Obama Fights Back!

Some on General Powell’s endorsement:

Note: General Powell makes one minor error: Obama has not always been a Christian. Obama talks about his conversion (from being an agnostic) in his book Dreams from my Father

Hat tip to NC Dem Amy at the Daily Kos.

While Watching the Bears vs. Vikings track meet…er Football Game…

(from Yahoo)

Bears-Vikings: it was 27-24 Bears at the half and with 10:30 to go in the game, it is now 48-31 Bears. But the Vikings are have it at the Bear 5. OMG, the Bears hold on 3′rd and 2! The Vikings kick a field goal and it is 48-34.

Still, not a ton of defense.

For the record, I don’t care for the orange jerseys. Yeah, they look fine, but they just don’t look like “Da Bears” with those on. They are too, uh, refined?

More on politics.

Professor Moran (yes, that is his real name) shares a Canadian perspective on the USA election:

Note: in his blog, he also lampoons the oft repeated thought that somehow “those godless atheists” are responsible for every ill that occurs in the United States. It is true that “the godless” have a disproportionate impact in the sciences, especially at the elite levels.

We know about Colin Powell endorsing Obama (which must be painful for McCain). So, McCain brags about an endorsement from….a soap opera actress? That’s just too perfect, isn’t it?

West Virginia: a battleground state? Barack Obama is starting to compete for West Virginia. West Virginia Democrats are stepping up to the plate and addressing things directly:

West Virginia’s Democratic leaders on Saturday embarked on a winding, eight-county bus tour through the south of the state, and in one small mining town after another, they sold Barack Obama to small crowds of Democrats with remarkable directness.

“He is black” was the first thing Kenny Perdue, the state’s AFL-CIO president, said. “The gentleman that’s in the White House and John McCain — they’re white men. And I’m absolutely ashamed of what George W. Bush has done to this country.”

The president of the United Mine Workers, Cecil Roberts, spoke after Perdue in a parking lot set in the flat plateau below the remains of a strip-mined mountain.

“I’d rather have a black friend than a white enemy,” he said. State Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey spoke, too. Casey, 57, grew up Irish Catholic in Charleston, and he said the bus was following John F. Kennedy’s bus route in the 1960 Democratic primary.

“There’s a lot of people out there think you’re a bunch of inbred, redneck racists,” he told a couple dozen people wearing union hats and jackets. “They say you won’t vote for a man who’s black.”

“The rest of the country thought when Kennedy ran we were a bunch of ignorant, inbred religious bigots,” he said. “They were wrong, and we made Kennedy president.”

[....]

West Virginia isn’t exactly a battleground state. After Obama was shellacked here by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary — the southern coal counties voted for her by margins as high as 8-to-1 — both his campaign and John McCain’s assumed he’d lose it.

And with good reason: West Virginia represents a cross-section of the voters who have been hardest for Obama to reach. It’s among the oldest, whitest and least-educated states in America. It was where reporters found white Democrats who freely use the N-word and swore they’d never vote for Obama.

But as the article goes on to say that at least some attitudes have changed.

Electoral vote.com This is the website that the map logo links to (on my sidebar). Today’s post is especially interesting. Among the topics discussed: what will the networks do if, say, Obama has a big enough lead in Virginia and North Carolina to call those two states (say, at 7:30 Eastern Time) when it is only 4:30 on the west coast?

Personally, I won’t be affected as I have the day off from work and will be doing GOTV until the polls close here (7:00); probably in Iowa, or Missouri, or Wisconsin, or Indiana.

I’ve rounded up a buddy to go with me and have announced an Obama event to hopefully pick up another person or two.

Sarah Palin’s support: though I talked about a former Hillary Clinton supporter who likes her, Palin’s strongest support comes from men:

Guys think Ms. Palin is great, too, or at least many of those who come to hear her. They sometimes go to extraordinary lengths. “I woke up at 2 a.m. so I could get my work done before 6 and get here by 7,” said Mike Spencer, a chef from Dexter, Me. Mr. Spencer waited in the chilly hangar — in a “Nobama” T-shirt — for almost three hours.

At the height of Palinmania, soon after she made her national debut in September, Ms. Palin’s popularity among men was striking. Her favorability ratings were higher among men than women (44 percent to 36 percent), according to a New York Times poll, even though she was chosen in part because of her expected appeal to women. Since then, Ms. Palin has endured a tough month politically, and her favorability ratings have dropped among both sexes, but more so among men (down 13 points, to 31 percent in the latest Times poll.)

