Coincidences?

Gas prices are down just two weeks before the election. Don't think I have to spell that one out. Big oil...gas prices...big election...wonder why that would be...hmmm.

And last week Obama added an attack on McCain regarding medicare cuts. I'm assuming his campaign is a little concerned about the amount of seniors who will vote for him and needed a little kick to get their attention.

I still like Obama, but that medicare attack seemed a bit like the garbage I've hated for the last eight years or so...appealing to fears. I hope he doesn't keep that up this week.

Sarah Palin shouldn't have done SNL if she was just going to sit around and look like she wasn't having a good time when she wasn't looking straight clueless. You can tell anything controversial in the jokes was bargained out by Palin. The only mildly funny part was Baldwin blasting Palin thinking it was Fey.

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Oops I Did It Again

I didn't whimp out. More importantly to me, I got Puck to go along. It wasn't easy. There were shouted, angry phrases I had to take, but it was worth it. We ended up doing the neighborhood on the opposite side of the major street that runs outside our gate. Puck held stuff for us and said goodbye to people as we left. I introduced her a bunch of times. She would have left if I'd tried to get her to engage anyone. I kinda know the limits of how far to push.

Anyways back to the canvassing task. It was about the same number of residences as last weekend. The people were a bit more peeved about a knock on their door than last week. Not sure if it was because it was a different neighborhood, the fact that yesterday was the first day or early voting, one weekend closer to the big day of Nov. fourth, or a combination of all of the above. A lot of people were canvasser weary. A couple specifically complained of me being the 7'th or 8'th person to knock on their door for a campaign in the last week. I can definitely see that for undecideds because both sides or going to try to focus on them. I partly fault the campaigns for that. The campaigners that handed us our route told us that there should only be 1's or 2's (campaign speech for strongly and semi strongly committed Obama voters). Their reasoning, which I agree with, is that knocking on doors of undecided voters this late in the game to persuade them is less likely to help them, but more likely to alienate them from voting for Obama. You aren't going to change minds this late in the game. It's far better use of your volunteers to visit the homes of the 1's and 2's actually go out and vote. When I looked at my list though, there were 20 or so registered democrats, republicans, non-partisans, or independents that were either undecided or were leaning towards or decidedly pro-McCain. Having 1/3 of my list having "persuade" on it kind of bummed me, but I figure most wouldn't answer their door. I was mostly right. Still I don't understand why the philosophy of the campaign didn't match the data lists.

Anyways, most people were civil except for about 5 of the houses. One guy closed his door behind him and raised his voice with a...fork raised menacingly at me (yes, I'm typing that with a smile). Puck said he scared her. He annoyed me a bit because in my opinion he was using our knock on his door to work out his frustration with the voter roll having his name down incorrectly (asked for the female on the roll, he asked me to name the other person listed as registered to the address, which I figured was incorrect because it had the same last name as the house two doors down). I can understand a bit of his frustration, but to take a minute or so to yell at me about a bunch of stuff was a bit much, especially when we offered to correct everything he complained about but he didn't want us to do anything to help.

He complained about the voter roll name being incorrect. Offered to get it fixed. He said no. He complained about seven or eight people showing up within a few days. Said I could stop canvassers coming to his address. He responded that he wanted canvassers, just not so many and that us knocking on the door has gotten him from wanting to vote Obama to wanting to vote for McCain. Then I guess he was done, because he shut mouth with the bright yellow (just the tips) teeth still glowing in our brains. Puck and I still can't come up with why he would have his teeth stained just in that way. Any ideas for yellow tipped teeth across the entire upper row and they aren't gold?

One house where two older guys were in their garage working on restoring an antique chevy (weren't on the list) but I waved and commented, "nice truck" to the guys. One responded and sounded like you would if you were trying to talk while spitting at the same time, "I know". So I kept on walking with no response but to kind of tell Puck what a prick that guy was. So we do the rest of the houses on that street and as we're walking to the next street on the other side of the street the guy yells out, "Have any McCain Palin signs?" followed by the type of chuckling laughter you'd hear from Boss Hog. I should have not replied, but I politely said no, of course to more laughter from them. All my mean comebacks were right at the tip of my tongue, worst of which was that he probably spends so much time working on old cars because because the even older model inside refuses to be worked on because he doesn't have the tool to fix her.

