AT THIS early stage in the US Presidential election, Barack Obama is winning Floyd country Indiana by about 60-40 CNN reports.
A 2004 check of the vote in this county in south east Indiana has Bush 49% to Kerry 41%.....as of writing Obama is pulling in 59% of the vote to McCain's 40%.....
For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence.
The Undecided Voter in the 2008 election. ....think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” - David Sedaris in the New Yorker Magazine.
The Barack Obama 30 minute commercial airing on 5 major US TV netoworks was clearly aimed at bringing in those fikle last hour undecided voters, less than a week away from the November 4 Presidential election.
But after vertially years of campaigns, debates, endless news time, endless tv ads and peopel to people discussion....why are there still an estimated 5-10% of the voting public yet to make up their minds.
Turns out, most undecided voters are not very smart, uninformed and tend to be female.
"Undecided voters are less educated, less affluent, and somewhat more likely to be female than the average voter," a Pew research poll on undecided voters found.
But one scientist who studies decision making thinks the oppsoite, that undecided voters are the smartest of the bunch.
"People tend to think of them as dolts, because how could they not have gathered enough evidence by now?" Neuroscientists Joshua Gold told Reuters.
"But from a purely rational standpoint, it makes perfect sense not to commit until you go into the voting booth because you can collect as much information as possible."
But another scientist belives that undecided votes may have alreaddy made up their minds, but dont actually know it yet, from New Scientist:
Bertram Gawronski, a social psychologist at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and his colleagues asked 129 residents of Vicenza, Italy, whether they would support a controversial proposal to enlarge the city's US military base.
To measure subconscious biases, the team used an "implicit association" test to record, for example, whether volunteers associated pictures of the base with positive words such as "joy" or negative ones such as "pain". When polled a week later, many who were undecided about the base in the first poll had resolved to support or oppose it - and the team found that their decision could be predicted by their responses on the association test (Science, vol 321, p 1100).
He believes a good portion of those who say they are undecided have made an unconscious decision already -- and will "come home" and vote according to their demographic group. That is, a white church-going man from the U.S. South will tend to vote Republican, while an urban educated woman in the Northeast will tend to vote Democrat. But McClerking also believes there's an added racial element to the undecided voters this year: that many of them have already ruled out Obama but are afraid of saying so for fear the interviewer will think they are racist. "My personal rule of thumb, when I look at a poll, is I take roughly half of (the undecided portion) and add it to the white candidate, to give me a sense of what is really going on," said McClerking, a professor at Ohio State University.
It would be one of the most Epic Fails in the modern history of US Politics. John McCain is only just hanging on to his home state of Arizona, despite representing the western state for many years as Congressman and Senator.
If Obama is this close to beating McCain in Arizona....Well, you draw the conclusions on "That One."
John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama is down to just five points in his home state of Arizona. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds the Senator leading 51% to 46%. McCain is viewed favorably by 59% of voters in Arizona and unfavorably by 40%. Obama’s ratings are 49% favorable, 50% unfavorable. Voters in Arizona trust their state’s Senator more than Obama on the top issue of the economy by a 52% to 44% margin. However, voters not affiliated with either party trust Obama more, 52% to 39%.
A Reuters/Zogby poll ( slightly slanted Republican due to an allocation of party affiliation the same as 2004 when George Bush and the Republcan party were far more popular) has Barack Obama looking strong in the normally reliable red states of Virginia and North Carolina. They also show him surging in Ohio, but Flordia is likely going to come down to the wire.
Reuters/Zogby telephone surveys of eight battleground states show Democrat Barack Obama ahead in six. While his lead over Republican John McCain is less than three points in Florida, Missouri and North Carolina, these results still point out the daunting task McCain faces to reach the 270 Electoral College votes needed for election
With Barack Obama only needing to hold onto the states John Kerry won in 2004, plus the now strongly blue stats of New Mexico and Iowa (states that only went to Bush in '04 by a few thousand), a win in either Colorado, Virginia, Florida or Ohio would see Obama become next President.
Could this be George Bush's gift to John McCain just one week before Americans go to the polls in one of the most important elections in the history of the world?
Syria accused the United States on Monday of committing a "terrible crime" in killing eight civilians during a helicopter attack on a Syrian farm near the border with Iraq. Syria has said four U.S. helicopters attacked the al-Sukkari farm in the AlbouKamal area in eastern Syria on Sunday and that U.S. soldiers stormed a building in the area.
