Pre-emptive Ejection – Audience members removed from McCain rally because of the way they look!
She said McCain staffers wouldn’t tell her why she was being asked to leave and when she got outside, she saw “a group of about 20 people” who had all been asked to leave.Elborno said after seeing the people who were asked to leave, she was concerned that McCain’s staffers were profiling people on appearance to determine who might be a potential protester.“When I started talking to them, it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive, but based on what? Based on how they looked,” Elborno said. “It was pretty much all young people, the college demographic.”Elborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave.“I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”
Jane Devin: The Christian Right Killed the Republican Party
Today, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are among two of the more prominent Republican figures that have become mouthpieces for the religious right. Their attempts to split a diverse, multi-cultural country into “pro-America” and “anti-America” factions have left little doubt who is to be considered patriotic and who is not.Those who are right-wing Christians — anti-abortion, anti-feminism, anti-gay, anti-evolution, anti-taxes, pro-gun, and pro-deregulation — and who are willing to ignore or justify massive governmental debt, corporate welfare, bank nationalization, unjustified war, falling markets, depleted retirement accounts, record foreclosures, government spying, broken treaties, torture, the impingement of a free press, the subversion of the First Amendment, the hiding of official records, the missing millions from Halliburton, and more – are patriotic. Everyone else is not.Barry Goldwater once said that he was “sick and tired of the political preachers” that tried to dictate his morality. “And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of “conservatism.”Goldwater, I think, would be rolling in his grave at the hijacking of his party by religious fundamentalists. It remains to be seen if the Republican party can recover from its long and seedy affair with the extreme right, but there is no doubt that many socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republicans are waiting for a leadership that is driven more by Goldwater ethics than by the bogeyman of a separatist, neo-con God.
Colin Powell: Hero
President Bush’s first secretary of state criticised his own party for allowing the campaign to turn negative.”I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the [Republican] Party say… such things as ‘Well, you know that Mr Obama is a Muslim’.”Well the correct answer is, ‘He’s not a Muslim, he’s a Christian, he’s always been a Christian’. But the really right answer is, “What if he is?’ Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is ‘No’, that’s not America.”
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Colin Powell backs Barack Obama
As it turns out, the most important thing endorsed by Colin Powell today was an America that’s worth leading and worth fighting for, an America that encapsulates the idea of what some might call a “more perfect union.” To that end, Powell invoked a picture to illustrate his point.“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star – showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.
And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life.”
WOW: Obama Rally Draws 100,000 in Missouri
Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Obama Rally Draws 100,000 in Missouri
Amy Chozick reports on the presidential race from St. Louis.
Barack Obama attracted 100,000 people at a Saturday rally here, his biggest crowd ever at a U.S. event.
The crowd assembled under the Gateway Arch on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear Obama speak about taxes and slam the Republicans on economic issues.
Lt. Samuel Dotson of the St. Louis Police Department confirmed the number of attendees piled into the grassy lawn by the Mississippi River.
To be sure, big crowds don’t always signal a big turnout on Election Day. But Obama’s ability to draw his largest audience yet in a typically red state that just weeks ago looked out of reach, could signal a changing electoral map.
For months Missouri polls put Obama as much as ten percentage points behind Republican John McCain. It was widely believed that McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate would have won over the state’s conservatives and boosted his chances there. So far, that hasn’t happened.
A Rasmussen poll released on Friday shows Obama leading in Missouri 52% to 46% for McCain.
Palin’s Staffers Keep Her Away From The News To Avoid Being “Depressed”
Palin also attributed polling numbers to God. “We even saw today, thank the Lord,” she said, looking upwards and raising her fist, “We saw some movement.”
Palin’s Staffers Keep Her Away From The News To Avoid Being “Depressed”
Portraying Obama as the bogey man
Over the past few weeks of the US presidential election campaign, the tone has turned increasingly negative, especially from the Republican side.BBC News has been talking to two key Republican advisers about whether the personal attacks on Senator Obama can be justified.Across America, ghosts, ghouls and snaggle-toothed jack o’lanterns peer out from a million suburban stoops; it is just two weeks until Halloween.Jack o’lanternThis may be the year for the politicians to save the scare tactics for HalloweenBut this fall. a genuinely frightening spectre is said to be lurking in the bushes, ready to pounce on the good people of Middle America.He is tall and slim but his past is dark. He ‘pals’ with a terrorist intent on blowing up American values.He was raised in a strange land amongst Muslims. His religious mentor in more recent times is a preacher of hate.His name alone is enough to strike fear into many a God-fearing soul. Whisper it quietly: Barack Hussein Obama is coming to get you. Over the top? You bet, but then that is the tone adopted by some of the die-hards in the Republican campaign for the White House.
