The meme of MCain being the "expert" in foreign politics could be reinforced today, check the 2 Obama/MCain related news in yahoo's front page

McCain:
McCain: Russia should immediately cease action in Georgia

Obama:

Obama family heads to Hawaii, campaign stays home

:(

more below the fold

Sorry to all of the Edwards supporters here.  It seems that yes, it is true, Edwards was sleeping around as the National Enquirer claimed.

Big Deal.

Edwards is not the Democratic Candidate for President.

Edwards will not be the Democratic candidate for Vice President.

Netroots Nation '08 provided an awesome panel discussion on creating political community around film, featuring some megawatt all-stars who've done exactly that: Wendy Cohen of Participant Media, Jim Gilliam of Brave New Films, Jacob Soboroff of "Why Tuesday?", and Tracy Fleischman of Live from Main Street.  

If you're in the Triangle area of North Carolina tomorrow (August 9), you have the opportunity to see me put my Netroots Nation money where my mouth is as Galaxy Cinema in Cary hosts a screening of the documentary "Senator Obama Goes to Africa," a postfilm discussion with Obama campaign staffers, and a big voter-registration drive based out of the theater lobby.

[cross posted at E Pluribus Unum]

There's a new meme in town and Peggy Noonan is here to tell you about it:

Despite the much-hyped "parity" between the candidates in national polls, myself and many others are expecting an Obama landslide come November. Why? One huge reason is the "ground game," a term used to signify get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in the final days of campaigning and on election day.

I hold no illusions, this is a republican state and has been for years. I live in one of the most republican districts in the state, Lexington County and it is represented by Joe Wilson R SC02, he is a retired reserve Army Colonel.  His Congressional biography can be read here.

He has been less than helpful in my personal dealings with the Veterans Administration on my claims for the exposures at Edgewood Arsenal. He is being opposed by Rob Miller as the Democratic nominee, if he wins it will have to be with the votes from outside the Lexington County area, he is from Beaufort, where he runs a small business with his wife. Hopefully with a large turnout for Obama, there will be enough down ticket momentum that Rob can unseat Joe Wilson.

Paul Krugman, writing in Friday’s New York Times, crafts a cautionary tale about the current political landscape.

[T]he debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

I wrote an earlier diary on this subject and with the release of McCain's new ad:

"It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

the narrative has now gained traction in the GOP's campaign.  It would be worrying should McCain actually succeed in convincing the right-wing conservative christians that Obama is indeed the anti-christ.  As Time Magazine points out today McCain is consciously using the language of the right-wing including references to the o'so frightening "Left Behind" trash novels.

Please Rec this diary.

We've had a running battle for the last couple of hours with some other freepers (RedStaters?) Bad Dad started an effort to freep a poll at AOL that showed McCain in the lead at 100% of the States.

Even though we all know that's total BS, it could ultimately have some impact if we let it stand. We've been playing Whack a Mole with these Right Wing freepers but the previous diary just did not get enough attention to have an impact.

How come all the cool YouTube grassroots political activity is coming from our side alone?

Let's assume that the media advisers and producers who make a living, periodically, turning out advertising for political campaigns are imitative, like their peers who are employed full-time by the various media conglomerates, but not as talented.

This would explain, for example, why the soap opera that was the Clinton Administration, scripted by the Thomasons, was less successful than, for example, the longer-running "Friends."

I'm not trying to be snide, but have been struck for some time by the inferior quality of the output of the Wallywood transplants, as opposed to those who "make it" in Hollywood.

Note: I'm the author of the book, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama campaign.

David Freddoso's new book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate is a badly-written hatchet job, full of errors and distortions and smears. The author, who works for the right-wing National Review and published his book with Regnery (which printed Unfit for Command, one of the Swiftboating attacks on John Kerry in 2004), simply fails to prove his key assertions, preferring to rely upon a bunch of false attacks, McCarthyist-style denunciations of Obama's associations, and extreme conservative attacks on abortion rights, all of it padded with lengthy digressions on topics unrelated to Obama and his record.

Wow... things must be really bad for John McCain. Even a conservative bastion like the Wall Street Journal is out with an editorial praising Obama's support of a strong dollar. Is McCain losing his base?

The strong dollar used to be an axiom of US economic policy, until the current President. Somehow the administration still thinks they can sell the line that oil prices have nothing to do with the value of the dollar, but that is so ridiculous, it's surprising even this bunch of liars can say it with a straight face.

McCain of course would continue to allow the national debt to spiral out of control to fund his tax cuts, which cause the dollar to slide further. Let's see what the Journal has to say, over the fold.

Thank you for taking this onto the Rec list... Democrats are ignoring a goldmine  

This spring while Oil prices soared, debate festered between various factions as to whether supply/demand vs. speculators were causing the energy markets to rocket up.  In case you haven't noticed, Oil markets are crashing and only one real actual thing has happened to affect this situation, and that thing was predicted to cause this exact response.... what is it?  

The Democratic Congress CLOSED the Enron Loophole in the Farm Bill on June 22nd

Take Credit NOW PLEASE!!!  The MSM is claiming there is a fear of soft economic growth... This is laughable as oil went up and up through the spring and summer as it became common for the MSM and everyone else to talk slow growth, recession, etc... Something else happened, something the press is ignoring as well as our Party, at our own peril.

Paper trail and links to back this up below with graphs...

This is going to be a very short diary - because all that needs to be said is rather short.

To Everyone in America:

Both Barack Obama and John McCain promise to cut taxes.

John McCain plans to cut taxes on people earning over $250,000 a year.

Barack Obama plans to cut taxes for everyone else.

Where are you?  Do the super rich need a tax cut, or does everyone else?

According to First Read, the McCain campaign says the new ad called "Painful" will be run in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia (Northern Virginia), and Wisconsin.

It lies about Obama's economic policies, and the Obama campaign is calling McCain out on it:

This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam.

Obama Campaign Statement on TPM

Msnbc's First Read did some fact checking and backs Obama on this.  That, and more, after the fold

Apparently Obama is quite the draw.

He has sold out Invesco Feild in Denver for his convention speech in 24 hours, according to this item posted on CNNs political ticker.

Last night we attended the Grand Opening of the Obama office in New Philadelphia, the Ohio 18th Congressional District. There was about 200 people. Congressman Zack Space spoke and had some very interesting thoughts to share, and a little bit of interesting news!