Gallup now has McCain up over Obama 54-44. Oh my!
In the new poll, taken Friday through Sunday, McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote. The survey of 1,022 adults, including 959 registered voters, has a margin of error of +/— 3 points for both samples.
Of course some dipstick is likely to point to some outdated state polls to “prove” that Obama is still ahead in the Electoral College. Whatever.
Finally, PMSNBC is replacing Olberman and Matthews for political coverage.
What is so ironic is that the when you ask a rabid left wing kook that hates FoxNews, what news network they prefer, they always say MSNBC. Yet Fox would never put Bill O. or Hannity in the position MSNBC put Olberman and Matthews.
William often links to websites like this one that “prove” GOP voters are more stupid than Democratic voters. Let me explain the thinking behind their “science”, how their arguments contradict traditional liberal politics, and finally how their conclusions are flawed.
Here is an excerpt from William’s favorite article.
Of the 17 states (including DC) with an above average percentage of citizens with advanced degrees, 13 (76.5%) voted for Kerry. Of the 34 states with a below average percentage of citizens with advanced degrees, 27 (79.4%) voted for Bush.
Talk about some seriously bad logic. I’ll get back to that later, but if you are unable to see the flawed thinking in the above excerpt, then my friend you have problems.
Think about what they are saying here. For years and years we have been told by the representatives of the downtrodden, the least of these, that the Republicans are for the rich man (most educated, better opportunities) and the Democrats are for the poor man (least educated, less opportunity), that the Democrats are for the black man, and all minorities for that matter (least educated), and the Republicans are just a bunch of country club honkies (more educated). Obviously this new argument is a direct contradiction to the old class warfare argument, that is unless all of the rich people in this country are proven to be the least educated. If anybody has any data to confirm that, I’d like to see it.
Now lets get back to their reasoning and how seriously flawed it is. A good example to “prove” the Republican part of their argument is Mississippi. I chose Mississippi, because I grew up in Alabama, where the state motto was “Thank God for Mississippi”. According to their chart, Mississippi ranks 51st on the list of most to least educated states. 59% of Mississippians voted for Bush in 2004. Almost 40% voted for Kerry. According to the census bureau, Mississippi is 60% white and 37% black. 16% of white children in Mississippi live in poor families, while a whopping 47% of black children live in poverty. A Harvard study (nationwide study) in 2004 concluded that while 75% of white children graduated High School in 2001, only 50% of black students did so. How many black people in Mississippi do you all think voted for Bush in 2004? How many whites?
On the flip side, do you think Michigan would ever go Democrat if Detroit, with a High School graduation rate of 25%, was not a part of that state? How about Pennsylvania minus Philadelphia, or Illinois minus Chicago?
Obviously the white liberals in the northeast, the ones so smug they smell their own farts, are more educated than the rest of the country, and the whiteys in West Virginia are good examples for their argument. But even in places like West Virginia, Republicans have only recently started winning. Many white country folk still believe the Republicans are only for the rich. Are not both Senators and the governor of West Virginia Democrats?
Sometimes I am stunned at how stupid some of these people like William are. He forms a conclusion, a conclusion based on his own bigotry, hatred, and predjudice, and then finds “facts” to support that hate-filled conclusion. Of course his facts aren’t really facts, but merely a bunch of utter nonsense he cut and pasted from some left wing kook site. Unbelieveable! Well not really, I guess.
This letter was written by Alaska resident, a person who has known Palin since 1992, a Wasilla resdent. It was found and verified on snopes.com - a fact checking website.
Forget about your partisan bullshit and Republican authoritarianism for 2 minutes and read this. These facts show Palin is an appropriate torch bearer for the Republican culture of corruption:
Read the whole letter or this excerpt:
————————————–
“Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years; as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative.” During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation later to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.
As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state. In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.
She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them. While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop: As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than a dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.
She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness. Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.
When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).
As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork.”
She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.
As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.
Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.”
– excerpt from letter by Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny who has known Palin since 1992.
I think the best line from Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech was her response to Obama’s denigration of her time as Mayor of Wasilla:
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.
(Though the line about having authored two books but no reform legislation either in the U.S. or Illinois senate was a good one).
Mark Hemingway of NationalReviewOnline
details how the “community organizer” line has the Left indignant and Michelle Malkin provides more background on the kind of organizing Obama has done.
Bill Whittle (at NRO) explains why he’s proud of the GOP for the first time in a while:
And I don’t know whether or not we will win in November, but for the first time I feel like we deserve to win more than they deserve to lose. And I find myself at peace for the first time in . . . well, it seems like forever. Because now I know that we will win or lose based on what we love and what we believe in, and that we have managed to find two politicians who have lived those values through good times and bad.
Also at WisdomisVindicated.
Victor Davis Hanson explains why Palin Derangement Syndrome is “surreal”:
In short, Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.Instead this entire sorry episode of personal invective against, and jealousy toward, Sarah Palin is surreal. Given the rising backlash, Palin Derangement Syndrome may prove to be the one thing, fairly or not, that sinks Barack Obama.
