Meet Tara
I will be out of the loop for a while. My sister sends in these pics of Tara, a six month old blue heeler/lab mix, who needs a home. Her sister was adopted and she is apparently lonely.
My sister is constantly bombarding me with pets that need adopted, so if you live in the Pittsburgh area and would like a doggie, drop me an email and I will get you in touch with her.
Consider this your open thread.
This Is A Stupid Story
I understand why people are trying to make a big deal out of this, but I disagree:
arly in 2007, just as her husband launched his presidential bid, Cindy McCain sought to resolve an old problem – the lack of cellphone coverage on her remote 15-acre ranch near Sedona, Ariz., nestled deep in a tree-lined canyon called Hidden Valley.
Over the past year, she offered land for a permanent cell tower, and Verizon Wireless embarked on an expensive public process to meet her needs, hiring contractors and seeking county land-use permits.
Verizon ultimately abandoned its effort to install a permanent tower in August. Company spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said the project would be “an inappropriate way” to build its network. “It doesn’t make business sense for us to do that,” he added.
Instead, Verizon delivered a portable tower known as a “cell site on wheels” – free of charge – to the McCain property in June, after the Secret Service began inquiring about improving coverage in the area. Such devices are used for providing temporary capacity where coverage is lacking or has been knocked out, in circumstances ranging from the Super Bowl to hurricanes.
As far as I am concerned, when it comes to the safety of our candidates and our past and current Presidents, what the Secret Service wants the Secret Service gets. Period.
Inside the Bubble
According to everything I have read and everything the talking heads on my television have said, last night was John McCain’s best performance, but that Obama committed no gaffes, held his own, and then finished strong. I have to say at that I am relieved that McCain had a better night, as there is still a chance that he could pull it out and win. Anything can happen, and it would be nice to think that if Obama does lose, the next administration would not be a total disaster.
On the other hand, I think this take on things is probably delusional:
Tonight we finally saw what so many of us have been waiting for. John McCain mopped the floor with Barack Obama.
Throughout the night, Barack Obama looked distant, like he did not want to be there, like he was annoyed. He really looked annoyed all night.
McCain on the other hand looked like the comeback kid — the guy who knew he had to do well. And he did.
Here is why it mattered.
Between October 24th and 27th of 1980, Jimmy Carter was ahead of Ronald Reagan by six points. Obama is up three in the traditional Gallup poll and up eight in the expanded Gallup poll.
This becomes very doable for John McCain tonight. It becomes very doable.
Doable and plausible are two different things, and we need to square this “mopped the floor with him” rhetoric with the polls:
CNN poll of debate viewers: Obama 58%, McCain 31%
CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 53%, McCain 22%
Still making their own reality over at Red State.
Say It Ain’t So, Joe
This, if true, is just pretty damned funny:
Two readers with access to the Ohio voter file say that Joe Wurzelbacher’s inluence on this cycle will be limited in one way: He doesn’t appear to be registered to vote.
(And yes, the freelance opposition research on Joe began before the debate ended.)
That would be typical of the zaniness of this election.
*** Update ***
According to you guys, he was on GMA and stated he is registered, so one of the possible great acts of comedy this election has been foiled.
Great Idea
In this blogger’s opinion Obama won the debate with a measured response to the question of abortion. The instapproval graph also liked his health care plan (they hated McCain’s unhappy-mayor-from-The-Nightmare-before-Christmas attack face), but the point about finding common ground on abortions maxed the squiggles and kept them there until he stopped talking.
The basic thrust of Obama’s point went like this:
Planned Parenthood and the (more reasonable) Lifers have the same basic agenda: reduce the frequency of abortions. Family planning and birth control moots the question of casual abortion by putting women in control of their own reproductive agenda. Why not sell it that way? Peel off the Life groups who will cooperate on community-health strategies to reduce abortions through planning and highlight the extremism of the Lifers who won’t cooperate. At this point we’ve got more than enough public health studies to know for a fact which approaches in fact reduce abortion rates and which do not. Reframe the debate so that the moderate and rational opponents of abortion have more in common with us than they do with the bombers and other freakshows.
That wasn’t a quote from tonight, it was a bit of strategery that when I was just another commenter at Kos*. It was my only rec’d diary (sniffle), and in my opinion anyway the whole thing makes a great read. The basic point was to strategize about what Dems should do if we won a crushing victory in 2004 (foresight!), but really it was a diary about Barack Obama. His 2004 convention speech moved the hell out of me, so I wrote a diary proposing how Dems can win an enduring majority by following in the spirit that Obama laid out instead of the spiteful path of Rove.
It sucks that Kerry didn’t win, but instead I can watch a black guy with a muslim name eat the Republicans’ lunch using a strategy that I envisioned after watching a speech by him. It’s nice to think that I’m a little bit in tune with the guy who could be our next JFK.
***
(*) About the Kos pseud – I picked Tom Frank back when Kos has 10,000 users and I didn’t know about that other guy. I felt embarrassed when I found out, but by then I wasn’t about to give up the sweet user ID#.
Debate Post Thread
Since I did not watch, I will state for the record that this was the best debate. This guy was glued to the tv screen: