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THURSDAY,  SEPTEMBER 25,  2008

UPDATE AT 11:54 P.M. ET:  The two worlds of Barack Obama:  From the AP:

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama on Thursday criticized lawmakers who are holding up a deal on the $700 billion financial bailout plan, saying they need to clarify their objections so an agreement can be reached that will save the economy from further damage.

The Democratic presidential nominee spoke in a round of television interviews after a White House meeting also attended by Republican presidential rival John McCain. Obama said he left thinking they will reach a deal, but some work still needs to be done.

While other Democrats said McCain is part of the problem, Obama would not criticize his opponent directly. He told CNN that he and McCain must be careful not to "start injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations."

From The Politico:

Obama's camp, after sniping at McCain's "suspension," dismisses it this evening as a stunt in a memo to the press:

So make no mistake: John McCain did not “suspend” his campaign. He just turned a national crisis into an occasion to promote his campaign. It’s become just another political stunt, aimed more at shoring up the Senator’s political fortunes than the nation’s economy. And it does nothing to help advance this critical legislation to protect the American people during this time of economic crisis.

Choose whichever position you wish.  You get equal credit on the test for either one.

September 25, 2008.

UPDATE AT 10:37 P.M. ET:  From AP:   WASHINGTON - Prospects were questionable at best that John McCain and Barack Obama would meet Friday for their first presidential debate as progress appeared to dissolve between Congress and the Bush administration on a $700 billion financial industry bailout.  McCain didn't plan to participate in the debate unless there was a consensus. Obama still wants the face-off to go on, arguing that Americans need to hear from the candidates. The Democrat was scheduled to travel to the debate site in Oxford, Miss., on Friday.

COMMENT:  Let Obama go to Mississippi and make a fool of himself.  McCain should have maximum press availability and make clear that he's doing the job of a US senator.  McCain's surrogates should point out the difference between the people's business and show business.  Get back to the theme of painting Obama as a celebrity with little idea of how to get real work done.  This is not a time for warmth.

FURTHER FICTION UPDATE AT 3:01 P.M.  Are they copying from each other?  Now the AP has this headline:

Lawmakers: Wall Street rescue accord reached

But again, go into the story.  It's the same saga we reported at 2:45 p.m.  Reach way down and this appears:

But there were fresh signs of trouble in the House Republican Caucus. A group of GOP lawmakers circulated an alternative designed to attract private capital back into the credit markets with less government intrusion.

Under the proposal, the government would provide insurance to companies that agree to buy frozen assets, rather than purchase them directly as envisioned under the administration’s plan. The firms would have to pay insurance premiums to the Treasury Department for the coverage.

“The taxpayers haven’t done anything wrong,” said Rep Eric Cantor, R-Va., adding that rather than require them to bear the cost of the bailout, the alternative “pretty much puts the burden on Wall Street over time.”

Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader, was huddling with McCain on the rescue. Earlier, asked whether the GOP presidential nominee could corral restive Republicans to support the plan, Boehner said, “Who knows?”

Yeah.  Agreement reached.  Apparently, the Dems agreed among themselves, which is all the in-the-tank media has to hear.

Double yuch.

A FICTION UPDATE AT 2:45 P.M. ET: The headline at the Washington Post now reads:

GOP, Democratic Negotiators Reach Agreement in Principle

Trouble is, that's not what the story says.  The Dem negotiators say they've agreed, which apparently is good enough for the in-the-tank-for-Obama news pages of the Post.

But way down in the story the Post adds:

However, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), gathering his GOP colleagues in a private huddle for a third straight morning, declared that there was no bipartisan compromise.

"There is no deal," Boehner said, according to participants in the meeting.

So why the headline, fellas?

TRACKERS

Posted at 2:25 p.m. ET

What?  You mean McCain isn't down by 120 points?

No.

You mean the Gallup tracker suddenly has him tied again?

Yes.