Also at WisdomisVindicated.
Ever notice how the Left has chosen to create their new Obama posters and murals in the old-school communist/socialist/Nazi meme?
Ned Williams e-mailed me some time ago with a suggestion to draw attention to today’s modern ‘Obama’ posters, and those of yesteryear. I’ve sat around on that idea for seemingly forever.
Sorry, Ned; I hadn’t forgotten. It just takes me a while.
click for embiggenment.
For the young kids who don’t know any other socialists than their own Obama, we’ve pictured here Lenin, Stalin, Obama. Not enough pixel room for Ché. But he’s there, in spirit.
Politically, a perfect fit.
Polls mean nothing though. Right? Well according to the Willies of the world, they do when they say this. Lots of time left though. As for the electoral college and those swing states, take each state poll and subtract about two percent for Obama to account for the Bradley Effect and bong water drinking twenty-somethings that could not find their way to the kitchen for another pack of Cheetos, much less a place where people actually cast ballots.
Wouldn’t you just love to see her sitting in front of Russert or the WH press corps? Sarah ‘Pit Bull’ Palin is not only full of bull, she’s ignorant about foreign policy and other pressing issues and the McCain campaign knows it; (listen to her talk about Eye-Rack) . They can’t risk her going in front of the national media. In short… she’s a lightweight, unqualified, unknowledgable, and trying to learn in a few weeks something about foreign policy to match Biden’s 37 yrs of experience. Of course she’s rife with typical GOP buzz words… “drill baby, drill” … that’s about as deep as it gets.
She’s feisty, she’s tough, she can stand up to the good ole boys—or so they claim.
For someone who claims to be a fighter and a stand-up gal, Palin isn’t living up to the hype. If she were, she might hold a press conference or sit down for a Sunday morning political show.
But no. Palin’s hiding from the press, mean people who might ask her hard and unfair questions about, say, foreign policy, or John McCain’s call for comprehensive immigration reform.
Press reports today say that the new VP nominee will be taking two weeks off to, well, to study the issues so she’ll know what she thinks about national and international issues.
UPDATE: TP reports Palin has agreed to her first TV interview. It will be with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, and it may be later this week.
Meanwhile, Palin - who knows nothing about “Eye-Rack” and foreign affairs, takes a crash course on foreign affairs with the neo-cons, learning about the world from the same people who have been wrong about every major decision in the past eight years. Change we can believe in!
Palin is a Bush Republican. Palin is a Bush Republican. Say it loud and often.
This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need.
I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” [But she’s convinced that the US is on a mission from god in Iraq].
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax.
She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
–Gloria Steinem, author, co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.
Thanks McSame. Women aren’t as stupid as you think.
“My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the start of the week. Their charismatic candidate was ahead in virtually every poll. George W Bush was so unpopular that conservatives were scrambling around for reasons not to invite the Republican President to the Republican convention. Democrats had only to maintain their composure and the White House would be theirs…. But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska.
“For once, the postmodern theories so many of them were taught at university are a help to the rest of us. As a Christian, conservative anti-abortionist who proved her support for the Iraq War by sending her son to fight in it, Sarah Palin was ‘the other’ - the threatening alien presence they defined themselves against. They might have soberly examined her reputation as an opponent of political corruption to see if she was truly the reformer she claimed to be. They might have gently mocked her idiotic creationism, while carefully avoiding all discussion of the racist conspiracy theories of Barack Obama’s church.
“But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor’s office.
“On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter’s. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.
“Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.
…
“When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows.”
h/t Ace
…seen around the web today…
Barking Moonbat Early Warning System: More reasons not to vote for Obama
Six Meat Buffet: Bumper Stickers for an inspired base
An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings: Obamarama
Oh, and my favorite…
NewsBusters: “The Swift-Skirting of Sarah Palin”
Don’t miss: William Kristol (a good William) at The Weekly Standard “Thanks, Guys The media’s attacks on Sarah Palin backfire”.
This is the man we want leading America– a simpleton who becomes irrational and unbalanced when challenged by a woman, and continues falling into the trap of having a debate with McCain’s junior officer, rather than his actual opponent for the presidency.As Allah says, it’s rather rich that Obama, who’s requrested three-quarters of a billion dollars in earmarks, including for his wife’s hospital, which then coincidentally promoted her and gave her a ginormous raise, should be questioning the pork-appetite of a former mayor and governor.
Heh. Goodnight.
Donald Douglas (a PolySci professor living in Southern California) writes at American Power Blog. Donald exposes more of the left-wing’s utterly hateful attacks on John McCain and Sarah Palin..
“Readers will recall yesterday’s post, “Leftists Attack GOP as “Ugly Americans.”