For all the bitching in the last two paragraphs, walking around wasn't thankless. There were at least two homes where the person specifically thanked Puck and I for walking around for a campaign. One of the two I remember specifically because he had a yankees sticker on the back window of his car and I thought to myself, 'oh boy, a smug guy awaits'. A big, burly Puerto Rican guy answered the door and was as nice as can be. You could tell he was a former new yorker as soon as he opened the door.

Anyways when we were done and walking back to the car I asked Puck if her feet hurt and she said hers did, which made me feel better because last week the guy I was with said his didn't hurt at all and I should probably go see a podiatrist. When we turned our stuff in the volunteers asked us how things went and when I mentioned the canvasser weariness of one of the two neighborhoods we visited and they kind of nodded like I wasn't the first person to say that. I stupidly signed up for next weekend against my better judgment. I think the annoyance will be worse next weekend because a lot of people are just going to be annoyed at being canvassed multiple times when they've already voted. We were canvassed by two young ladies around 11 A.M. Oh yeah, we voted yesterday after we canvassed. We voted at a little office on the side of our neighborhood Albertson's supermarket.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. There were two or three older (55+) voters who would only say they voted and although were registered democrats, refused to state who they voted for. Scary little subgroup of voters there because these people were labeled as in the pocket of Obama either by phone polling or how they represented themselves to previous canvassers. Something to think about when the news people are trying to bury the Bradley effect.

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Surprise, Nobody Won

There was a zinger moment with McCain telling Obama that if he wanted to run against Bush he should have run four years ago. Besides that, McCain looked angrier, rolled his eyes, let out an angry sigh, and attacked Obama to not that much effect, at least in my opinion and you know I'm biased. Obama didn't win despite this. No quick and witty retorts to any of the serious attacks made by McCain. His Bill Ayers response was emotionally muted. That's good in a way but I'd guess the McConverted would take that as an admission of guilt. Anyways, I would have wished that he'd worked in the phrase "guilt by association" and had a quick association that would have embarrassed McCain followed by a declaration that he can bring up these things if he wants but he'd rather discuss the issues that affect the american people instead of playing the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with each other.

Obama did well by sticking to the issues and seeming to have more of a command and more specifics. McCain went back and forth between rhetoric (and we'll take care of those autistic kids and people and the government will open up their wallets for those young americans) policy/rhetoric (I'll reform the schools and I won't raise anyone's taxes to do it) and policy (I am against what Obama's tax policy will do to Joe Plumber!).

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What I Learned From FOX news

Like we couldn't see this coming...

I guess it really isn't much news anymore because once I googled it the mainstream news articles start at least as far back as 10-03-08. 

Hustler is making a Sarah Palin adult movie titled 'Nailin' Paylin'.  I only had it on Fox news for a minute around 6:45 AM or so and that's what I saw, with a screenshot. Weeyuhd. I'm not linking to anything dirty,but here is the latest newspaper article about the latest on it from the The Post Chronicle.   The older 10-3 article is from this link to the nydailynews.com.  I'm going to assume the TMZ article that the Post Chronicle discusses wouldn't be safe for work.  I haven't looked at it.  O.K. now I have hehe.  Nothing dirty in the TMZ pics but I wouldn't visit that at work.  My conclusion...They could have gotten a much comelier looking woman to play Palin.

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How To Knock Out McCain (or Kick Him While He's Down if That's Your Opinion)

update about 1 hour after I started writing and hadn't posted this yet, I was watching the dodgers and saw this...I saw this ad (that is pretty old but hadn't aired in NV for all I know yet. Puck and I were floored in a good way. Let me know if you had already seen that ad in your state, Biz. Youtube shows it's over three weeks old. I can't believe he'd sit on this so long before airing it over here in a tossup state instead of the usual response to attack type ads. The comments to the vid show a lot of people got as fired up about that ad as I did. Anyways, on to my crazy campaign strategy.

The general attitude of many democrats these last few days or so based on the polling showing Obama increasing his lead seems to be a semi-smug conclusion that the possibility of McCain winning this November is nil. I'm not that optimistic. I think I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm not elated when I see those polls for a few reasons. I don't think the campaign should start taking its eyes off the ball because the ball has been moving with a lot of late break this last week or two. I don't think Obama's campaign has based on the very brief and shallow depth I got into it. They seem to be extremely aggressive and smart. The importation of Californians into Nevada to try to help win Nevada for Obama still kind of floors me.