Geez.  These fascists know how to rig an election, don't they?

Yeah.  Just the way BUSH did when he stole everything for big oil.  That BUSH!

Well, let's look at the numbers today.  Apparently, the crash of '08 hasn't occurred.

Rasmussen, as reported earlier, has Obama up three, a gain of one over yesterday. Battleground has McCain up one, a loss of one since yesterday.

Hotline has Obama up four.  It was six yesterday.

And Gallup, which had Obama up three yesterday, has the race tied. 

Has McCain started to reverse the damage with his dramatic announcement that he's suspending his campaign?  There's no way to know right now.  The polls are snapshots, and new state polls out today are grim for McCain.  There could even be further slippage.  But we've been here before and things can be reversed.  It is possible that the sudden dip for McCain earlier in the week, reflected in these polls, represented more anger than commitment.

As far as we know, Friday's debate hasn't been cancelled.  Things are in flux.  McCain is certainly not in the position he dreamed of, but the man is a fighter.

September 25, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  Rasmussen's tracker for the day is now out.  It has Obama up over McCain by three, 49-46, as opposed to two yesterday.  That is McCain's lowest level of support in nearly three weeks.   In addition, Rasmussen has Obama up two in North Carolina, previously regarded as fairly safe for McCain.

The McCain campaign is going through a crisis, but the numbers are far, far less than staggering.  Obviously, things can get worse.  But they can also get much better. 

I still want to know - no conspiracy theories involved - how this economic collapse occurred right in the middle of a presidential campaign.  Notice that the press is not asking the question. 

HOT AIR ON HOT AIR

Posted at 8:31 a.m. ET

Ed Morrissey, at Michelle Malkin's "Hot Air" site, reports that one of Barack Obama's major financial "bundlers" had a wonderful experience earlier this week.  May we share it with you?

And she’s bragging about it, too. Apparently without “preparations”, Code Pink founders Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin met with Iranian president and raging anti-Semite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. Evans wears another hat in this election as well; she has pledged to raise over $50,000 for Barack Obama as one of his main bundlers.

Just brimming with ideas:

They had some interesting ideas for promoting peace with the man who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, who funds terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, whose munitions kill American soldiers in Iraq, and whose nation currently wants to build nukes. Their solutions? Peace parks and investing in Iranian businesses.

Look, Jodie Evans is very affluent.  Maybe she understands the mystery of foreign investment.

They also proposed a plan to invest funds in an Iranian business, one that produces green and sustainable products, such as bicycles.

Remember, whisper it to your friends.  Bicycles.  Who would have thought?

Most people want to stop investing in an Iranian system that needs cash for its nuclear aspirations. Congress has considered a divestment bill this year, for instance, attempting to use leverage . In fact, both John McCain and Barack Obama support divestiture. Maybe that message got lost in the shuffle at Team O.

And...

That brings us to the bigger question: why is a bundler for Obama’s campaign meeting with the head of the biggest terror-sponsoring regime in the world? Let’s skip over all of the hypocrisy of a supposed “peace” group sucking up to a man who funds terrorists, murders, and violence all over the world. (They like Castro, too, so that’s old news.) Here we have someone actively working to raise funds for Obama meeting with the explicitly avowed enemy of one of our closest allies. What does that say about Obama and his campaign?

And why are Hot Air and Ed Lasky and a few others the only ones to ask the question?

Obama should disavow Evans and return the money she has bundled for him. If not, we can consider that agreement with Evans’ actions and judge Obama’s foreign-policy instincts by it. (via Melanie Morgan and Free Republic’s Kristin Taylor)

Okay, McCain team.  Let's see how sharp you are.  Get on this.  Force Obama to deal with it.

September 25, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 8:19 A.M. ET: First tracker of the day is out.  Battleground has McCain up one point, 48-47.  He was up two in this poll yesterday.  We stress that Battleground is the outlier here, the only poll that shows McCain ahead.  We'll await Rasmussen, who should be next to publish, later this morning.

