Meanwhile, today's poll analysis

Nate Silver, who has been dead on all season, sees McCain's chances dwindling to 3.7%.  

These are landslide, blowout, "send a message" type numbers.  

I somehow think that if Bush/Cheney were running again, it would be tough for them to do worse.

Campaign with Dignity, John

Dear John,

It's over.  Anybody who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or delusional.  You are trailing by far too much with only a handful of days left.  You message didn't resonate.  Your VP pick was the last straw.  You ran on 4 more years of republican rule, when the republicans have turned into bigger spenders who have attempted to control the American people more than any other administration in history.  You and your ilk need to be destroyed in the election, and that's about to happen.  My hope is that a limited government, Ron Paul style Republican party will emerge.

So, in these waning days of the race, I urge you to campaign in a way that will make your grandchildren and great grandchildren respect you.  Pull the negative ads.  Focus on helping limited government republicans in house and state legislature races win.  Then you can be remembered as the beginning of the rebirth of the party, not the death.  

Yours truly,

A former republican leaning independent

A Message from the "fake" Virginia to John McCain

Dear John McCain,

Recently one of your senior advisors has said that even though you are down in Virginia by an average of close to 10%, that's OK, because you are competitive in the "real Virginia."  By "real" your advisor meant anything but Northern Virginia.

Let me tell you something.  A third of the Commonwealth's population lives in Northern Virginia.  We are as real as any other part of it.  On top of that, we are highly educated, diverse, and highly motivated.  Wealthy too.  What that means, is that between now and the election, I'm going to spend as much free time as I can to make sure you don't steal this election up here.  Even though I work a full time job and am studying for graduate admissions tests, my future is too important for you to screw it up.  If you think the rural part of Virginia is the only real part, keep on thinking that.  I'll see you back in the senate in January.

Yours truly,

A "fake" Virginian

PS: Just so you can see how your efforts are paying off, I have attached the recent polling data.  And just so Sarah understands, blue means NOT you.  

Desperate Strategies

Word on the street is that McCain has now abandoned Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa.  I could see IA for a long time coming; they are the ones who started Obama's momentum way back in the Iowa Caucuses.   New Mexico is another state that is pretty much blue these days, especially with the popularity of Gov Richardson.  

And Colorado?  It voted for George W Bush in 2000 and 2004, but the educated West in general is not a fan of the likes of John McCain, especially when paired with Sarah Palin.  

So where is Johnny boy trying to win?  Pennsylvania.  Sorry to tell you McCain, but that ain't gonna happen.  It would be like Obama making a play for Kansas.  On paper, it looks alright, but McCain is behind by an average of 15 points.  That's huge.  It is practically insurmountable.  Especially with 2 weeks to go.  

And even if McCain were somehow able to pull off an upset in PA, by devoting all his resources there, he would be leaving Ohio, North Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, and most importantly Virginia vulnerable.  Obama will likely win at least 2 of the states on that list, VA and NV.  Just one more state than those would clinch a win for Obama.

Better get ready to go back to the senate John.

Asshole in Ohio

Here is the story of someone who publicly admits they won't vote for Obama because he is black.  He said the US is a white nation.  He hung an effegy of Obama from a tree.  Note that he also put a star of david on the head of the dummy, so I guess he thinks that Obama is Jewish too.  People like this should be deported.

$150M in September

Barack Obama raised $150M in September, breaking all previous fundraising records.  For the record,  John McCain has $85M to use from Sep-Oct.  

If donations are a measure of enthusiasm, its not even close.  

Powell Endorses Obama

Yet another nail in McCain's political coffin: Colin Powell today endorsed Barack Obama for president.  Powell is a lifelong republican who served in the Bush administration.  Powell said this has nothing to do with race, and you have to give the benefit of the doubt to someone like Powell, who has never used the race card.  He said he respects both Obama and McCain, but just like many others, pointed to McCain's bone headed selection of Palin as the reason for voting for Barack.

Racism in America

The hicks of SE Ohio:

Newspapers for Obama (even the conservative ones)

Today three imporant newspapers endorsed Barack Obama for president.

The Chicago Tribune has never endorsed a democratic nominee before.  (The Chicago Sun Times is the liberal Chicago paper).  Today they support Barack Obama.

The Los Angeles Times has not endorsed a nominee since Nixon in 1972, but endorsed Obama today.  It has also never supported a democrat in the past.

And the Washington Post, which is THE paper for politics.

