Not a Big Truck

As Obama continues to hold onto his leads in national and swing state polling and expands the playing field into what were expected to be solid GOP states, the emails from the Obama campaign pleading for money are starting to make me chuckle. See this bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping email from yesterday evening:

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain’s negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee. … [J]ust this week, we’re facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

Oh no!  The Republicans are having to defend Montana and West Virginia, states that the Democrats never expected to have much of a chance of winning!  I’m surprised they didn’t mention that McCain is having to spend money on robocalls in Arizona now.

This ad from Democratic challenger Kay Hagan responds to Dole’s recent attack ad that implied that Hagan was an atheist and featured a female voice in the background screaming “There is no God!”  Hagan’s response is, I think, devastating to Dole and my immediate reaction to watching it was that it is strong enough to push Hagan over the top in North Carolina.

Saw this at the Dish.

Since our blog’s title was inspired by Alaska  Senator Ted Stevens, I thought it appropriate to note his conviction today on seven felony charges of concealing a quarter-million dollars in gifts.

My favorite quote from the trial:

“We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us,” Stevens said when a prosecutor asked him about the [$2,700 massage] chair.

Farewell, Senator.

Things have to be looking up for Stevens’s opponent in next week’s election, Mark Begich.

Starting after the election, we will be having a cabinet pool. More information will come out in the coming days but here’s an article on the subject to whet your appetite.

Drudge is trumpeting the story of a woman in Pittsburgh who was allegedly robbed at knifepoint at an ATM.  Her attacker supposedly saw a McCain bumper sticker on her car and proceeded to scratch a “B” into her face — go here for a short article with picture.

Suspiciously, the “B” on her face is a mirror image of a regular “B.”  Why would the attacker scratch a mirror-image “B”?  If it was meant as a mark of Barack Obama, why not carve the letter “O”?

I’m interested to hear what is on the ATM security camera video.

Jeffery Goldberg has a great article out in the Atlantic about the TSA.  Unlike some other critiques of the TSA, it’s not hysterical, and focuses mostly on the agencies most obvious flaws.

My favorite quote:

On another occasion, at LaGuardia, in New York, the transportation-security officer in charge of my secondary screening emptied my carry-on bag of nearly everything it contained, including a yellow, three-foot-by-four-foot Hezbollah flag, purchased at a Hezbollah gift shop in south Lebanon. The flag features, as its charming main image, an upraised fist clutching an AK-47 automatic rifle. Atop the rifle is a line of Arabic writing that reads Then surely the party of God are they who will be triumphant. The officer took the flag and spread it out on the inspection table. She finished her inspection, gave me back my flag, and told me I could go.

I’ve found it useful to think about candidates policy proposals during an election as falling into a given location on a 2×2 matrix:

Any policy proposal can be catagorized by how sound it is, in terms of being effective policy, and how politically popular it is.

I’ve been considering this framework for a bit but am not sure whether it is accurate or significant. Some initial observations:

- Candidates will try to give themselves credit for their positions on which there is a consensus while making opponent’s proposals seem elitist.

- Social issues do not solve any policy problems and can only be judged by whether or not they are politically popular.

But this is still awesome.  Kudos to the guy who socked Fuld in the face.

Saw this gem on Ben Smith’s blog over at Politico and thought it was good enough to repost here:

Sen. John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate’s decades-long interest in Latin America.

Speaking at a panel discussion Friday on the next U.S. president’s Latin American policy, McCain advisor Richard Fontaine started out by mentioning an old Brazilian flame of McCain’s, who recently emerged in the press.

”Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years,” Fontaine said. “In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She’s a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region — in the most positive terms.”