I suggested that left-wing partisans will sink to the gates of hell in
attacking John McCain and Sarah Palin, a fact demonstrated by the
left’s reaction to the realization that the Alaskan Governor is the new feminist terminator.”The truth, of course, is that the ugliest Americans are those now smearing the McCain-Palin ticket.“t turns out, as Chas Martin chronicles, not surprisingly, that there are close to 50 rumors flying around the fever swamps of the leftosphere, viciously attacking Sarah Palin, with allegations from the debunked Bristol baby cover-up to vile the suggestions of book-burning fundamentalism. The list continues to grow, naturally, with the slurs and smears distributed by some of the biggest blogs on the left (with the mainstream media in tow).
“So it should be no surprise to soon see photos like the one below at Andrew Sullivan’s or at Daily Kos.
“That’s right: Sullivan and Markos are not much better than than the low-life scum who created a blog dedicated to exploiting Trig Palin: “I Miss My Mommy.”"
There’s a photo there, you’ll just have to go see for yourself.
Grit your teeth.
Democrats, remember, are the party of Hope and Change.
I wonder if the One has seen this?
The fact is, Obama could lose OH, FL, NC, and VA and still win the presidency. BUT… if he wins any ONE of these states, it’s pretty much game over for the old man. Considering the newest Opinion Research Poll has Obama up by 2 points in OH, and a tie in VA, it looks bad for McSame. Even strong red states are now polling Obama with a slight lead in ND, NV, CO, and NM
Maybe this time, the smart people will get to elect the president.
Despite a protracted military struggle (in Eyerack), a sluggish economy, high fuel prices and the advantage of being out of office for eight years, the Dems could snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory once again.
Drudge is reporting larger viewership for the GOP convention, more popularity for the GOP’s VP candidate and more popularity for the Conservative network than the opposition.
Must be racism.
From Stop the ACLU, this video.
This sort of thing just…bedevils.
Obama, religieux, for to cleanse us of our collective sins.
All we hear now is that Obama’s attacking another girl; while crying about ‘being bullied‘. Bonus! he compares himself to John Kerry!
The Democrats are now in a perpetual lather, but no matter what they do or say Sarah Palin isn’t going away. In the polls, Obama has peaked, and will fall soon enough.
It doesn’t help Dems that Joe Biden’s mouth runs 24/7. Give the man a mic, stand back, and he’ll do the rest. Jake Tapper, ABC News (h/t Jeff G)
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., likes to tell crowds that he and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are friends.
In a packed gymnasium at Maple Point Middle School in Langhorne, Pa., this afternoon, before a receptive crowd, Biden explained just how close they are.
“John McCain is my friend,” said the loquacious Blue Hen. “I admire John McCain. I know of no man or woman I have ever met that has more personal courage than John McCain. We have been friends for over 33 years. We have traveled together. When John was Navy liaison he staffed me for three or four years everywhere I traveled in the world.
“Jill and John are good friends,” Biden said, referring to his wife Dr. Jill Biden, who had just introduced him. “Matter of fact there’s a best-selling book written about us called The Nightingale’s Song about John and some of his graduating class from Annapolis that references Jill and John in the book as good buddies.
“She doesn’t like the reference,‘” Biden added, “but John, John’s a great guy. John was staffing me in Greece. I was meeting with the Prime Minister Papandreou and we were supposed to go to this fancy dinner and Jill said ‘Do we have to go to this dinner?’ And John said, ‘No, no, no I know this great place for dinner.’
“And there was a place literally down on the docks, where Zorba lived I think, and so I had to go to the fancy thing and I come back down and I find it, and we’re wandering through these alleys on the dock — you’re gonna get very angry at this Jill — but I walk around the corner and there’s these cement tables like down at the shore you know, the cement base ,the cement table, and I walk in and Jill and John are standing up on the table drinking ouzo dancing with one another, and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve never trusted John since then, Jillie.’
“But he’s a great guy,” Biden said, “and if John called me today and said ‘Joe -,’ like when they went after John McCain, when Bush went after him in South Carolina with the scurrilous comments they made about his character, I called him and said, ‘John, where do you want me? I’m an Al Gore man but where do you want me? I will show up anywhere in America to testify to the kind of man you are.’ And he is a good man, he is a good man.“
emboldenings mine.
From Rasmussen, (h/t Jeff G) Sarah Palin has a 58% Favorable rating, up from 52% Favorable before her Tuesday night speech. Compared to 57% Favorable ratings for both John McCain and the Messiah (yes, they are tied up; someone take William’s shoestrings and belt). And, 51% of Americans realize that the media is trying to harm Sarah Palin. And, 51% of all voters think John McCain picked the perfect next Vice President.
Oh, and the Dem’s choice, Eagelton Bidog? He’s carrying only a 48% Favorable rating, and only 47% of all voters think the Messiah chose well.
Worth noting about Palin’s executive experience, not exactly what you’d expect from a fiscal conservative.
As mayor of Wasilla, AK, Palin pushed through a sales tax increase, increased government spending, and racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt for the town of less than 6000, or roughly $3,000 of debt per resident.
Palin’s approach actually brings her in line with McCain, whose own “massive tax cuts” “would recklessly exacerbate the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration” and cause the largest deficit in 25 years.