THE MOMENT

Posted at 7:16 a.m. ET

We are experiencing a decisive moment in the campaign.  I think we all sense that, emotionally, the race has changed in the last 48 hours.  The financial crisis, conveniently striking in the midst of a presidential race, has thrown McCain for a loss, even though his opponent has responded to the dilemma with his vast nothingness, elegantly served. 

McCain can be the master of the great moment, as he showed when he chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and shook up the campaign, or, earlier, when he replaced teams of advisers who weren't producing results, and went on to win the GOP nomination.  Now he has chosen another great moment - suspending his campaign and challenging The One to come down from the mountain and do the same, until the financial crisis is solved.

Dick Morris and his wife, Eileen McCann, think he's scored a direct hit.

This bold move could have an impact on the race akin to McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Defensively, McCain had to act to stop the fall in his poll numbers.

Offensively, he has placed himself at the epicenter of the only issue on the national agenda - proactive action to stop a total international financial collapse.
Obama's response to McCain's initiative is lame. As with his initial reaction to Sarah Palin, Obama has miscalculated. While he tries to spin McCain's move as a mere response to his initiative, it was the Republican who first issued the call for a suspension of the campaigns.

Both McCain and Obama will now go to Washington. McCain on his own initiative. Obama as a result of the president's call for an economic summit.

And the differences continue:

McCain is going to work while Obama is phoning it in.

Oddly, McCain and Obama agree on the bailout package. But it is only McCain who can pass the bill. Only McCain can deliver the administration and the Republicans.

McCain will be at the center of the process, managing it through to success while Obama lingers on the outskirts, irrelevant and uninvolved.

Oh, I surely hope so.

There are compelling reasons why McCain may be saving his campaign by this bold move.

McCain's entry into the legislative foray personalizes the economy issue.

As long as McCain stayed away from Washington, it was the Democrats against the Republicans. Polls give the Democrats the edge. But voters trust McCain personally more than they trust Obama to manage his way out of a crisis.

By showing up in Washington, McCain makes the issue personal, not partisan.

The rescue legislation will pass.  McCain will get great credit.

Once the bill is passed, McCain will have the credentials to go on the offensive and warn of the impact of Obama's tax increases on the recovery.

Had McCain not acted, Republican opposition to big government might have doomed the economy and destroyed Republican hopes.

Finally...

By going to Washington, McCain makes it imperative that the Republicans pass the legislation. His presence makes it an issue of party survival in a way that lame duck Bush could never do.

As Woody Allen said "half of life is just showing up.

I hope that analysis is correct.  One lurking problem, of course, is the role of the press.  Already the at-your-service-Barack media is trying to spin McCain's move as entirely cycnical, as if his patriotism and guts needed to be proved.  The public, already down on the Republican Party, must be won over. 

We'll watch the tracking polls closely in the days ahead.  If McCain continues to slip, and especially if he does poorly in the first debate - whenever it's held - his campaign may well be over.  But if he goes to Washington and does the people's business successfully, he might just pull out a victory, and once again show that writing John McCain off is a dangerous form of work.

September 25, 2008.      Permalink          

WEDNESDAY,  SEPTEMBER 24,  2008

UPDATE AT 9:18 P.M. ET:  President Bush has just addressed the nation on the financial crisis.  He was calm and reasoned.  One thing he revealed - that he's asked both Senator McCain and Senator Obama to come to a meeting at the White House to help solve the crisis.  McCain, of course, had already said he was returning to Washington.  Obama had resisted.  Now Obama, who received a personal call from Bush, must certainly go to the White House.  Can he really defy a request from the president?  If he does, he can destroy himself.  But if he answers the president's summons, he looks like a follower, not a leader.  Advantage:  McCain.