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US Elections 2008 | Portraying Obama as the bogey man
Poll debate watchers say Obama wins cnn.com
McCain loses the last debate. This was John McCain’s last chance to change the dynamic of the election, to reverse his slide and slow Barack Obama’s momentum. He blew it.The pundits called each of the first two debates a tie, which — given how the polls were shifting — favored Obama. (Surveys later showed voters thought Obama won them both.) This time around, McCain might be glad to settle for a draw. If anything changed tonight, it probably only made things worse for the Republican. We finally found out which John McCain would show up for the debate: an angry, unsettled one who’s obviously frustrated that he’s losing to a man he doesn’t respect much. It’s hard not to think McCain lost ground. Just one example: by the end of the night, McCain may have finally proven his anti-choice bona fides to activists who never trusted him on abortion. But in order to do it, he had to pick a fight over whether abortion laws left too much leeway for exemptions for the health of pregnant women, and he started referring to pro-choice positions as “pro-abortion.” It may not have been the best way to try to close the gender gap.
McCain loses the last debate – War Room – Salon.com
HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN) — A majority of debate watchers think Sen. Barack Obama won the third and final presidential debate, according to a national poll conducted right afterward.Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain debate face to face Wednesday night.Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain debate face to face Wednesday night.Fifty-eight percent of debate watchers questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said Democratic candidate Obama did the best job in the debate, with 31 percent saying Republican Sen. John McCain performed best.The poll also suggests that debate watchers’ favorable opinion of Obama rose slightly during the debate, from 63 percent at the start to 66 percent at the end. The poll indicates that McCain’s favorables dropped slightly, from 51 percent to 49 percent.The economy was the dominant issue of the debate, and 59 percent of debate watchers polled said Obama would do a better job handling the economy, 24 points ahead of McCain.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.poll/index.html
UPDATED WITH FINAL RESULTS As in the previous debates, CBS News and Knowledge Networks have conducted a nationally representative poll of uncommitted voters to get their immediate reaction to tonight’s presidential debate.In the first presidential debate, second presidential debate and vice presidential debate, more uncommitted voters said the Democratic candidate was the victor.And tonight’s results have, by a wide margin, made it a clean sweep. Here are the final results of the survey of 638 uncommitted voters:Fifty-three percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed identified Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the winner of tonight’s debate. Twenty-two percent said Republican rival John McCain won. Twenty-five percent saw the debate as a draw.More uncommitted voters trusted Obama than McCain to make the right decisions about health care. Before the debate, sixty-one percent of uncommitted voters said that they trust Obama on the issue; after, sixty-eight percent said so. Twenty-seven percent trusted McCain to manage health care before the debate; thirty percent said so afterwards.
CBS Poll: Uncommitted Voters Say Obama Won Final Debate – Horserace
McCain loses againJohn McCain promised to kick Barack Obama’s “you know what” on Wednesday night. He hinted that he’d bring up former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers and worse. Instead McCain bludgeoned Obama with Joe the Plumber, and the effect was more farce than fierce.McCain mentioned the now-famous plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, an apparently wealthy Toledo businessman who complained he’d pay more taxes under Obama’s plan, more than he talked about Sarah Palin or Osama bin Laden, by far. Midway through the 90-minute conversation, Obama was addressing Joe the Plumber, too. And it was clear by then that McCain had lost three straight debates.
If the world could vote?
Just out of curiosity. The president of the United States is a powerful man, probably the most powerful person on the planet. So everyone seems to have an opinion on who should be the next president of the United States. We thought it would be interesting to see who would be the next president if the whole world could vote. It’s also a challenge to try to beat the number of voters in the last US elections. So spread the news!
