Itz News to Me

I left this in the comments at Ace’s place:

FWIW, here’s my prediction of where things go from here:

I think there’s going to be a deal. That deal will include at least a nod to the plan put forth by House Republicans and helps put some of the pain on Wall Street rather than Main Street. [Dems don’t want a deal without cover from House Republicans so they’re going to give them something, maybe not much substantial, but enough that McCain can claim a victory and House Republicans have something to take home to their constituents to say “Hey, we did the best we could for you.]

House Republicans will publicly thank McCain for fighting to make sure that the Average Joe was protected. The MSM will try their damnedest to spin another story, but McCain is able to get his message directly to the people at the debate (which he will participate in Friday night) before they can get their spin machine in top gear and before Axelrod can give Obama a full set of talking points with which to respond.

Expect the Obama campaign to go back into all-day, every-day smear mode (a la the initial reaction to Palin) ASAP. Internal polls are going to look awful for them, so the flop sweat of desperation is going to begin showing in a big way.

I see McCain up in Gallup and Rasmussen by +3 or more by the end of next week….

I may wind up right or wrong, but unlike Obama at least I’m willing to commit to a position one way or the other…

Popularity: 22%

Obama’s problem is that he doesn’t have a core.

The reason for the “uhs” and the “umms” is that he’s trying to do lawyerly parsing in his head on the fly, and he’s not parsing fast enough to keep up with his mouth.

The conversation goes something like this:

He thinks: “I think…no wait, that’s not strong enough…We believe..yeah, that’s it…”

He says: “We believe…uh…”

He thinks: “Now what? What do you mean now what? Don’t you know? Know what? What was the question? Oh yeah…”

He says “um…”

He thinks “What did Axelrod tell me our position was? He didn’t. Wasn’t there something about ‘Hope’ in the answer? I’m sure there was..’

He says “that we are the hope…”

He thinks “Hope for what? Well I can’t say anything specific, people would be able to nail me down on one side of the issue or another. Better say something noncommittal and give myself plausible deniability no matter what they say I said. What should I say though?”

He says “uh…uh…”

He thinks “But it was a yes or no question…Shut up…Only a racist would ask a yes or no question. Damn racists, trying to bait me like that…”

He says “umm…”

He thinks “I’ll show them who’s smarter. I used to organize communities for God’s sake. I’ll give them the answer I want. What do I want? To not lose, Michelle would be soooo pissed! And she’s not that nice when she’s in a good mood…Yeah, but I mean besides the obvious…”

He says “err…”

He thinks “Hope and change. Axelrod says that’s our message. Forget the policy: if they found out what the policy was they’d never vote for us…Stick with the hope and change, and let ‘em chew on that for a while.”

He says “and change that we’ve been waiting for…”

He thinks “HA! Let ‘em try to figure that one out…::smug internal grin::”

He says “Next question?”

(I originally posted this in the comments at Althouse..)

Popularity: 19%

The Jawa Report has done a great job of connecting the dots between the Obama campaign and video hit jobs against Sarah Palin that were uploaded to YouTube and Google Video as well as e-mailed to Leftist websites like DU and dKos.

David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, is one of the most vicious, disgusting and vile human beings ever to walk the face of the earth. To even think of some of the smears that have been launched against Sarah Palin, let alone be responsible for spreading what he knows for a fact to be outright lies, takes a level of human depravity that few are capable of.

I state this as fact. If Obama and Axelrod want to challenge me, then let’s take it to court. We’ll go to discovery over their communications with the Winner family, open up the client lists of his AstroTurfing company, and follow the dots throughout the Democratic leadership. Go ahead, I triple dare you….

Popularity: 31%

It turns out that the high-paying, super-important job that Barack Obama gave up in order to pursue a short stint as a “community organizer” was far less than he made it out to be. In fact, it was so much less than he made it out to be that it was: nothing at all like what he described whatsoever.

He was a low-level flunky at a research sweat-shop - nowhere near the mover and shaker he made himself out to be in order to show what a swell guy he was to give it all up in pursuit of his ultra-altruistic goal of organizing communities.

 So now that this vital and revealing part of his biography is revealed to be a complete fabrication, we’re going to see the media get right on investigating how much of the rest of that biography is a work of fiction too, right?

Popularity: 20%

Over at Patterico, he reports on the latest Presidential polls which includes a Rasmussen report showing a dead heat between McCain and Obama.

But as I commented there, there’s a big problem with Rasmussen’s methodology in this poll:

If you read the full Rasmussen report, you see the following caveat:

For a variety of reasons, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll is less volatile than some other polls and always shows a somewhat smaller convention bounce than reported by others. This is primarily because we weight our results by party identification (see methodology). Looking at the data before adjusting for partisan identification, the Republican convention appears to have created a larger surge in party identification than the Democratic convention the week before. If this lasts, it could have a significant impact on Election 2008.

After running it through the secret decoder ring, this reads:

we’ve seen a significant swing in party self-indication towards the GOP since the convention, but we’re going to wait and see if that continues before we start including that factor into our regular polling adjustments.