She has been widely attacked, even by a growing number of conservatives, as being essentially unserious and uncurious. “She doesn’t think aloud. She just …says things,” the Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote Friday. “She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation.”

All the while, Ms. Palin’s stoutest defenders are often the Joe Sixpacks in her crowds, who shrug off her critics, ridiculers and perceived adversaries in the news media. They say they appreciate Ms. Palin for, above all else, how “real” and “like us” she is.

In short, the dumbest of the dumb like her.

Kook of the week

Pleasant Walk

We had a visitor this weekend; she was great company.

Workout notes 10 miles (plus) on the East Peoria Trail; sidewalk (by CVS) to the 4 mile mark on the pavement 1:08:00, 1:02:25 on the way back. Basically, the way out is uphill and there was a slight wind against me. And, on the way back I had people to chase.

Local Peoria stuff: sort of

My friends and relatives probably remember this and this.

Well guess what? The party that instigated it (the neo-nazi from Virginia) is in jail. Note that he was from Roanoke and he was arrested at about the time that Obama had a rally there. (One Peoples Project’s take on this.)

Politics

Colin Powell endorses Obama.
Video.

I agree with what General Powell said, especially what he said starting at about 6 minutes into the video.

What kinds of images are going out on Al Jazeera?

Minnesota Representative that he talked about:

You know, if the typical Republican was like Colin Powell, I’d consider voting for one. But the party has been pandering to kooks for far too long.

18 October 2008 Evening.

Football: this is “flex your muscles” Saturday for the big powers.

Sure, Michigan is having a down year, but 46-17 is still a blowout (Penn State doing the blowing out).

USC humiliated Washington State 69-0 in Pullman.

Ohio State had its way with Michigan State 45-7 at Michigan State.

And, right now, Texas is manhandling Missouri; it is 35-0 and there are a few seconds left in the first half.

Of course, Navy got pounded by Pitt 42-21. But the Midshipmen had fun:

Yes, Senator McCain is a Naval Academy graduate and has attended a game this fall. My guess is that he will be very popular there, even though President Carter was not.

The game I actually watched (aside from the first 3 quarters of the Ohio State-Michigan State slaughter) was the Northwestern-Purdue game, which the Wildcats won going away 48-26. The Wildcats moved the ball very well from the second quarter on and took advantage of 5 Boilermaker turnovers.

Politics

Fake Virginia, Fake America.

Sarah Palin talked about the “pro-America” parts of America. A John McCain spokesperson talked about “real Virginia” (as opposed to the parts of Virginia that favors Obama)

Well, the Daily Kos is having a grand old time mocking that:

But this sums it up well (made about a year ago)

(Jed Report)

Republican reaction to the Obama rally: lots of denial on the Free Republic:

Doubt

No way….Is that real?
I bet 80,000 were bussed in from other states.
He’s got enough money to do it.

8 posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:00:04 PM by gimme1ibertee

photoshopped

I think that second section against the skyline is a photo “adjustment,” it looks fake.

10 posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:00:15 PM by madison10

totally agree….looks like a bogus pic

14 posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:01:11 PM by spacejunkie01

Excuse

Exactly. If he would come here to SW MO he would’nt get 20 people to show up.
St.Louis and K.C. are the only reason McClucksill is Senator. They are truly just microcosm’s of commies imbedded in an otherwise conservative state.

26 posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:04:10 PM by mkcc30

So, what about the areas that Palin visits versus the ones that Obama visits? There is a demographic difference; see a study of it here. There are some cool graphics; here is a brief summary from the FiveThirtyEight link:

I looked at the racial composition of voting-age (18+) population in these 44 cities as according to the 2000 census.** They are, on average, 83.3 percent non-Hispanic white, 7.5 percent black, 5.2 percent Hispanic, and 4.0 percent “other”. By comparison, the US 18+ population in 2000 was 72.0 percent white, 11.2 percent black, 11.0 percent Hispanic, and 5.9 percent other. Thirty-four of Palin’s 44 cities were whiter than the US average. [...]

Over the same interval, Barack Obama had public events scheduled in 48 distinct cities. The racial composition of these cities was 69.8 percent white, 17.4 percent black, 8.9 percent Hispanic, and 4.0 percent other. The percentage of whites very nearly matches the US average 72.0 percent; 22 of Obama’s cities were whiter than average, and the other 26 were less white than average. Obama, however, has visited cities with a relatively larger fraction of blacks than in the US as a whole.

Bonus: check out what some “real Americans” are doing about ACORN.