Just got the text!

Right now, the polls are showing a dead heat between Obama and McCain in the Presidential race. This is significantly off from June numbers which had Obama up by 6-7% points.

Before hitting the panic button Democrats, or begin cheering Republicans, there are some facts/issues to consider for both sides.

Sloganomics, not Economics!

Winning American elections is not about who has the better understanding or the better intellect or the better argument, It is about who has the better slogans.  Period.

With all concern troll portions excised:

What is [   ] with the Obama Campaign?  Don't they know that [   ] means they don't have [   ]?  It's no time to [   ]!  Just because it's August doesn't mean [   ].  

If it were my campaign, I would [    ] immediately.  I would also [   ], fire [   ], and generally [   ].  I mean, there's no choice now but to [   ], even if Obama prefers to [   ].

How can you let McCain [   ]?  Even if [   ] happens, we still have to [   ], because [   ], [   ], [   ] and [   ] are at stake.

Several superfluous pictures, then jump, with what I really think.

Michael Moore has an article posted on HuffPo urging Caroline Kennedy to "Pull a Cheney" and suggest herself as VP.  The article is very compelling.  I'm hoping the following will be a link:

"Caroline: Pull a Cheney!" An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy (head of the Obama VP search team) from Michael Moore

Most of us hated Bayh.

Some of us hated Kaine.

Still others disliked Biden as the choice for Vice President.

All three were the subject of significant trial balloons over the last three weeks, with the most significant being the possibility of Biden over the past 36 hours.

But with the developments today, I am now convinced Barack Obama has decided to pick....

And it's this guy:

Yep: It's Washington State Rep Al O'Brien.

Al brings all the votes from northeast King and south Snonomish Counties, along with the memorable campaign slogan, being rolled out tomorrow:

Obama.  O'Brien.  Oh boy.

You heard it here first.

Some of Barr’s key points:

1. McCain, like his mentor, is clueless when it comes to "geopolitics and the ethnic and demographic problems in that part of the world (Georgia)." I should add that this ignorance extends across the globe: he is equally clueless on the Middle East, Asia, Africa, LA and, of course, the Real America (not the one where a person graduates from the middle class after five million dollars).

2. McCain, like his mentor, recklessly bases his foreign policy judgments on metaphysical data like that gathered by Bush when he peered into Putin’s soul (or spoke with G-d).

3. McCain is a moron for his "we are all Georgians" remark. His advisor, Randy Scheunemann, might be a Georgian in the same way that I might  be an Iranian if Ahmadinejad gave me $730,000 for a shoulder to cry on. But, like Barr said, we are not all Georgians.

4. McCain, like his mentor, does not understand that American power is not based solely on empty bluster, especially when it can’t be backed up.

5. Republicans are sucking in the free world (as opposed rocking in it).

When they speak of the term Appalachia, people are usually thinking of West Virginia, Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee. But the culture and economic conditions of the Appalachian region extend well into western Pennsylvania and southeastern sections of Ohio. All agree that these two states are important in this year’s presidential election. Under many scenarios the voter outcome in Ohio could either give or deny the White House to Barack Obama.

The 2004 election illustrates the importance of Ohio. In 2004 George W. Bush won the state of Ohio by 119,000 votes. Had John Kerry defeated Bush in Ohio, Kerry would have won the presidency.

More multiple point messaging like this please.  While Obama is vigorously going after McCain's deplorable patriotism attack, the DNC is just out with this in response to the Saddleback forum:

It was two years ago this week, eight years after Robin Hayes first took office, that Hayes told Fox News he'd made no mistakes in Congress.

Host Beth Troutman: "Is there anything from over the past few years that you would have done differently? That you are maybe the least proud of? If anything?"

Rep. Robin Hayes: "Hard, as I can't think of anything honestly, right off hand."

As we reminded him last cycle, the working families of North Carolina's 8th District may have some suggestions.

When I wrote the diary concerning the uncanny resemblance between John McCain's Christmas story and the story of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet gulags, I had no idea about the response it would really generate.  I figured that people would see it as an interesting "gotcha" story, and that maybe people would be interested enough in it to place my diary on the rec list.  Well, I can honestly say that I GREATLY underestimated the interest and I underestimated the feedback, both positive and negative, that it has generated.

Saturday Night’s Political Forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren was one of the most interesting campaign events this year.    It was nice to hear someone from the right argue that it is essential that Americans (both conservative & liberal) learn to argue their viewpoints WITHOUT demonizing the other side.    In coming to terms with the idea that we are all Americans (even when we disagree) we build upon the idea that we are greater as a nation together than we are as the sum of our separate ideologies.

A very dear friend of mine is directing a feature length documentary that is soon coming to completion and fruition about a very important but grossly ignored subject.

She was imprisoned, interrogated, and ultimately deported for her work documenting the horror occurring in Zimbabwe. I have been trying in my own small way to assist her with the completion of this important project.

I have asked for and received permission to cross-post her latest blog from Huffington Post here. Following is something that I hope gives everyone a moment of pause to understand the true horror that is happening this very minute.

Obama has so far been unwilling to touch McCain's POW time or military service, except to praise it.

OK, we all understand why.  Getting into a spitting context on that issue makes him come up the loser every time.

But why not PRAISE McCain's experience... but do so CLEVERLY.

A kind of witness.

Orson Swindle, a fellow POW, says that he remembers McCain telling the story about the cross in the dirt sometime in 1971.

Orson Swindle's charity, Citizens Against Government Waste, laundered money for Jack Abramoff. The Senate Finance Committee report is here.

ETA: A correction is below and a mea culpa is in my next diary, The Battleground McCain Prefers.

John McCain has made his experience as a POW the bedrock of his entire political career.  Lately he has turned into a noun a verb and POW.  During the latest discussion at Saddleback Church McCain made it a point to recount his POW days as his talisman of faith, it was also where he learned to love his country, and the basis of many of his admirable stories and traits.  Integral in this story and his POW mythology is the fact that he refused early repatriation to the United States in 1967.

Barack Obama came to San Francisco tonight for a fundraiser, probably his last visit here until the election. So I scraped together the price of admission and went to see him. And had a few words with him. Again.

First, let me say that the event raised a record $7.8 million, the most ever raised at a single San Francisco event.

Second, he made it clear in his speech that he knows what he's up against ("The Republicans are meeeeean" was the way he put it), and he is going to be fighting back HARD. He's heard the hand-wringers and the doomsayers (gosh, d'you think he reads dKos?) and in so many words he was telling them not to worry, he knows how to fight. The GOP knows they can't win on the issues, he said, so they have to fight dirty. And he is ready for them.

For the rest of it, come below the fold.