign "there are some who sort of enjoy chaos." There may be more of that going on than fraud...

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Iraq and the United States have finally agreed on a security pact which would mean that US forces would withdraw from Iraq by 2011, American and Iraqi officials said yesterday.

Iraqi politicians have always assumed that Washington's insistence on signing a new accord before the presidential election was motivated by the White House's hope that the accord would be seen as a sign that its Iraq policy had at last produced a success. The Republican contender, Senator John McCain, started off his campaign by saying that US troops might stay for 100 years and there should be no date for their withdrawal. The Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, wants combat troops home by the middle of 2010, which was also the date originally proposed by Mr Maliki....

James T. Harris, the African American Republican who begged GOP candidate John McCain during a rally to "take it to Obama," stormed off the set of a CNN interview yesterday during a debate with another black conservative.

The Milwaukee radio host appeared via satellite to face off against fellow radio host Shelley Wynter, who says he is voting for Democratic candidate Barack Obama because McCain is not a true conservative.

Harris, who said he has been called "sambo," "Uncle Tom" and "sellout" since his comments at the McCain rally, tried to argue that McCain is still a better choice for Republicans because he's more likely than Obama to be pulled to the far conservative end of the spectrum....

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THE MORTGAGE PLAN: Early in the debate, John McCain said that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., proposed the same kind of mortgage buy-up plan that he did. "During the depression era, we had a thing called the Homeownership Loan Corporation, and they went out and bought up these mortgages and people were able to stay in their homes and, eventually, the values of those homes went up and they actually made money. And, by the way, this was a proposal made by Sen. Clinton not too long ago," McCain said.

FALSE. While Clinton has proposed directly helping homeowners by having the government buy and resell mortgages that are in danger of foreclosure, her proposal would force financial institutions to take a loss. The McCain proposal, by contrast, is more generous to financial institutions and more costly for taxpayers. The Arizona senator would have the government pay face value for home mortgages, ensuring that financial institutions avoid a loss. More background here...more...

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The Republican National Committee is halting presidential ads in Wisconsin and Maine, turning much of its attention to usually Republican states where GOP nominee John McCain shows signs of faltering.

The party's independent ad operation is doubling its budget to about $10 million and focusing on crucial states such as Colorado, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia where Democrat Barack Obama has established a foothold, according to a Republican strategist familiar with presidential ad placements.

Florida and North Carolina have also been in the RNC ad mix. Pennsylvania is the only Democratic leaning swing state apparently left in the party's ad campaign....

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A prominent voters registration group admitted today that it had fired some of its workers for falsifying voter registrations, but said that it had helped authorities to identify the phony voter cards and that its efforts shouldn't be tainted by the fraudulent activities of a few workers.

And because of the group's focus on minority or low income voters, Republicans have long connected the group's voter registration drives as benefiting Democrats.

Kevin Whelan, a spokesman for the nationwide group, admitted that in some states some of its workers had "decided to pad their hours" and had sent in duplicative or faulty registrations but that the "vast, vast majority" of its workers did a "great job."

"There is no evidence that these false registrations led to false attempts to cast a ballot," Whelan said.

Whelan said that ACORN tries to independently verify applications and that by state law "and good judgment" it turns over all its applications to election workers, even those it has flagged as potentially problematic.

But ACORN and other voting registration groups fought back forcefully today.

"By raising the issue of voter fraud," said Miles Rapoport of the voting rights group Demos, "a serious disservice is being done to the election process itself."

Rapoport claims that Republicans are using the issue to "divert attention" from other voting issues such as untrained workers, absentee voting problems and machines that aren't working correctly.

The issue of voter fraud has long divided down party lines.

Obama told reporters in Ohio that he is not connected to ACORN... Read more...

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You don't think they're considering it?

Funny flash pic. Imagine what Palin would be like in the Oval Office.
PalinAsPresident.com, click on the various office objects.

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The official list of Republicans and conservatives jumping ship,
pointing fingers, or otherwise abandoning the McCain campaign...

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Misconceptions of Obama fuel Republican campaign

As the US presidential campaign enters its final weeks, both the Republican and Democratic candidates are hitting the swing states.