I think Obama should re-tool his stump/rally speech. He should go Ross Perot-lite. He should include a huge screen and make his speech interactive. There should be graphs and numbers that compliment the speech Obama already gives. It should have a side-by-side with charts representing the implications of some of McCains policies on certain economic numbers.

It should be like a really large scale powerpoint+campaign speech presentation. Even if the average voter doesn't scrutinize the charts, I believe the use of ultra-hard visual aids at large venues to augment the spoken message by Obama would legitimize and instill confidence in Obama's policies, campaign, and would widen the lead he already has on the economy over McCain. If people respond to this new "speech" and it grabs headlines, people on the fence and the news media will be questioning or expecting some kind of response to what McCain thinks of Obama's numbers and why McCain cannot provide more detailed information in his speeches regarding the economy. His best response would be a "me too" copying of Obama's innovation. Worst outcome would be that Obama's charts are innaccurate without offering any numbers of his own. This strategy I think would be effective because it would at least seem to give the american people what they keep saying they want--specifics they can understand about how bad is the economy and how will your policies fix it--. It is probably even more important in that it pushes the campaign discourse back to the economy and forces McCain to react on the fly.

The biggest mistake either candidate could make would be going too populist. Oversimplifying complex issues can backfire like it eventually did to Ross Perot. McCain has fumbled at it because his message is inconsistent and contradictory, and Obama was kind of already populist by being a democrat, but he hasn't really used the populist angle that much. Numbers that are too easily or quickly debunked/discredited by media is the next biggest mistake a candidate could make because then the candidate loses all credibility and becomes untrustworthy.

I guess if they have more ads like that one off in a can somewhere, I guess they really don't need to attempt to re-invent the wheel a bit to stamp out the last embers of the burnt-out fire that used to be John McMaverick's campaign.

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my day canvassing for Obama

So someone called Puck to volunteer and I bit the bullet. Many months of me sitting here complaining about the state of america had me guilty about doing next to nothing to help bring around the change I'd rather have than McCain's co-opted pledge of change. So I showed up at the local Obama campaign office, signed in, and caught the last 5 minutes or so of training. I guess the 9:30 AM show up time was a bit off. So I was more than a bit nervous as I missed out on the definitions of all the codes and abbreviations for classifying my contacts. But numbers are easy and that was the most of the classifying. 1=in Obama's pocket 3= undecided 6= get off of my lawn! I got paired with another first time volunteer and we headed out span class="fullpost">to our assignment of about 100 homes a few blocks from the office. We got a voter list that consisted of places that previous canvassers couldn't reach the occupants. I'd say we got to talk to 60-70 out of our 100 ish people. 90% or so of our list were already registered democrats. There were all types of people. I did odd numbered houses and my partner he did evens. We talked politics. My friend is an ex-republican. That's right, even better he is still registered republican. He is even more rah-rah about Obama than I am. His life story was pretty interesting. He is a mathematician who worked in the 80's for a defense contractor and that pretty much steered him into voting republican as voting democrat might mean him losing his job. He told me that once the Berlin wall fell he felt it was probably time to move on or be out of a job, so he went into teaching. Little did he know 8 years or so later the defense budgets would be even bigger than cold war levels thanks to W. He said he voted for Gore and once he went into education felt the need to not vote 'just for himself' and think of the common good, I interrupted and interjected "Americans" and he corrected me by finishing, "the world". I was pleasantly floored. Bush scares him and he views McCain as just as dangerous.

With that anecdote out of the way I'll describe another encouraging thing I saw. College kids were there...from California. It was weirder than you reading it just now because just last night Puckster was out on a drinking date with friends. When I picked her up and in her telling me how her night went, she told me how the election came up in conversation with her work buddies and that one lady stated that the Obama campaign called her house and asked if she could possibly let some college kids from California stay at her house for a few days. So I guess that was true. It's either a hell of a lot of dedication or a heck of a lot of extra credit.

It was strange to see how campaign hardened some of the young people were. I'm a total campaign newbie, but I have to guess that some of these younger adults had been doing this for a while. They were pros. The only bad thing about that is they were a bit jaded in their manner of talk and kind of dehumanizing jokes/comments about the voters. It's easy for me to type that, but the college people really doing this for the last 6 months+ have to get hardened a bit to do the hard work they're doing for so long. So despite that slight jab at the energy I got in the campaign office, I was also extremely impressed at how hard they seemed to be working and how seriously they were going about it. There was a very nice elderly gentleman that knew his stuff manning the check in/check out table. Someone had donated pasta for people to eat. I might have partaken, but I just wanted to get the heck home after walking around from 10 AM until 2 PM.

