"Barack Obama attracted 100,000 people at a Saturday rally here, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. [campaign] event.
To be sure, big crowds don’t always signal a big turnout on Election Day. But Obama’s ability to draw his largest audience yet in a typically red state that just weeks ago looked out of reach, could signal a changing electoral map."
Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported yesterday.Science, the enemy of Bush and Palin. They probably have an endgame Bible passage to explain this.
"Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter" to the rest of the world, Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card.
The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.
"Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways."
For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at conditions in the Arctic.
"At those times on the campaign trail when sometimes it's easy to get a little bit discouraged, when, you know, when you happen to turn on the news when your campaign staffers will let you turn on the news," she said, prompting laughter from the group. "Usually they're like 'Oh my gosh, don't watch. You're going to, you know, you're going to get depressed.'"So her two months of campaigning have got her depressed, she is SO ready to take over when McCain takes the big trip West.
"I cannot believe that my nation is having a discussion on what is torture. There is no question in my mind -- there's no question in any reasonable human being, there shouldn't be, that this is torture. I'm ashamed that we're even having this discussion."Many more clips online on their website. You can watch the entire show and check for local listings. PBS chose not to show this documentary before the election, major lack of balls.
"Again and again, he promised Joe the Plumber that unlike Barack Obama, he wouldn't take Joe's wealth. He'd leave it with Joe.We shouldn't have to hit rock bottom to know we can be better than this.
But the rest of the country has been living amidst the sharpest inequality since the 1920s. Median wages have stagnated for a decade while the rich have reached almost supernatural heights of opulence. For most folks, spreading the wealth around probably seems like a good idea. It probably seems like the fair thing to do, particularly as we now see that much of that wealth was built off risky trading strategies that have now dealt a gut punch to the broader economy, and thus the pensions and incomes of the rest of us. In the most unequal economy in modern times, McCain had just declared himself pro-hoarding."
"But tonight, I believe, featured a historical moment in that debate, because until tonight, I had never seen the matter of a woman's health given AIR SCARE QUOTES. But that's precisely what John McCain did, sneeringly, as he attempted to portray support for a mother's health as an extreme position, when in fact, it is a mainstream position -- ground that even fervent pro-life individuals often concede."
"In a more general sense, if tonight was McCain's big "last chance" for a game-changing performance, it was a missed opportunity. Opinions will no doubt vary widely, but I thought this was the worst of McCain's three debate performances. On the substance, McCain had nothing new to offer. On his demeanor, McCain seemed angry and dismissive (did anyone count how many eye-rolls we saw?). On rhetoric, he was clumsy and repetitious.Source: Steve Benen
What's more, McCain positioned himself as a far-right Republican at precisely the time Americans want to move away from far-right Republicans. How did McCain present himself to Americans? As an anti-abortion, pro-voucher conservative who wants to slash federal spending and talk about how mean television ads and t-shirts hurt his feelings.
Obama has cornered the market on stature, temperament, and control. Where McCain was nasty, Obama was unflappable. Where McCain was angry, Obama was confident. On the substance, Obama was on message, and just as importantly, made personal connections on the issues he cared about.
I also noticed that Obama seemed to go out of his way to appeal to centrists and independents. While McCain reached out to his base on abortion and vouchers, Obama sought out middle ground on practically every issue."
"I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but, apparently, it needs to be said. There is a difference between radical Muslims who support jihad against America and Muslims who want to practice their religion freely and have normal lives, like everybody else.Old ladies like this are the perfect recruiting material for anyone in the Middle East. Our savagery and ignorance personified by a Grandma from Iowa.
There are more than 1.2 million Arab-Americans and about 7 million Muslim Americans, former Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, successful business people, normal, average Americans from all walks of life. These are the people that are being maligned here every time this happens. And we can only imagine how this conversation plays out in the Muslim world."
Vice President Dick Cheney experienced an abnormal heartbeat Wednesday morning, went to the White House physician and scheduled a hospital visit to "restore his normal rhythm."I can see his x-ray now, with the tiny heart beating inside a huge cavity a la the Grinch. Makes you think about McCain's health, too.
For the 67-year-old Cheney, who canceled a campaign event he was to attend later Wednesday in Illinois, it will be the second time in less than a year that he will have the cardiological procedure.
The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found.Tarnished is a good word. I would have used "destroyed any chance", but it will do.
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.Source: HuffPost
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.
"[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."I'm not sure McCain has the humility to admit this massive mistake. Denial is a pretty powerful thing.
Obama holds double-digit margins over McCain in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin and carries a nine-point advantage over his Republican rival in Colorado, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal.16 point lead in Michigan!
Obama's ascendancy in these key states mirrors his growing lead in national polling. The latest Washington Post/ABC News survey put Obama at 53 percent to McCain's 43 percent, while the daily Gallup tracking poll showed Obama holding a similar lead of 51 percent to 41 percent on Monday.
"I think Obama's relatively weak but nonetheless real interactions with William Ayers are a legitimate campaign issue. But Obama's best response, after telling the facts of the relationship, is to point out who else supported him. Republican machers Walter and Leonora Annenberg gave the former terrorist $50 million. They also gave money to Rick Santorum, Strom Thurmond and Mitt Romney. Annenberg was Nixon's ambassador to Britain. If Obama is "palling around with terrorists," the Republican Annenbergs are funding them.Source: Andrew Sullivan
Yesterday, the McCain campain put out a press release boasting that Leonore Annenberg had just endorsed him for president. Why is McCain happy to accept the endorsement of a funder of terrorism?"
"Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience."Source: Slate
"Make no mistake about it. We've done it before and we will do it again. America will once again rise from the ashes of the Bushes."
"Friday's report from special investigator Stephen Branchflower to Alaska's Legislative Council answered some basic questions about the political and personal bog known as "Troopergate".Amateurs are not what we need at this point in history.
Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so."
