The egomaniac



Democrat Barack Obama said he does not look like all his fellow presidents on the currency. His new coin proves it. The One has his own one. Obama contracted with a British firm in Birmingham, England, to mint the new coin of the realm: The One. To go along with the Seal of the Perfect Presidency.

The Coin of the Realm will be 300 pieces of silver under a 100,000 pound ($200,000) contact with a British company. The Birmingham Post reported:

And if the Democratic candidate is elected to become the most powerful man in the world on November 4, it could open the floodgates for millions of pounds worth of business for the firm. Windsor, Elizabeth & Windsor has already sold more than 300 limited edition commemorative silver coins to the Democratic Party to hand out to key members of the campaign to elect Obama.

If? If? Infidels. He is inevitable. All hail Barack the Magnificent! He won't be president; he'll be emperor. Why, he'll have his own money to prove it.

Source





Gates of Hell Freeze Over

One can only hope that every one of President Obama's cabinet picks will bring the same experience and gravitas to his team as his shrewd and far-sighted vice-presidential selection:

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden said. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are..."

Biden said he would ask Palin about "The superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down...John McCain wants to know where Bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where..."

In February 2008, Biden - along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. - was on a chopper that made an emergency landing in the mountains of Afghanistan. A snowstorm had forced them down.

In fairness, in the weeks after 9/11, many experts cowered in terror before the soi-disant "brutal Afghan winter". But I believe Senator Biden is the first to assert it's under the direct control of Osama bin Laden.

Source







Obama's In Good Shape in Pennsylvania, As Long As 53 Percent of the Voters are Democrats

ARG puts Obama ahead of McCain, 50 percent to 46 percent. And I'm usually willing to cut a pollster some slack on the partisan breakdown of their sample. But for this poll, the sample was 53 percent Democrat and 39 percent Republican. And the 8 percent of independents break for McCain, 51 percent to 41 percent.

A reader notes that on Election Day 2006, exit polls found the voter pool in Pennsylvania to be 43 percent Democrat, 38 percent Republican, and 19 percent independent. In 2004, it was 41 percent Democrat, 39 percent Republican, and 20 percent independent.

If you plug in the same ARG results with the voter makeup of 2006, you get, by my calculations, McCain 49.1 percent, Obama 46.19 percent.

Source






Obama Loses 10 Points on 'Handling The Economy' In a Week

Today's Hotline Diageo tracking poll has Obama ahead of McCain, 47 percent to 43 percent. But take a look at the question on who would be better handing the economy:

McCain continues to close in on Obama's lead, which has decreased from a 5-point lead in the September 20 Poll, to a 1-point advantage in today's Poll, (43% - 42%).

In fact, on September 16, the Diageo-Hotline poll, a tracking poll, had Obama ahead, 47 percent to 36 percent, on which candidate would do the best job of handling the economy. So Obama has lost 10 points on that question in a week.

A reader asked how I thought the financial crisis was affecting the campaign. I responded that it's scrambling the race, and clearly is creating divisions within the parties, as Bush, Paulson, and the Democratic Congressional leadership seem on board with it, (or generally on board with it), along with Dodd and Frank, but the rank-and-file are skeptical. My readers are basically split - if they're in finance, they see it as a necessary evil to avoid a serious economic crisis; my non-finance readers think this is horsepuckey (or other words) and that reckless Wall Street managers are getting a "get out of jail free" card and pillaging the U.S. Treasury.

From where I sit, McCain's response has been hot and cold. The "Resolution Trust Corporation 2.0" idea seems to be popular with Wall Street, and he deserves a bit of credit for getting ahead of the curve; on the ther hand, calling for Cox to be fired left a lot of traditional allies unimpressed, and the Andrew Cuomo idea is arguably the dumbest McCain has ever come up with. Obama seems to think that by hanging back and saying little he'll look wise; maybe, or maybe he looks like he's in way over his head.

Biden, by comparison, blaming tax cuts and talking about President Roosevelt going on television in 1929 sounds unhinged.

Neither McCain's nor Obama's instincts and background are suited to this problem, nor is Biden or Palin. If I were either of the candidates, I would make Mitt Romney and Robert Rubin my de-facto "other running mates' until further notice, attending each event and explaining, with charts if necessary, what happened, how it happened, and how to address the problem, and the consequences of action and inaction... I understand the temptation for populist drum-beating, but this seems like a time to talk to the public like they're grownups.

UPDATE: A reader urges skepticism about the Hotline poll, pointing to this post, arguing that

If you look at the daily results... you see... incredible volatility.... [If they reported the daily samples] people could see that this is basically statistical noise in a stable race... . But Gallup doesn't report its daily results, they report a... three day rolling average, [and] you get these pleasant looking peaks and valleys in the race. The change over time here is large enough in magnitude... but also slow enough in pace (unlike on the one day chart) to be plausibly interpreted as public opinion shifting in response to events.

I hear that argument, but even if you don't like the particular numbers, the trend over the past seven days (seven separate daily samples) has been pretty consistent - McCain up or even, Obama down or even.

Source







Infatuation with Obama ending

A supporter: "As much as I hate to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the `He's all about speeches, not ideas' critique." Blogger John Althouse Cohen still supports Democrat Barack Obama. But Cohen has gone from excited to tepid. Cohen listed some reasons:

1. Obama's clinging to guns and religion speech to San Francisco elites.

2. Obama's refusal to call evil "evil."

3. Saying he'd meet with dictators in his first year in office.

4. Not timing his flip-flops well.

5. Republican Sarah Palin caught them off guard.

6. Not specific.

7. "As much as I hate to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the `He's all about speeches, not ideas' critique."

8. His take on race is disappointing.

Cohen still will vote for Obama and he gives fuller explanations. Also while the first 4 and No. 7 are things that deal with who Obama is, Nos. 5, 6 and 8 are political. If we are going to ding candidates for inept campaigning, no one will get elected.

Hmm, not a bad idea. The clock is nearing midnight and someone is looking more and more like a pumpkin pulled by mice.

Source






More On The Obama Dirty Tricks Team

In a conference call underway now to highlight the new "Chicago Machine" ad, McCain Palin campaign manager Rick Davis blasted the "very negative" campaign run by Obama since the convention, and notes he is "amazed by the level of personal attacks" launched by the self-declared new kind of candidate.

In response to a question about a story in this morning's New York Times having to do with Davis' past work for the Homeownership Alliance, senior strategist Steve Schmidt also unloaded on the New York Times for having abandoned its journalistic traditions and becoming an extension of the Obama campaign. Chris Cillizza has the details here.

In response to my question about this morning's story about the possible source of attacks on Sarah Palin and the past attacks on Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso, Schmidt noted the "fierce campaign of intimidation waged against any critic of Obama," and promised to look into the new story closely though he challenged the MSM to investigate the ties between David Axelrod and the Winner firm and whether the internet smear campaign was being run de facto by the Obama campaign. Schmidt also used the question to demand increased scrutiny of the Obama-Ayers relationship

Source

(For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . For readers in China or for when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)