Maybe that entire last paragraph isn't news to you at all since you've been pretty heavily involved in politics at the ground floor yourself, Bizut. But my apathetic ass gained a new appreciation for how the campaign for Obama has been run. I read about it, but I think, at least for the politically uninitiated, you have to be there to believe. There's some kind of creative sentence that ties in that last sentence's use of the word believe with Obama's slogan, but it's not in me right now as I chuckle at myself for being too lazy to find it.

So anyways, since the list I had was 90% democrat already, there wasn't much persuading of minds as much as reminding people to vote for Obama and also reminding them that in Nevada you can for the first time vote early starting October 18'th at our neighborhood's supermarket (Albertson's if you remember). I think that was the most important message because a lot of people didn't know that when we told them. Some people blatantly lied before we got to the October 18'th part and claimed to have already voted early hehe. Alright, I can't think of anymore to write about the experience besides stupid, insignificant complaints so if there's something you wanna ask about what went down today go ahead and ask in the comments, Bizzy.

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A Country Declares It's Restarting Its Nuke Program

and kicks out IAEA inspectors and Bush celebrates a week or so later by taking them off the terror sponsor list? What kind of foreign policy is this? I read the headline and I was baffled. I really had to look up news articles to make sure I wasn't misremembering this or something. The administration is more than just a bit inconsistent. So apparently there is an agreement regarding inspections, but none of the details are in the news right now. It's just termed as they've agreed to all the U.S.'s demand and gives only a few specific things about North Korea providing "samples" from declared and hehe...undeclared sites. It also details that the Koreans agree to stop making nukes. I think the details are few intentionally--because it's a bad deal.Remember a few years ago when Bush kept saying, 'oh we aren't going to make a deal with the North Koreans that they backslide on like that treaty the Clinton administration did'? Guess they really can't go around crowing about that anymore. The Bush deals have been disasters compared to the relatively small pain in the ass Jung-Il was back then. I just wish they were inconsistent in a way that brought troops home and ended the war.

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United Banks of America

My feeble little mind cannot grasp the complexity of what the smart guys in the treasury want, but when I woke up a half hour before the alarm the newspeople were talking about the government buying significant ownership stakes in lots of banks. Next they went to the "breaking news" that the entire world economy is now in the crapper. The reporters seemed to relish delivering the idea that Iceland knew well enough not to ask us for any money when their currency croaked and instead went to Russia. Wonder what other financial shenanigans happen today.

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Can The Obama Camp Stop Saying the Word 'Erratic'?

They are starting to sound like the Fox news channel. Please find another word. The talking heads that go channel to channel are finally being told by the hosts to stop it. Now pundits are talking about GM on the verge of bankruptcy. on MSNBC. America is bankrupt. I'm bankrupt. You're bankrupt. We're all bankrupt. McCain is trying to make his campaign into a culture war by talking about Bill Ayers. It might bump him for a day or two, but it's going to fail because people want to hear about how he's going to govern. He needs to catch Obama stealing from an individual or some smoking gun like that. Not going to happen. Obama has won, but he needs to keep sounding "new to us voters. Saturday, I'm going to see what it's like to walk up to people's door and say, "Hey! Make sure you vote!" to strangers in my neighborhood. I'm trying not to think of it so I don't chicken out on it. I'll post about how it goes.

Just remember, the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Yup. It just makes me think of the repeated line by characters in airplane, "I just want you to know, we're all counting on you.".

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Unsure

If I'll watch the debate tonight. The news is just so stupid today that I'm feeling like what's the point. I've listened to enough stupid campaign commercials. The entire discourse of today is Obama has a mancrush on Bill Ayers, will raise your taxes, and the always annoying 'we don't really know him' crap. Obama's people are out talking Keating five. All while the American economy goes up in flames. Yay...

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Howling Wolf

YouTube search led me to a bunch of videos making me realize that I'd seen her as a talking head before. I guess a lot of younger adults like her views. I don't agree with everything she says because she's a bit extreme, particularly on the issues of sexual harrassment and abortion.