UPDATE AT 7:12 P.M. ET:  Obama has turned down McCain's suggestion to postpone Friday night's debate.  The left-wing spin machine is going into action, accusing McCain of trying to avoid the debate.  McCain is correct here - the people's business comes first, and a debate can be put off a few days.  But the press will twist it otherwise.  Already David Letterman has gone hysterical over McCain's cancelling an appearance on his show tonight.

And the Democrats in Congress will make things difficult for McCain in Washington.  Common decency requires that Obama agree to suspend the debate and return to carry out his oath of office as a senator.  The fact that the press isn't, at this hour, demanding it of him, tells us what our modern media is all about.   

NOTE AT 5:49 P.M. ET:  For sheer nerve, nothing today beats the ditz-of-the-world column by CNN anchor Campbell Brown, here.  Brown runs one of the most anti-Sarah Palin programs on TV.  Some call it the "Anti-Sarah Hour."  In her column today, though, she accuses the McCain campaign of practicing, get this, sexism against Sarah Palin.  You cannot make this stuff up.

Brown apparently feels she can get away with anything.  And at CNN, she apparently can.

THE CRISIS

Posted at 5:14 P.M. ET

The financial crisis enveloping the nation is smothering the political campaigns.  As you know by now, Senator McCain has suspended campaigning and is returning to Washington to work on solving the financial woes.  He's asked Obama to do the same, but so far Obama seems to be balking.  McCain has asked that Friday's debate be postponed.

Look, this isn't all about patriotism and "putting country first."  McCain clearly is maneuvering politically.  But there's an old saying in the Chicago political machine:  "Good government is good politics."  Returning to Washington is the right thing to do.  McCain is a U.S. senator.  If Obama chooses to continue campaigning, he begins to look selfish and ridiculous.  But if he, too, returns to Washington, he's following McCain's lead.

What if Obama hangs tough and says he intends to show up at the debate.  For McCain to cave in would look weak, especially when he actually is in Washington doing public business.  McCain should express outrage at that point, and needle Obama as a man who spends all his time running for office and too little time performing the duties of the office.

McCain is in trouble.  He knows it, and he's acting properly.  I'd love to see Obama debate an empty chair, while McCain is doing the public's business.

But will the public side with McCain or Obama?  I think they'll go with McCain.  They already see him as a leader, and Obama, if he does not return to Washington as well, can look awfully small.

September 24, 2008.       Permalink          

UPDATE AT 4:39 P.M. ET:  I just returned from listening to a briefing by Dick Morris.  More about that in a post to come soon.  Fascinating. 

The polls today are all over the place.  We reported the Washington Post/ABC poll, showing Obama up nine. There's also a Fox poll showing him up six,  but the trackers don't confirm such a dramatic movement.  Gallup still has Obama up only three.  You can go to the link and read the numbers.  Obama has made progress, but the averages suggest he's about five points ahead.  That can be overcome, but the financial crisis is clearly a body blow to the McCain campaign. 

UPDATE AT 10:10 A.M. ET:  This is bad news:  The Hotline tracker just out shows Obama up six, getting close to that nine-point lead in the Washington Post/ABC poll.  Hotline yesterday had Obama up four.  So Obama has now gained two points each in the Rasmussen and Hotline polls.  We are two days away from the first debate.  Things are getting serious.  But we stress again that these are daily snapshots.

Clearly, though, the financial crisis, coming conveniently in the middle of the presidential campaign, is a nightmare for McCain.  I make no accusations and have no evidence, but someone should investigate the timing of all this.  Usually that would be the press.  It won't be this time, for obvious reasons.

UPDATE AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  The Rasmussen tracker, just out, has Obama with a two-point lead.  The poll had the race tied yesterday.  This is the first time in more than two weeks that Obama has had a lead greater than a point in the Rasmussen poll.  Does this mean that the Washington Post poll showing Obama up nine may have identified a late trend?  No, not by a long shot.  This is still a very tight race, with more than a month to go before the election. 