But misconceptions and rumours abound and many voters have their facts about the candidates all wrong. Some believe that Democrat Barack Obama is a Muslim, for instance.

Casey Kauffman talked to some Republican supporters after a rally by Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, in Ohio.

Watch the video now

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I came on Newsvine in the first week of July of 2007 and immediately got embroiled in heated debates about whether Barack Obama stood any kind of chance to be President of the USA. My belief in his eventual success was unshakeable, and stood confidently firm, even in the face of all the arguments. In fact it was a rather lonely time then, trying to defend my corner as a seemingly 'naive' newcomer in the face of so much scepticism and so many learned Americans telling me otherwise, especially when a few repeatedly pointed out that it was their country and they knew far more about the form than I did. But that cemented my belief even further. Often outsiders can see what we cannot because, being outside of the situation and untainted by its partisan nature, they can see the bigger picture.

I had nothing much to go on except my instincts and, to the smug political pundits, that was nothing on which to base such an important prediction in the face of 'past experience' and the 'evidence' against an Obama victory. However, being a confident person, I remained steadfast, as my instincts have never failed me in my life. I have not seen any reason whatsoever along the way to change my mind either. Even when I saw the dire comments of what would happen at various points in the campaign, especially how he would be beaten by Clinton, I still didn't budge. So when I now see those sceptical pundits announcing with a flourish that Barack will be the 44th President, I smile to myself knowing that they are ONE YEAR too late with their prediction. It's good to be smug sometimes, especially when one was supposed to have been so wrong and so ignorant of the form! It is fascinating to see them justifying his impending victory with all kinds of spurious reasons except the main one: that the man is extraordinary and exceptional in what he has done, considering he emerged from nowhere to beat everyone else to be key leader for these troubled times.

A lot can happen in three weeks, of course, but barring any catastrophe, Barack is home and dry in the White House. It will have happened because of the reasons I stated one year ago. John McCain has said that even though Obama is currently 'measuring the drapes' he is a fighter and will carry on fighting with the hope of overturning the current position. He is not out yet. Well, I have news for him. None of the old comeback tricks will work this time, but I applaud him for continuing with that hope. It makes for a more interesting contest to the finish, and will give him an honourable exit as well. One cannot begrudge him that.

Written in July of 2007 and posted on Newsvine in November, 2007, Four Key Reasons Why Barack Obama Will Be The Next President demonstrates why Barack will be victorious as well as how belief and faith can move mountains and also confound the sceptics.

One year on, every word is a winner. Well done, Senator! :o)

What's the big deal about ACORN, if registrations have to be verified anyway?

I'm sick of it. Enough distractions. ACORN has been around for years. The spokespersons for the non-profit have publicly stated without being refuted, that they've asked for more help in verifying registrations and received none. They flag as many as they can as potential false applications and the rest of are caught by the commission anyway. At best this is like most organizations in our world, understaffed, overworked, money-motivated, overzealous, underpaid employees and at worst voter "registration" fraud, not to be confused with "voter" fraud.

By now we know critics are trying to tie this organization to Barack Obama, but it's a failed attempt since both presidential candidates are connected to the organization. Who you gonna believe me or your lying eyes?

But when it's all said and done, don't we have verify who we are at the polls on election day anyway. Most time with a valid state issued identification or driver's license. And once that voter is accounted for they can't vote again.

So, I repeat, what is all the hoopla for? Oh yeah, more distractions.

Note: don't get all of your news from TV, do your own homework. Most people never even heard of ACORN until a few weeks ago.

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Play the Obama video game online now.

John McCain's brother Joe McCain apologizes after a comment he made during a rally in Northern Virginia yesterday.

During his campaign stop in Loudoun County yesterday Joe McCain referred to two democratic-leaning areas of Northern Virginia as communist country...

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I had a lovely, inspiring poem and comment in my mailbox from an Obama supporter and it got me thinking a lot of things. Reacting to the disgraceful behaviour at the recent Palin rallies, Sue Shields wrote:

"What worries me is that Pandora's box has been opened and once again people will feel safe in using prejudiced actions and words in their daily lives. Maybe not as dramatic as burning a cross on someone's lawn or burning a church, but feeling comfortable to use their fear and hate to alter the destination of others in their daily lives and life pursuits. We have to be aware that discrimination is broader than fearing one's color or religion or gender---it includes fearing one's creativity, enthusiasm, intelligence and even one's hope.