Basically, they’re admitting that their current poll results aren’t accurately reflecting what the mood in the country is right now: rather it’s a projection based on a “what if” scenario that requires the Republican base to return to its previously demoralized state. Unlike Gallup, they’re actively factoring out the uptick in Republican enthusiasm rather than simply reporting it.

Barring some major problem with Palin, I’d bet that the Rasmussen polls start moving towards McCain as they will have no choice but to accept that the swing in party self-identification isn’t just a one week phenomenon and correct their current “tweaking” of the raw data.

Popularity: 21%

At least that’s the judgment of this columnist….

Your mileage may vary, but I think it’s the most thoughtful examination of Obama this election cycle…While I happen to think that he vastly overestimates Obama’s brainpower (which certainly hasn’t been much on display especially of late), I also think he’s got it mostly right….

Popularity: 15%

Joe Biden lost his wife in a tragic car crash some years back, and now he’s trying to drum up sympathy for himself and Barack Obama by peddling lies that she was killed by a drunk driver, causing no end of grief for the family of the man who is no longer alive to defend himself

The truth is much less sympathetic to Biden: it appears that she may have died as a result of her own negligent driving:

In that interview, Herlihy said Neilia Biden either accelerated or drifted through the intersection, and Dunn could not stop. The truck driver said she was not looking at him, her face turned away, and the state police thought she was distracted by one of the children in the back seat.

Note that this doesn’t in any way lessen the tragedy that happened that day. What matters is that Joe Biden is yet again attempting to advance his political career by lying through his teeth about his personal life. If this was an isolated incident in which a man’s memory might be understandly muddied by a personal tragedy, it might be forgivable; but he has a long history of serial exaggerations, plagiarizing, and outright lies that date back at least as far as his college days.

And they’re worried that Sarah Palin might wind up a heartbeat from the presidency?

Popularity: 20%

Jake Tapper tries to defend Barack Obama’s time as a community organizer…

 Here’s the comment I posted in response:

1) Obama started the back and forth by referring to her as the Mayor of Wasilly (sic) instead of giving her the respect she was due: she is the sitting Governor of the largest state in the union. Talk about extreme sexism: he would never have dared do that a man.

2) When you call into question her experience as a mayor, then that puts his “experience” as a “community organizer” on the table. People want to compare his work to MLK or Jesus: how laughable. The reality is that it’s more like Al Sharpton.

3) He didn’t do this out of altruism. He got paid for the work. Maybe not as much as a Wall Street job, but: a) we have no proof that he was ever offered one in the first place, and b) he was laying the groundwork for running for office in that district. Just because he was employed by a church (my church as it so happens), doesn’t make it charity. He had extremely selfish reasons for doing it as anyone who has ever actually read his book would see.

It’s no more laudable than my sister going into public accounting for five years so that she could get a six-figure job afterwards. Both are equally mercenary, and neither is a qualification for the presidency.

3) Speaking of reading his book, those who have can tell you that *Barack Obama himself* didn’t hold the position in high regard. To him it was a stepping stone and nothing more. These people trying to make him to be Mother Theresa or something similar evidently are either unwilling or unable to read what the candidate himself has had to say on the subject.

4) In response to some of the commenters here who are twisting Gov. Palin’s words: she has never said that rape is not a crime. It’s a deliberate misreading of “society’s mistakes” to make it say what they want you to believe. An objective reader can figure it out for themselves: the only ones believing this sort of ridiculous tripe are the ones who are writing it.

Popularity: 15%

A Rasmussen poll out today is spelling potential disaster for Barack Obama:

In the overall population, Obama only beats Palin on experience by 10%. With independents, it’s only 5%. That’s the #1 on the ticket vs. the #2, and he’s only barely winning. Oh and, by the way, did I mention this poll was taken before her speech last night in which she laid the wood to his backside over his lack of executive experience….repeatedly and to great effect…

…This is definitely not going to help Michelle’s children.

Popularity: 11%

…at least, the fact that he graduated without honors from Columbia College would tend to imply it strongly….

 His campaign is refusing to release his grades or other information about his academic career either at Columbia or Harvard, and now we have a good idea why.

 Harvard Law School is one of the most prestigious and competitive law schools in the country. Yet this guy who didn’t even graduate with honors somehow managed to find his way into the school and become the Law Review editor. Given his extraordinarily thin resume, his time at Harvard has been one of his biggest selling points as proof of his intelligence and even (laughably) cited by his supporters as proof that he’s ready to be commander-in-chief.

If his “achievements” are the result of racial preferences rather than competing on a level playing field, doesn’t that significantly tarnish them? Doesn’t the public have a right to know how his credentials stacked up against other (probably) more-qualified applicants who weren’t admitted to Harvard?

It’s certainly high past time that demands were made of him and his campaign to produce the records to let the public for itself how much credence they should give his highly-touted academic achievements….

Popularity: 7%