Obama: bought up 2 minute ad slots in Ohio and Texas

The Obama campaign has bought up 2 minute prime-time ad slots in every major media market in Texas and Ohio. This is the ad he is going to air:

Obama’s Closing ad

There is no youtube available as yet.

update: here it is:

For a preview of Ohio and Texas, as well as Rhode Island and Vermont, go here.

For a cool least squares regression calculation, go here.

Frankly, I am nervous and excited. I stand by my previous “best guess”: BHO in Texas (narrow in the primary, larger in the caucus), BHO big in Vermont, HRC narrowly in Ohio and in Rhode Island; BHO slightly pads his lead in pledged delegates.

This race continues on to Wyoming and Mississippi where we win big (we’ve already campaigned there) and we close it out in Pennsylvania (where we’ve already caught up).

But my predictions are worth what you are paying for them. (that is, not much!)

Experience? McCain, Obama and Clinton Compared Objectively.

Workout Notes I am planning to walk for about 1 hour and to do some easy yoga/resistance training. Oh yes, we are supposed to get dumped on, again (more snow). Even the editorial board of our local paper is pleading for the snow to stop; it sure would be nice to have a deity to blame for this.

Update 5 mile walk on the treadmill in 58:20; enough to work up a minor sweat. Yes I can!

Experience: Recently, I’ve posted about Obama’s U. S. Senate Record and how to see it for yourself by using the Library of Congress search engines. I posted a link to a Daily Kos Diary which contrasted Obama’s and Clinton’s record.

Now a recent Diary came out which used another search engine in another way to contrast McCain, Clinton and Obama; this one was done by TheUrbanRevolution.

Here is the search engine that this Kossack used.

Barack Obama has sponsored 129 bills since Jan 4, 2005, of which 120 haven’t made it out of committee (Poor) and 1 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Obama has co-sponsored 551 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).
S. 2030: A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists.
S. 2111: Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act
S. 2066: Back to School: Improving Standards for Nutrition and Physical Education in Schools Act of 2007
S.Con.Res. 46: A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month.
S. 2044: Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007 (to help workers not get exploited by employers by labeling them indie contractors)

Hillary Clinton has sponsored 354 bills since Jan 22, 2001, of which 307 haven’t made it out of committee (Extremely Poor) and 2 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Clinton has co-sponsored 1728 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).
S. 2114: American Home Ownership Preservation Act of 2007 (no co sponsors)
S. 2082: A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act to establish a Coordinated Environmental Public Health Network, and for other purposes. (no explanation of goals)
S. 2059: Airline Flight Crew Technical Corrections Act (family and med leave amendment)
S. 1148: Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commemoration Commission Act of 2007 (PR bill let’s commemorate some one)
S. 2054: Neighborhood Reclamation and Revitalization Program Act of 2007 (self explanatory – want’s to give grants to real-estate developers)

John McCain has sponsored 403 bills since Jan 21, 1997, of which 263 haven’t made it out of committee (Extremely Poor) and 12 were successfully enacted (Extremely Good, relative to peers). McCain has co-sponsored 876 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).
Some of McCain’s most recently sponsored bills include… (View All)
S. 722: Walnut Canyon Study Act of 2007 (land study – goals not mentioned)
S. 2172: Saffron Revolution Support Act of 2007 (a bill to stop import of gems and hardwood from Burma?!?!)
S. 1304: Arizona National Scenic Trail Act
S. 32: Defense Acquisition Reform Act of 2007 (how they acquire stuff)
S. 1255: Indian Arts and Crafts Amendments Act of 2007

So, McCain get’s extremely good for the amount finally enacted. However, let’s look at the last 5 bills sponsored. They seem really safe! I’ve added explanations when the titles of the bills weren’t self-explanatory. I’m not going to go back to the 1990s to look but I did at least look at 2007 and McCain’s only sponsored one bill dealing with foreign policy and ZERO dealing with the troops. Obama has sponsored 4 regarding foreign policy and Clinton 1.5 (one is so vague and has no explanation) Both Obama and Clinton have sponsored a handful of bills dealing with the troops, but Obama has sponsored more.

Of course, the “poor”, “extremely poor” ratings must have a subjectivity content to them because in terms of percentages, the “poor” rating for Obama’s “out of committee” rates at 7% of his bills, whereas Clinton’s is 13% and still gets “extremely poor”; they must take into account some sort of difficulty factor.

In any event, this is interesting reading.

Here is an example that you can do by just plugging in your Senator’s (or Representative’s) name.

Note: this is not a government website and there is some subjectivity involved in this website, though it is non-partisan. From it’s homepage:

An independent, non-partisan, non-commercial website founded in September 2004, GovTrack.us was a 2006 Webby Award nominee and has been mentioned in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. GovTrack was inspired by other websites, such as Project Vote Smart, OpenSecrets, and the commercial CapWiz, but was the first website to provide comprehensive legislative tracking for everyday citizens and the first congressional transparency website to embrace Web 2.0 and principles of open data.

The data shown on this site is assembled in an entirely automated way from official data sources, primarily from the website THOMAS, the official website for the status of legislation run by the Library of Congress.

I used “Obama” as the name and found:

Obama is a rank-and-file Democrat according to GovTrack’s own analysis of bill sponsorship. (Where do these labels come from?)
Barack Obama missed 201 of 1121 votes (18%) since Jan 6, 2005. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart.

The graph goes up exponentially when Obama’s campaign started.

You then get a list of committees and subcommittees that he serves on.

You get a list of votes that he has made or missed. Then the legislation part:

Statistics: Barack Obama has sponsored 129 bills since Jan 4, 2005, of which 120 haven’t made it out of committee (Poor) and 1 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Obama has co-sponsored 551 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).

Some of Obama’s most recently sponsored bills include… (View All)
S. 2030: A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists.
S. 2111: Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act
S. 2066: Back to School: Improving Standards for Nutrition and Physical Education in Schools Act of 2007
S.Con.Res. 46: A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month.
S. 2044: Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007

A political junkie could get lost for hours here!

More interesting videos

I made my calls today; some for BHO’s campaign and some for MoveOn.org.

Yes, there were BHO voters who didn’t know about the caucus system in Texas.

Phonebanking on a national level can be tough as winning campaigns tend to give the “good” numbers to the locals (as they should); national folks get the left overs and less likely supporters.

How will Obama do? He has tended to under poll (over the last 11 elections), but Ohio and Texas are like none of the others as Clinton has put in a ton of time, effort and money there. The race is painfully close in the two large states, with BHO having an edge in Texas and HRC in Ohio; BHO enjoys a large lead in Vermont and HRC a smaller lead in Rhode Island.

A 2-2 split is looking increasingly likely, but nothing is assured.

Cool Videos: point/counter point

A good pro-Clinton Jack Nicholson ad:

And a counter parody of it

One very minor quibble: when WJC made the “fairy tale” remark, he was talking about the presses coverage of Obama being anti-war; WJC correctly pointed out that BHO and HRC voted the same way after BHO went into the Senate. Where that is true, BHO reminds people that “once a bus is already in the ditch, there is only so many ways to pull it out. You don’t promote the driver though”, meaning that HRC helped us get into Iraq, and BHO, though not in the U. S. Senate at that time, spoke out against it. True, that was a popular stance among his state constituents, but it was risky for his upcoming U. S. Senate primary run which was about 1 year away.