What I do agree with and find exciting is her latest book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
I rant on and on about America turning fascist without much more than pointing at how dominant consumerism is in America and how much influence corporations/big business has on government. Little did I know there's lots of people that agree that America has morphed into a crazy government that uses fear and intimidation to control the populace. I think Wolf goes a little overboard in personal appearances in portraying herself as a victim, but the bigger point is true. Oh yeah, her fascist list is a bit thin and her simile of Bush/Cheney administrations to Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin seem a bit stretched at times. There are bad guys and then there are bad guys. We aren't going to know the full extent of how bad Bush/Cheney are until they are out of office and the new administration chooses to share the terror watch lists and the procedures in place for our 'security'. I hope they go to jail or whatever after they leave office, but that's just not the way the world works because the world isn't all that fair. As I write, Bernanke and a bunch of CEOs are testifying about how nothing is their fault. Screw them. Screw them all. Pretty soon the government will start to talking about financial terrorism.

My text has ceased to make sense to an audience of anyone but myself, so just go watch a few videos and make up your own mind. You probably knew of her before I realized she was hiding in plain sight.

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Palin Outdoes Colbert (also the PRC and Kim Jung-Il)

I wake up this morning to the cnn.com breaking news banner of "Crowd's clothes form flag as backdrop for Palin's Florida event". Hey Sarah, did you know that that's what the former U.S.S.R. leaders used to do to hold a rally? Did Palin watch the Olympics in Beijing and say to herself that those communists sure know how to throw a pretty rally? Did she drop by Kim Jung-Il's a few days ago or something? What made her think that this was a great idea? It would have been worthwhile though if Palin crowdsurfed on the audience flag like some faux-punk popstar at a concert.

Just a few months ago the McCain Palin camp was decrying Obama as an empty, celebrity, Hollywood type and put out that commercial with Obama juxtaposed Paris Hilton. Yeah, the McCain campaign sure is consistent with the message it sends out.

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Nobody Won

Biden could've won, but he didn't. Palin could've studied more than just energy for the debate, but she didn't. There really aren't any clips from either that you could take from the debate and say, 'ooh!' Palin amused me a bit with some of her linguistic tail-chasing, but she didn't look like Palin did in the Couric interview. She looked alright when she wasn't overtly sidestepping questions to talk about energy. I like Palin a little bit, politics and pay for your own rape kit aside, but we had the cool president for 8 years now and it put the country in a ditch.

McCain has taken the sink throwing strategy that Clinton used and ramped it up. It's left McCain looking even more old and bitter when he addresses the press. Every couple of days his message changes, as do his positions. I watched a rerun of the debate that had some focus group split by gender with the little dial things in their hands emotionally reacting in real time with the debate. I turned it off as soon as both men and women turned Palin down to near zero when she did one of her question dodge moves to talk about energy. People seeing past b.s. and judging people accordingly helps me go to sleep at night.

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Palin Didn't do So Badly + Fox News Commentary =Palin Did Fantastic

Hopefully I don't start rambling here. So my main compadre and I watch the debate. I couldn't believe she really wanted to watch it, but she did and it was genuine and I was pretty happy about that. She never got up and said she'll just listen as she browses the internet or anything like that. I think part of the reason she wanted to see the debate is because women like to see women they hate humiliate themselves in public. She'd seen interview clips here and there and wanted to see verbal vomit come out of her mouth live. There may have been some spit-up of the kind that infants do when they aren't on solid foods yet,(is this post disgusting enough yet?) but (oh well guess this is going to be a long post)there weren't any acutely uncomfortable moments. She talked around in circles only a 5-10 times and not Couric interview type badly. She definitely could have worked more on transitions so it didn't seem as obvious that she didn't (couldn't) answer the question given to her so she could talk about energy. So all in all it was a boring debate and before the families got trotted out there we switched to the ball game to find a pleasant surprise waiting for us on tbs.

I think my better half explains her antipathy for Palin best with the diatribe that I'll try to paraphrase, 'She's like the Veep version of the Barbie Doll. She's decent looking but she's hollow.' She's that popular, pretty girl in high school that was empty headed and got by on her looks, so most all the girls hated her.'

This dovetails very well with the Time.com article by Belinda Luscombe that attempts to explain all the Palin hate by women. You should give it a read. If anything it's pretty funny.

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