McCain wanted this scummy fight.

Now he is perceiving that Obama is attacking Cindy McCain because of her lavish spending and the homes.

This house, thingy is a bombshell.  It is called, "peeling the onion" on McCain.

Now, they are shaking and the gloves are off.

Rezko and Reverend Wright ads are now being made.

You remember how McCain was saying that all of his questioning of Obama's motives in ending the Iraq war wasn't questioning his patriotism, but instead his JUDGMENT? Well Obama saw through that BS. Sounds to me like Obama's gloves have also come off on Iraq. First Obama called him the liar that he is.

On Thursday, Obama took umbrage with this interpretation of events. "I expect [John McCain] to show me the same courtesy that I showed him," said the presumptive Democratic nominee. "Then yesterday he tried to say he wasn't challenging my patriotism, he was challenging my judgment. What does it say when you say someone would rather lose a war than lose an election? Of course he was challenging my patriotism."

Professor Nate Silver of the mind-blowing FiveThirtyEight has just given a dandy lecture via blog post over on New York Magazine's "Daily Intel: Early & Often" on how to read the polls between now and election day.

Some is common sense, sure... although how "common" that sense is may be seriously in question giving much of the panic currently spreading through the Democratic party.  But even so, we'll take a look at some of the wisdom that perhaps is NOT so conventional, so to speak

So let's pop in and take a seat in the back of Dr. Poblano's class, and see what we might learn about this next, crucial phase in the election (and how we could and should respond to it).

NOTE: All credits for this course are completely transferable to Al Giordano's "No Chicken Little Left Behind" Academy.

Cross-posted at Project Vote's Voting Matters Blog

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

With little more than two months left before Election Day, prospective voters are rushing to get registered. And like the way that slugs thrive in moist weather, voter suppression attacks spring up around large-scale voter registration drives. Partisan attempts to shape the electorate, in effect choosing the voters rather than voters choosing their own representatives, seek to impose barriers to voter participation by eligible citizens rather than creating a system that works to facilitate the foundational right of American democracy. Voter ID laws are a particularly favorite weapon in the arsenal of partisans seeking to choose their own voters to the exclusion of other eligible citizens. More than 25 states introduced voter ID bills this year and at least nine have such laws in place for this November’s election despite scant evidence of voter impersonation, the ill it is supposed to stop.

I wholly did NOT intend to venture any more silly speculation on the upcoming VP pick, as most speculation to date has seemed utterly groundless, HOWEVER...

On a few occasions over the past couple of weeks, I have mentioned an initiative with respect to going on the attack against John McCain. With that, I have created a Google Group called "Know Your McCain" and we are looking to gather information (old and new), create viral videos, write blog posts and use social networking to spread the message about how dangerous John McCain is.

You can look for diaries with the tag "Know Your McCain", and some diaries will have the "Know Your McCain" in the title as well.  If you are interested in joining the Google Group or helping out with the Facebook group, please send me an email (address is in my profile).

***************************

It is one thing to be passing around information in the progressive blogosphere about McCain (both past and present), as well as using Digg to rate up posts – both of which are excellent.  However, in order to really move beyond this echo chamber and reach more people, we should be thinking of how to reach others.

Thursday is the day.   Networks and outlets are planning their weekend format and preparing for Sunday.  This is the best day to make an announcement that'll allow for the Democrats to show off their Vice-Presidential candidate before(and during) the convention in Denver.  Yet as the hours go by, there has been no early-morning announcement.  Thursday would be crucial to introducing the country to a candidate that they may not know everything about.

Unless that candidate has a famous name.

FiveThirtyEight.com in my opinion has the best analysis of the election.  They take a hard look at all of the polling numbers, movement and predictions.  I have been watching Obama's lead dwindle since he won the primaries as the right wing ultra negative attack and distract machine rolls out and hits Obama 24/7 with the help from their propaganda news organization.  I have to agree with 528 on this point:

So i'm picking up on the dr. strangelove mccain storyline..i'm glad susan rice brought it up. it's up to us to get the noise machine going and write write write, and spread spread spread the talking points..

there are ample quotes out there and a pretty great narrative to run and build on-i'm only concerned the media won't really do their job since this narrative conflicts with the mccain is our war hero with so much honor he can do no wrong!!!

this will be short. but i invite you all to create effective, sharp talking points to begin to define mccain in the most dangerous (which he is) way possible. he is unstable, dangerous, trigger-happy... We need a bank of words, sources where of his hotheadedness, videos, testimonies.. all in one place!! also if you find more articles, ill be making this into a weeks project, just collecting.. please help me grow my collection!!

