Needlenose

WaPo:

Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall
…
While there are few signs of progress for McCain in the poll, recent history suggests that mid-October leads are vulnerable, although turning around a late double-digit deficit would be unprecedented in the modern era. At this stage in 1992, Bill Clinton held a 14-point advantage over incumbent George H.W. Bush in Post-ABC polling, and it was as high as 19 points before the election, which he won by six points. In mid-October 1976, Jimmy Carter had leads as big as 13 points in Gallup polling; Carter defeated incumbent Gerald Ford by two points.

Polls don’t mean squat and numbers can change quickly — in either direction. Which is why Obama’s trying a campaign stunt of his own:

And, late last week, it was revealed that Obama is seeking to buy a roadblock (a coordinated block of time on every national broadcast network) for 8 pm on Oct. 29. He already has purchased a half-hour of TV time on CBS and NBC — at a cost of roughly $1 million each — and is seeking time on Fox and ABC as well.

The last candidate to make such a play on broadcast television was Ross Perot way back in 1992. He ran a series of political infomercials, the largest of which — on Nov. 2, 1992 — drew 26 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

1/2-hour of unfiltered TV, a week before election. Gutsy move.

Makes you proud, don’t it.

The McCain campaign has made a large ad-buy on Washington Post’s web-site. It’s pretty much a given nowadays that if you click on a political or economic article, a McCain ad will show up. Sometimes, to incongruent (yet humorous) effect:

It can go the other way too:

Pretty funny stuff.

Via an e-mail making the rounds this morning:

I’m a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight…..(hope I’m not offending anyone):

• If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
• If you grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, you’re a quintessential American story.
• If your name is Barack, you’re a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
• If you name your kids Bristol, Willow, Piper, Trig and Track, you’re a maverick.
• If you graduate from Harvard law School, you are unstable.
• If you attend five different small colleges before graduating, you’re well grounded.
• If you spend three years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
• If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.
• If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
• If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
• If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
• If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system, while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.
• If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent America’s.
• If you’re husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, *much* clearer now.

This one was just too good to pass up:

Getty Images/ Alex Wong: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks on day three of the Republican National Convention (RNC) at the Xcel Energy Center on September 3, 2008 in St. Paul, Minnesota. – via Capitol Confidential.

Commenter at Metafilter:

[S]omeone needs to remind Sarah Palin that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.

After listening to the Palin speech last night, I came to realize where a lot of confusion on this business of change is coming from.

After eight years of Bush/Cheney, it’s pretty much universally accepted that the country is ready for a change. The problem is that the GOP thinks the change people want is in personnel, that what will keep people happy is new faces in the Executive branch. It’s like one of those soaps where a character leaves and they replace the actor.

The trouble is, the mood of the country seems to be that they want a different story line.

The change people want is in policy and the way the country is run. And that will not come from replacing Bush/Cheney with McCain/Palin. So the challenge of the Dems in the next few weeks is to make it clear that it’s not about the personnel but about direction. Every time they make it about the individuals (and gender or race) they’ll muddy the waters and the GOP comes out ahead.

In an election where none of the incumbents are running, the cast change is a given.

Some real journalism coming out of AP.

See what happens when Ron Fournier is out getting drunk at the post-Palin-speech bashes.

I think not.