This type of behavior has been rampant within the walls of corporate America, within neighborhoods, within schools. The faster the world changes the more people fight to hold on to their status quo through any means neccessary...."

Her sad words rang a great bell inside my head because her comment is really about CHANGE and how we each individually deal with it. Change can often make us feel threatened, vulnerable, exposed, unprepared, and insignificant, make us do things we wouldn't even dream of doing to resist it. New initiatives, new situations and new leaders tend to bring out the worst reaction in us, making us needlessly defensive of our territory while firing our natural instinct to protect the status quo at all cost.

It seems that accepting any form of change depends primarily on four key factors:

1. Personal perception of our individual situation;

2. Our vision of how we could be affected by something new;

3. Our degree of readiness for a different experience;

4. How much we perceive we have to lose and our level of confidence in dealing with the unexpected.

Having no vision means we can only see through a narrow tube of familiarity which gives us just a tiny part of the whole picture. For many people, particularly older ones, this partial 'emotional blindness' increases their fear levels and keeps them firmly where they are, gradually letting in less light as they close their minds to the alternatives, while being detached from both reality and the action. In this way they continue to have a distorted, jaundiced view of the potential effects of anything new in their environment, and to the detriment of their evolution and development.

The old days, old methods and old leaders look better because these people cannot cope with the new, especially when there are no consistent rules to guide them, when they do not feel included in its message and when the seemingly secure boundaries they are enjoying are gradually being stripped away leaving them feeling exposed. Most important, the past always looks better when we lack confidence because it allows us to dismiss anything remotely uncomfortable while we remain deliberately blind to what we do not wish to see. But this merely increases our sense of insecurity and keeps us on the periphery of change, feeling isolated and ignored - and desperately seeking scapegoats.

This is what's happening to the Republican party, especially it's members, at this moment. Facing defeat in the eye, their level of fear has been rising uncomfortably as they go through the five stages of grief, of acute loss, as they know it. They started off with denial, not ever dreaming that Barack Obama, a Black man, would triumph. Now that seems likely, they are at the next stage of anger - Pandora's box referred to above.

In fact, there are clearly TWO Americas in view at present. One a rainbow society full of hope, diversity and new understanding of each other, working together to elect a man who isn't white to the highest office in the land. This sits uneasily alongside another America which is virtually all-White, with hardly a Black person in sight at the rallies, wallowing in anger and blaming. In other words, one America yearning to build with hope while the other seemingly wants to destroy with hate and division. If they can't be the leaders in this new world they would rather destroy it by turning the people against each other instead. The GOP trapped in its own desire for power and perfection.

The trouble with opening Pandora's box of potential violence, especially a racist and divisive one, is that it is difficult to close again. When one has whipped up hatred and discontent for one's political ends, how does one put the genie of divisiveness back into the box? It is very difficult to do, and so I predict three things will happen after the elections.

First, that the Republicans who feel they have been 'cheated' will create mayhem, finding all kinds of reasons not to accept the results and will carry on their perceived 'grievances' for some time while it serves their purpose.

As that is likely to lead nowhere, they will take it out on each other which will see the disintegration of the GOP, with Sarah Palin being the main scapegoat for fanning the flames of anger and division. They will be out of power for some time.

Third, a new and more vibrant party, which is more reflective of the community, the times and the youngsters, will emerge. Much stronger for the change, in a spirit of acceptance and a focus on the future to complete the grief process. A little like the metamorphosis the British Labour Party had to go through during the late '80s to get itself elected again.

In essence, the GOP would have freed itself from its limiting past to become a more exciting and relevant adversary. In view of that, I think Sue's poem is most apt:

Let's take Freedom Seriously

America
The land of the free and the brave
I want to take this seriously
I'm not interested in just riding the wave
I want to be me
I want to be free.
America
What does this really mean?
This concept of being free
The right to be authentically me;
The glee of sharing with you
every clue
that I am who I want to be...
allowing you to see
everything I want to do.

