Republican Delusions (aka: “We’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em)

Dick Morris Reports: MCCAIN GAINS IN ALL THREE TRACKING POLLS

Really?

Zogby, Rasmussen and Gallup all report McCain closing to 5 points back. Zogby had him 12 back, Rasmussen 8 and Gallup 6 in their previous polling. McCain’s use of the Joe the Plumber and the tax issue in his ads is working!

Unilaterally, John McCain agreed to disarm himself by refusing to use perhaps his most potent weapon in exposing Barack Obama: the Democrats’ relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The McCain campaign and, at its direction, the Republican Party, have banned use of footage of Rev. Wright from their campaign commercials. Perhaps for fear of being accused of racism, they are not bringing up the single most compromising association in Obama’s past – his close liaison with Rev. Wright.

But it does not matter that Rev. Wright is black, white, or brown…or purple. What matters is that he spews hatred of the United States and that Obama was an active participant in his church. Or are we supposed to believe that Obama regularly attended church with Wright for two decades, chose the Reverend to baptize his children and officiate at his wedding, titled his book Audacity of Hope after a sermon of the Reverend’s, but did not know of his anti-American views? Nonsense.

Later he goes on to shill for some Republican 527 that is running Rev. Wright attack ads. That is the purpose of his post. Yes, toward the end of the post he adds some disclaimers so he can claim that he isn’t exactly lying…

But go to Gallup’s website: the race is remarkably stable and has been so for weeks.

Go to Rasmussen

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday again shows Barack Obama attracting 51% of the vote nationwide while John McCain earns 46%.

Battleground state polls released yesterday showed Obama leading in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. With these latest results, Rasmussen Reports has moved Florida from “Toss-Up” to “Leans Democratic.”

In Missouri and North Carolina, the race remains a toss-up while McCain leads by five in his home state of Arizona. Rasmussen Reports Electoral College projections now show Obama leading 260-163. When “leaners” are included, Obama leads 313-174.

Zogby? See for yourself. Over the past weeks, Obama’s support has been 49.0 to 52.2 and McCain’s has been 40.3 and 45.1. Margin of error: 2.9 points.
In short, each candidate’s support has been steady, accounting for the margin of error.

To see all of the polls: here is Pollster.com and check out the election futures, which have Obama at 87.0 in Iowa Electronic and 88.0 at Intrade. McCain’s numbers are 12.8 and 13.0 respectively.

So if you believe Mr. Morris, you can make a ton of money!

Who is the Elitist Candidate?
Let’s see how the candidates are funded (Open Secrets).

McCain: 34% from small donors (200 dollars or less), 50% from maximum donors.
Obama: 48% from small donors (200 dollars or less), 33% from maximum donors.

These numbers are all but reversed.

Religious Wingnut: If you vote for Obama, you risk going to Hell!

No, this is NOT from a parody site such as The Onion or Liberals Must Die.

Source: World Net Daily

To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger, according to the Word of God, so are you.
[...]

No, this election is not about race. It’s not about the economy. It’s about obeying God.
[....]

Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.

But the warning goes far beyond that. To those who think that God’s grace gives them license to willfully disobey Him without consequences – think again:

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Matthew 7:21-23) [...]

(hat tip: Right Wing Watch)

Such wingnuttery is not isolated.

This is from the McCain rally at Davenport, Iowa (note: McCain had not entered the arena as yet)

Wait….my deity is ringing me up…..

Whew! I feel better now…I was getting worried for a second…;)

Update:

Chilly weather is here!

Workout notes Overslept, so I made Nancy’s yoga-lattes class (7:15) then ran a hilly 7-mile course (1:13). Don’t laugh; that represents an improvement from my prior attempts. I ran around the Gateway building along the trail through lower Glen Oak park, into Springdale and up the bill hill to the Prospect road entrance and then back through upper Glen Oak park.

The first 10 minutes really sucked but then I started to feel good. Weather: sunny, just above freezing, slight wind. This was my first “jacket run” of the year.

After the run I walked a brisk mile to cool down.

Hey! I had put this cool video on my Daily Kos diary a few weeks ago. Now it has been redone and released as an Obama ad.

Halloween Political Fun If you enjoy dressing up in scary costumes, “dress up” as a clueless wingnut and surf over to Liberalsmustdie and join in on the fun! Be sure to have some cognitive dissonance, litter your posts with grammatical and spelling errors, and troll away! Be sure to include phrases like “Obama is a socialist”, “Obama is a Muslim” as well as your favorite Rush Limbaugh talking points.

Be careful to hide any actual knowledge or ability to reason; that might “out” you as a “lib traitor”.

John McCain ad:

Why this ad is stupid: Obama’s higher tax rate starts at 250,000 dollars a year, ON PROFITS. Labor costs are an expense, as is buying capital equipment. So what much about what these people talked about is completely irrelevant to Obama’s tax plan. Besides the higher taxes kick in for the amount over 250,000 profits, and they go up to where they were under Bill Clinton.