The United States, which accuses Syria of failing to stem the flow of alQaeda fighters and other insurgents into Iraq to attack U.S. forces, has neither confirmed nor denied the incident.
"This is an outrageous raid which is against international law. It is a terrible crime. I don't know the political meaning of it. We are expecting clarifications from the Americans," Syrian Ambassador to London Samial-Khiyami told Reuters.
The US has complained for many years that the DamascusGovernment had not done enough to prevent foreign fighters who heavily traffic the border are between Iraq and Syria.
But why would the Pentagon act now? No doubt the operation involving US helicopters and American special forces soldiers, would have been given the go ahead by President Bush, given the sensitive nature of crossing into a sovereign nation proper.
Why send shock waves across the middle east and around the world with an operation that clearly violates Syrian territory to go after what appears to be a small band of either traffickers of foreigners into Iraq, or as some Arab media says was civilian targets?
Why did something like this not happen much earlier, when it was clear that fighters have been using this area to pour into Iraq for many, many years?
Either way this smells fishy. Given that many people consider Republican Presidential candidate John McCain the more capable candidate on issues of national security and foreign policy, the operation in Syria, though low key would no doubt shore up doubts in voters minds over the ability of the relatively less experienced Barack Obama to deal with such a crisis.
The McCain camp has even released a plethora of TV ads in an attempt to throw up these doubts in voters minds as they head for the ballot box November 4.
Alaska has a history as being a state awash with political and financial corruption, Republican VP runner and Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is in the thick of it.
Sarah Palin could soon find herself in the middle of another damaging scandal, this time involving the apparent deliberate favouring of a contractor, TransCanda corp, in a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline from the Governors state to the lower 48.
Among the findings, the investigation found that Sarah Palin broke rules which legally bound her not to speak directly to any potential bidders. It also found that the leader of the Alaskan state bid had lobbied for the winning bidder in the past. The terms of bidding for the pipeline contract was also found to be anti-competitive, the winning company was granted subsidies by the State of Alaska despite the bid terms originally not requiring such a intervention by the Governor of Alaska.
Despite Palin's boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp.
In interviews and a review of records, the AP found: _Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group _ the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.
Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.
_The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.
_Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.
Politico.com's Ben Smith talks about the apparent unesyness between John McCain and Sarah Palin in the McCain-Palin 2008 camp.
Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image -- even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.
Unnecessary 2008 US Presidential election side show, Joe the Plumber from Ohio says he may as well (thinking about it) throw his hat into the ring for the 2010 election, given his new found status as Americas regular guy.
Joe Wurzelbacher, the most famous plumber in America thanks to John McCain and Sarah Palin, told conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham Friday he's considering a run for Congress in 2010.
That would pit Wurzelbacher against longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur for Ohio's 9th district on the state’s northern border, which includes Toledo and Sandusky. "I'll tell you what, we'd definitely be in one heck of a fight, Marcy Kaptur definitely has a following in this area," he said of the possibility. "But, you know, I'd be up for it."
Barack Obama is really opening up a can of whoop ass on American TV with the Obama-Biden 2008 campaign spending "more than half of what Sen. John F. Kerry spent on television commercials for the entire 2004 presidential campaign" in the first 2 weeks of the month of October alone.
The burst of spending came on the heels of Obama's record month of fundraising and has, in some key markets, enabled the presidential nominee to broadcast as many as seven commercials for every one aired by Republican Sen. John McCain.
"It's beyond saturation," said Evan Tracey, a media analyst. The overall differences in the way each campaign spent money during the critical first weeks of October are stark.
The reports filed with the Federal Election Commission late Thursday show that Obama and the Democratic Party committees that are supporting his effort spent nearly $105 million from Oct. 1 to Oct. 15. McCain and Republican Party entities, by contrast, spent just over $25 million
Barack Obama's presidential campaign appears headed for the upper deck. Polls (both national and state-by-state), organization, money, and momentum are all running strongly in Obama's favor.
At this point, one wonders whether Obama's winning margin could be greater than Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's 5.6-point win over President George H.W. Bush in 1992, more than Bush's 7.7-point win over Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, or more than Clinton's 8.5-point win over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996.
Even higher on the landslide roster is California Gov. Ronald Reagan's 9.7-point victory over President Carter in 1980 and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's 10.9-point win over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