There is an important race in Washington this year. I am not talking about  the Governor's race or the seat for district 8 (although both important), I am talking about the race for Public Land Commissioner.
In one corner we have Republican incumbent & sexual deviant Doug Sutherland, a career politician who favors the interests of big business (timber & mining) over the interests of environmentalists and advocates of sound public policy.
In another corner we have Peter Goldmark a progressive Democrat with a Ph.d in molecular biology and experience as a rancher. He would put the interests of the environment over the interests of big corporations. (He has been endorsed by Washington Conservation Voters

(Please read Teacherken's superior diary about his former classmate.)

I'm starting this diary with the assumption that magical ponies are not going to gallop out of Denver to rescue the Obama campaign.
Agreed, the Democratic party itself will be energized by the convention.  But the media coverage of Denver will invariably disappoint.
And the Vice-President choices are so controversial that the pick, when it is finally made, will generate bad press as well as good.
And then it will be September ...and no ponies to be found anywhere.
I know, I know, I can hear it already --"oh, don't worry! Mere bloggers don't understand it but of course Obama's campaign knows what they're doing!"  
But while his staff apparently are wonderful people, disciplined, loyal, knowledgeable, etc. etc, its becoming pretty clear they're in over their heads.  They've been distracted by style ("Look, Ma, no 527s!") and technique ("we have offices in 50 states!") and they've lost focus on substance.
It's time to stop with the wishful thinking.
(more after the jump)

I could write about a lot of stuff tonight.

For almost a decade I have been tracking Jack Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption and since I became uid 9214, I’ve written about that work here on Daily Kos. For years, I have been writing about the many ways that John McCain covered-up the Abramoff Scandal.

I could write about how the Obama campaign is taking that fight to Curveball John:

There is more to that story and more reasons why McCain should worry about Jack, but I doubt it would break through the waves of panic shaking the netroots.

Yikes! The polls have tightened. Well, what did you expect?

Take a deep breath. Get a backbone. FOCUS.

It’s time to call out the summer supporters and sunshine campaigners.

To the jump...

Fuck the polls.

That’s my new slogan.

Warning: This is a rant. More Strong language below the fold

I waited till midnight to push the button to publish this.  I'm up past my bedtime - and I'm still angry enough to take the plunge.  I'll go back to writing saner diaries another day, or maybe writing no diaries at all, but I would be dishonest if I just sat on my hands and didn't share how I'm feelin' right about now.  So here it goes.

Ashwin Madia blog day has generated a lot of posts from those of us in the lefty blogosphere. The candidate himself even got into the act.  He posted at The Hill.  Yow!

There’s a word in Washington for a taxpayer-funded endeavor that grows without limits, busts every budget projection, and which Members of Congress are loathe to confront.

The word is Iraq.

Today, the Republican Party announced that the loudest defender of status quo policies on Iraq, Senator Joe Lieberman, will be a prominent speaker at the Republican National Convention in my home state of Minnesota. Senator Lieberman and I do have one thing in common. We’ve both changed political parties. I left the Republican Party in 2002 after it replaced “balance our budget” with “borrow and spend” and after we started a war without a plan for success; a war we did not need.
(The Hill)

Here's a list.  I hope it's comprehensive, but I'm sure I missed someone.  Remember, it's not malevolence, just incompetence.

We all hate how the results of the 2004 Presidential election came to pass.

We are all working hard to make sure that result is not repeated in 2008.

I think I've found something cool that could help Democrats and progressives everywhere visualize what could be in 2008.

More after the jump.

I am an Obama Supporter and I am sick and tired of Obama and how his campaign reacts to allegations from McShame Camp.

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

The far-right Media Research Center (MRC) has released a new report today declaring overwhelmingly positive media coverage of Barack Obama in the network evening news broadcasts. I've scrutinized part of the study and media coverage during one month, and this simple look at reality indicates that MRC is intentionally lying about the media coverage.

In the 1990s, all of America was treated to "a show about nothing," and it was an instant classic.

I thought about Seinfeld when reading all the diaries about who Barack Obama absolutely cannot pick.  Apparently, every single possible VP is no good.

And then it hit me.

Obama - NOBODY 2008

To paraphrase George Costanza, everybody's always picked somebody for Vice President.  Barack Obama should pick nobody.  Literally, nobody.