The true experience of freedom
means people will rise to the occasion
to become more tolerant of differences,
less threatening to fellow human beings
that think or act outside
their comfort zone,
outside their persuasion,
placing more importance on the golden rule
rather than
they rule.
Placing more importance on respecting
those living a genuine experience;
authenticity that doesn't harm,
rather than setting off an alarm
because it's something
they don't condone.

Choose to love each other.
Cleanse yourself of jealousy
and resentment.
Find a way to live
in contentment,
to grow
yourself,
and allow others to show
the bravery of being
what it means to them
to be their own "me"
and freedom we shall see!

S. Shields, 2008

Amen to that, and thank you! :o)

"I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other," Obama told supporters in Philadelphia. He said McCain "has served this country with honor, and he deserves our thanks for that."

At a town-hall event Friday in Minnesota, McCain took the microphone from a woman who had called Obama an Arab. McCain said, "No, ma'am," and he called Obama "a decent, family man."

McCain drew boos at the same event when he told a supporter who expressed fear at the prospect of Obama's election that the Democrat is a "person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States."....

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John McCain has allowed himself to be tricked into grabbing a tiger by the tail and attempting to ride him bareback, ignoring Winston Churchill's sage advice that the man riding the tiger usually gets devoured.

McCain did not realize how bad it had gotten until today. While there had been chants of "off with his head," "kill him," "terrorist," and "traitor" that was just exuberance from the audience as far as the campaign was concerned. McCain realized what he had committed to today at a townhall meeting.

As a townhall meeting in Minnesota, McCain fielded a question from a white female that was moreover one of those questions that turn into statements because there is no way to answer the question without making the inquisitor angry. She said to McCain she did not trust Obama and believed him to be an Arab. When McCain said that he believed Obama to be a family man and not someone Americans should be afraid of as President, he was booed... and not just by a couple of people. He was booed by enough people that had they banded together they could have started a riot. This presents a real problem.

Political fights will get as nasty as you let them because they are, essentially, fights over who has the power to rule whom. McCain should never have allowed himself to be talked into this strategy where they shave off points from Obama's lead by saying he "pals around with terrorists" or where they call his patriotism into question or allow surrogates to suggest he is some sort of Manchurian Candidate because somewhere tonight someone is oiling a rifle preparing to save their country because their political process has become so poisoned that it has led them to the conclusion that it is better to be dead than to allow the other side to win.

McCain, Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis need to be extremely careful because they have wandered into a minefield. As I say, there may be only ten or twenty people at a rally that are doing these reprehensible things but just because they are a minority does not mean they cannot make a difference. Machiavelli pointed out that a man who is willing to die to assassinate a prince cannot be defended against or stopped and it is left to fate to decide whether he succeeds. The Republican Party, in pushing the envelope to try to win an election, is accidentally creating a fringe, ultra-patriot element within their party that could have unknown ramifications for the future. McCain is riding a tiger, it's anyone's guess whether he will shoot it with his sidearm or try to ride it into office... or if it will devour him along the way and chart its own course.

While Obama supporters have been frequently compared to Nazis because of their enthusiasm and love of Obama, these people willing to kill for John McCain to win are much closer. It is a lesson well worth remembering that the Nazis started out as a minority party within the conservative faction of Germany and ended as one of the greatest evils the world has ever known. People should bear this in mind.

If there's one rule in election-year politics, it's this: Don't mess with the science crowd. OK, labor unions and the NRA matter too, but John McCain may want to brush up on his stars and planets after Tuesday night's debate.

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When Barack Obama's campaign bus made a swing through Missouri in July, the unlikeliest of supporters were waiting for him -- or rather two of them, holding the banner: "Rednecks for Obama."

In backing the first African-American nominee of a major party for the US presidency, the pair are on a grassroots mission to bridge a cultural gap in the United States and help usher their preferred candidate into the White House.

Tony Viessman, 74, and Les Spencer, 60, got politically active last year when it occurred to them there must be other lower income, rural, beer-drinking, gun-loving, NASCAR race enthusiasts fed up with business as usual in Washington

Chris "Ludacris" Bridges won't have to worry about standing in line at his local polling station next month on Election Day.