Why did the Tribune support Obama and not McCain?  Because McCain is not a conservative.  He is a social conservative, but his spending and foreign policy are much more LBJ than Ronald Reagan.  Plain and simple.  As Andrew Sullivan has said many times, we need to purge the neo-cons forever and defeating McCain will accomplish that.

The Last Debate

Last Wednesday's debate was arguably McCain's last stand.  He did well for the first 30 minutes, and then turned into grandpa Simpson for the rest.  He rambled a lot and focused on things nobody cares about, like ACORN.  He also likely alienated 90% of independent women when he mocked "health exceptions" to abortions.  He even used the scare quotes.  Many women had viewed McCain as "pro-life light" before that, but now there is no mistaking that he wouldn't even abort Adolf Hitler.  

I think that overall, the debate went slightly to Obama.  What this means is that McCain has practically zero chances to win this election.  When else will he have a public forum to discuss his views?  Obama is taking out 30 minute ads before the World Series.  McCain could do that, but it would erode what little money he has.  

I think that for McCain to win, Obama will have to mess up in a major way.  That's been McCain's strategy since day one.  McCain never tried to win this election, he just hoped for Obama to lose it.  That hasn't happened.

i'm back!

I'm back.  Just got married and went on a honeymoon to the Riviera Maya.

Stayed at a great place, the El Dorado Seaside Suites.  Highly recommend it to any couples going to that area.

So while I was out, it looks like the stock market took a nose dive and bounced back big today.  

Sounds like McCain's campaign, except he hasn't bounced back... Fivethirtyeight.com currently has Obama winning the election 95%-5%.  Yikes!!!  Sure, right after the Palin pick, McCain was ahead by a bit.  But the closer we get to the election, the harder it is to make up for lost ground, and right now Obama has a larger lead in all national and state polls than he's had all year.  Hell, he might even win West Virginia.

Michigan Republican Freaks Out

""He's a general who left the battlefield in the middle of the fight."
"I'm disappointed in his behavior; he's thrown a lot of good Republican candidates under the bus."
"...our commander has raised the white flag..."

-L Brooks Patterson, Oakland County, MI Executive on John McCain's decision to cede Michigan to Barack Obama.

Patterson is afraid, and he should be. With McCain effectively dropping out in MI, many republicans will not vote. It is very possible that Joe Knollenberg or Tim Walberg will be defeated. Currently, Knollenberg is down by 4 pts in the polls, and with McCain dropping out its not going to get any better.

Bailout = McCain Finished?

The bailout fiasco is bad, really bad.  I'm not of the opinion that we need it yet, but the market was priced to expect the bailout so now the Dow has dropped 777 points.  I've lost several thousand recently.  Oh well, I have time to save.

I'm not going to get into economics tonight.  

My simple analysis is this: the failure of this bailout to pass just might sink John McCain for good.

Strike 1: McCain "suspended" his campaign to go to Washington and help build bipartisan support for the bailout bill.  He did not do much helping (by all accounts, he made a couple phone calls).  The bailout failed, mostly due to republicans.  This leads me to believe that McCain's own party does not respect him, particularly the Ron Paul Republicans who voted against it.

Strike 2: McCain said he was only participating in the debate because passage of the bailout bill was imminent.   Passage was not imminent.

Strike 3: Monday morning McCain claimed credit for the bill...  It didn't pass.

Obama didn't come up looking much better since he has backed the bailout bill (with strong reservations about its current form).  However, he did not pull stunts such as "suspending" his campaign or swinging wildly as McCain is doing today.  

Add to that a tie, at best, during the debate that was supposed to be John McCain's strength and you may very well be witnessing a major meltdown.

McCain Calls Terrorists Freedom Fighters

Something which I myself did not notice during the debate, but Radley Balko has pointed out is that during the debate, McCain made the following remark:

First of all, I won’t repeat the mistake that I regret enormously, and that is, after we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, we basically washed our hands of the region.

And the result over time was the Taliban, Al Qaida, and a lot of the difficulties we are facing today. So we can’t ignore those lessons of history.

These "freedom fighters" included Osama and the Taliban.  While it is true that we left them hanging around with a lot of guns, and now we don't quite have peace in the region.  

It is also true that at the time they were fighting for their freedom, something that can be said of many groups that are also called terrorists.  I'm not here to pass judgment on where freedom fighters end and terrorists begin, but you can bet your ass if Barack Obama had made that comment Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would be up in arms.

Obama-Palin?

Yesterday Palin basically endorsed Obama's stance on going into Pakistan, if necessary.

Today the McCain campaign retracted her comments.

Do I need to even state again how much of a complete disaster she is for the republican ticket?