UPDATE AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  First tracker of the day is out.  The Battleground tracker has McCain up by two, the same result as yesterday. 

The next tracker, Rasmussen, should be out about 9:30 a.m. ET.  Ras had a tie yesterday.

MR. EXPERIENCE

Posted at 7:38 a.m. ET

Once again Joe Biden shows that, as a man one heartbeat away from the presidency, he stands head and shoulders over that...that mom from Alaska.

WASHINGTON - Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today's leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to a financial crisis.

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened,'" Barack Obama's running mate recently told the "CBS Evening News."

Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929.

Oh, and by the way, they didn't have TV back then.  No Howdy Doody.  No Big Bird.  Not even Wolf Blitzer.

FDR was elected three years later when voters denied Hoover a second term. The Democratic challenger appealed to the "forgotten man" by promising a "new deal" to solve the Depression era.

No, he tried to solve the problems of the Depression.  He didn't try to solve the Depression era.  You don't solve an era.  Geez, can we get the reporters to get it right.

Biden was commenting on the stock market crash when he said leaders should explain the current economic crisis and how to solve it to the public.

"Part of what being a leader does is to instill confidence, is to demonstrate what he or she knows what they are talking about and to communicating to people ... this is how we can fix this," Biden said.

And you certainly did it, Joe - by messing up the memory of the most famous Democrat of all time.  Blessings on Barack Obama for having the wisdom to select you.  Please save us from that sitting governor of Alaska and her 80-percent approval rating.

Maybe it's time to put the money under the mattress.

September 24, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 7:03 A.M. ET:  Two new polls just out give completely different results.  A Washington Post/ABC poll shows Obama up nine points, way beyond what any other poll shows.  All the others show either a tie, or Obama up no more than four.

A new Ipsos/McClatchy poll has Obama up one, consistent with other polls.

We'll watch the four trackers carefully today to see if the Post/ABC boys picked up some trend, but I doubt it.  If the trackers continue to show the trend they've shown recently, you can toss the Post/ABC effort.  Maybe they can get their money back.

TONY'S FURY

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

Readers of Urgent Agenda know that I respect the work of Washington columnist Tony Blankley.  He is thoughtful, informed, and measured.  He is rarely angry.

Today he's angry, and for good reason.  Like so many of us, he's had it with the press coverage of this campaign.  All you need to do is look at the coverage of Sarah Palin as opposed to Joe Biden to see the extent of the bias.  Sarah conducts herself with dignity and class.  Joe can't open his mouth without making a fool of himself.  And Biden is considered by the media the "qualified" candidate.

Blankley lays out the indictment:

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign.

While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.)

The consequences of this can be catastrophic.

And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs -- the press. The image of Obama that the press has presented to the public is not a fair approximation of the real man. They consciously have ignored whole years of his life and have shown a lack of curiosity about such gaps, which bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct.

Compare please with the sending of battalions of "journalists" to Alaska to detail every day in the life of Sarah Palin.

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don't see Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

Well, I guess Tony won't get that VIP tour of The New York Times.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting are the shocking gaps in Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply have not reported on Obama's two years at New York's Columbia University, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter-mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers. Later, they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Ayers.

Oh, the red-baiting.  Tony, join the sophisticates and stop asking penetrating questions.  Be more establishment, Tony.

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Obama's rise in Chicago politics. How did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley?

He must have licked envelopes and run doorbells very well.  Can't you give the man credit, Tony?

The public image of Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Obama, his publicist (David Axelrod) and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor wrote, "The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis."

Taylor also was one of the few to expose the Duke University lacrosse case hoax.  Dangerous man, that Taylor.  No VIP tour for him, either.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

Their response will be to wave the First Amendment flag and "move on," which is the mantra of their age.

Excellent column.       

September 24, 2008.      Permalink          

"What you see is news.  What you know is background.  What you feel is opinion."
    - Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
      of The New York Times.

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