"I already voted," the Atlanta-born rapper-actor told the New York Daily News.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a substantial number of blacks in Georgia have taken advantage of the early voting option as a way to avoid any unforeseen polling problems on Nov. 4....

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We've been waiting three days for this moment. This morning, the New Yorker finally posted video from "If I Were Running This Campaign," the Saturday morning panel featuring NY'er staff writer/moderator Jeffrey Toobin (swoon), and a bevy of his CNN colleagues, including Ed Rollins, Alex Castellanos, and Donna Brazile.

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....We have enough political convicts, no need to import a notorious felon to be spokesman for opening ANWR. According to Governor Sarah Palin's former staff member Larry Persily, the Governor thought it was a good idea and planned to make an appearance on G.Gordon Liddy's program. When suggested that a Watergate operative may not be a smart choice, Arctic Power co-chair, Mike Navarre, suggested most people didn't know of Liddy's background and his role in President Nixon's administration and demise.

Letters to newspapers came pouring in, as did phone calls to the Governor's office. "I think it's terrible. If Alaska wants to put the best face on things it's probably best to not hire felons," Senator Kim Elton said....

... There are obvious controversies around the activist career of Bill Ayers, but the connections to Obama are peripheral. Bill Ayers has never been arrested, he turned himself into authorities and he never went to jail. He is professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has fought hard for education reform in his community. According to Palin's qualifications of "pallin' around", John McCain and G. Gordon Liddy are practically blood brothers. McCain and Liddy have been longtime friends and McCain has publicly stated "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family." He went on to say, "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." After the last eight years, I don't hold the same regard for presidential operatives covering up crimes of the administration they work for. Liddy has contributed money to McCain's campaign and held several fund raisers in his home.

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Speaking at an outdoor rally on a rainy and dreary day, Obama warned that the economy will continue to decline if new economic policies are not implemented. Borrowing Ronald Reagan's legendary campaign line – "are you better off than you were four years ago" – Obama said, "At the pace things are going right now you're going to have ask whether you're better off than you were four weeks ago."

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Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America's adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, "You have to talk to enemies." He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg immediately checked her on the "hatemonger" label, saying in Wright's defense, "this person did not like America. As a black person, we are very, very lucky. You don't see where that's relevant?"

After more back-and-forth, Hasselbeck said of Obama in general, "Are you a liar or do you have poor judgment?"

At this, Shepherd whipped around toward her Republican co-host and snapped: "Can we talk about poor judgment? What about the woman that McCain left that didn't even want him to know that she had been in a horrible, horrible accident, and then he came back, met another woman named Cindy McCain and left the woman that waited for him. Can we talk about that?"

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ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports: One thing we didn't hear in last night's debate was John McCain launch the kind of personal attacks against Barack Obama that his campaign has been telegraphing would come.

On the campaign trail in recent days Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has sought to tie Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers.

Both campaigns were prepared for a personal attack during the debate from McCain, who is trailing Obama is most national and battleground polls with 27 days to go before Election Day.

But then -- nothing. The worst McCain gave was to reference Obama as "that one" during an exchange over Obama's vote on an energy bill -- not a compelling attack.

This tells us that McCain is worried that if he goes to hard against Obama in the last days before the election, he thinks it might backfire.

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At rallies this week where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made sinister insinuations about Obama, attendees yelled out "Treason!" "Terrorist'" and "Kill him!" in reference to Obama. At a Florida rally for Palin, a supporter used a racial epithet to attack an African-American member of the media.

In Tampa, Florida, this morning, Biden said "to have a vice-presidential candidate raise the most outrageous inferences, the ones that John McCain's campaign is condoning, is simply wrong.....This is beyond disappointing. This is wrong."

Paraphrasing a pledge McCain once made of something he would not do, Biden said of the Republican ticket, "they're gonna try and take the low road to the highest office in the land and that's exactly what they're doing."

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Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain Tuesday agreed that one of the world's richest men, Warren Buffett, would make a good treasury secretary.

The two were asked at the beginning of their second presidential debate who would be a good replacement for current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who is standing down at the end of the current administration.

"I think the first criteria, would have to be somebody who immediately Americans identify with. Immediately say we can trust that individual," said McCain.

Buffett, chief of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, has supported Obama in the race for the White House.

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