Example: if someone makes 300,000 dollars a year in profit, then their tax hike is roughly (300,000 – 250,000)*.03 = 1500 a year. But then consider that Obama gives help for those who want to provide their employees with health insurance. But even more importantly, customers can’t patronize a business if they have no money to spend.

Hey, this couple says that things are tough, right? Well, let’s try something different under a new administration!

Daily Kos: “Axis of Weasel“

Too funny.

Joke: Yes, I admit that I sometimes joke that Democrats vote on November 4′th and Republicans vote on the 5′th. But I only say that to those who know better, and I certainly don’t print out something with an official State of Illinois seal on it.

But I am not a Republican; I have a sense of shame.

The Richmond Times Dispatch is reporting that fliers are being distributed in the Hampton Roads area that seek to deliberately confuse voters about which day they are supposed to vote!

Virginia elections officials say fliers are making the rounds in several Hampton Roads localities attempting to confuse voters.

The fliers advise Republicans to vote on one day, and Democrats on another.

Election Day for everyone, of course, is Nov. 4.

The bogus advisory features the logo of the State Board of Elections and states the two voting dates are intended to ease the load on local balloting officials.

State police are looking into the source of the fliers.

It’s not over! Don’t drop your guard for a moment.

Remember: Republicans are unprincipled dirt-bags. Some in the Republican leadership will use every dirty trick in the book. Be warned!
That is why I am doing a GOTV canvass next week (I have the day off of work); I am taking nothing for granted.

Update: Christopher Hitchens blisters the current Republican party on its rampant anti-intellectualism. The whole article (which mostly deals with Palin’s absurd fruit-fly research remark) is worth reading, but the last paragraph is priceless:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just “people of faith” but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Overslept, Flurries, PUMA desperation

Wingnuts are abuzz over this:

I’ll link to a wingnut version; you’ll see (from their annotations) that they “hear” exactly what he didn’t say.

In fact, Obama was talking about the role of the courts and how having the courts making the changes in civil rights law really, in the long run, did some harm to the movement. In short, it would have better to have done it from legislation. In other words, Obama’s position is more similar to the conservative one than the position that other liberals hold!

For an intelligent analysis, go to Cosmic Variance.

You can listen to the entire interview here, in RealPlayer. As an Obama supporter, all I can say is: please listen. (The interview was conducted on the late, lamented WBEZ program Odyssey, hosted by the redoubtable Gretchen Helfrich. Other Obama appearances here.) The response of any non-crazy person to that interview would be “Hmm, he sounds like a thoughtful guy. It sure would be nice to have someone as President who understood some of the nuances of separation of powers and the role of the Supreme Court in the federal government.”

Because that’s all the interview is about. Obama is talking about the role of the Warren Court in the civil rights movement. He makes a simple and true point, one that conservatives should love to hear: policy-making should not be done through the courts. The Warren Court, he says, was not very radical, even if it was painted as such at the time; it was essentially reactive, and that’s always going to be a feature of the appellate court system. If you actually want to enact substantive changes that have a chance of sticking, the right mechanism is political action and the passage of legislation, not relying on the courts to fix things.

Here is another summary.

Of course, the desperate are doing their best to dig up something; for example this PUMA blog is trying hard to make this “made up controversy” stick. (PUMA stands for “Party Unity My Ass” and is normally associated with disgruntled former Hillary Clinton supporters)

The difference intellectual level between this PUMA post and the Cosmic Variance post couldn’t be any wider; I wonder if this PUMA is so desperate to find ANYTHING that will stick that they throw reason out the window. It is sad to see.

On another note: Christopher Hitchens slams Sarah Palin for her rampant anti-science attitude. The latest, of course, was her being dismissive of an ear mark for fruit fly research and then going on to laud research into autism in the very next sentence!

Readers of this blog don’t need to have that irony pointed out to them.

Woos, More infighting, and desperate claims

Bill Maher: funny take on Barack Obama

Desperate Claim: The wingnuts are running with what Barack Obama said in 2001

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.

Obama’s larger point is that it is best not to rely on the courts to do what legislation and activism ought to be doing. In other words, the above snippet means exactly the OPPOSITE what some wingnuts are claiming that it means.

Cosmic Variance has an excellent post on this issue.

Obama: endorsed by a famous NASCAR driver?

Sarah Palin

Here is a note from a lame Sarah Palin Rally in Alaska. They have some video of the singers and the music. They aren’t that good, but the female lead vocalist has visible panty-lines.

Below is a photo from an Obama rally that same weekend in Alaska.

The Buzzards Circle

Sarah Palin comes under fire from Republicans for going her own way.

Some Republicans think that Palin will be the future of the party?

Mike Huckabee: plans for 2012?

Wingnuts: bringing out their deity.

Gay rights pose a threat to our country? Here is one of “them” discussing Proposition 8, which is a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage in California:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”

“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”

Ok. 9-11, not so bad. But gays getting married…oh no, not that!

They really mean it…if we don’t do what they want their god is going to “withdraw his protective hand from our country”:

Bonus

Obama spokesman Bill Burton stands up to Faux News