Internet Scofflaw

For what it’s worth, Zogby has McCain up in Pennsylvania, 49-44.  But then, Zogby has a virtual tie in Indiana.

(Via Hot Air.)

Rasmussen reports:

Republican challenger Dino Rossi has pulled ahead of Governor Christine Gregoire for the first time since February in Washington’s gubernatorial election. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Rossi leading the incumbent 52% to 46%.

(Via the Corner.)

Rossi will have to win handily to put his election out of reach of the King County fraud machine.

Barack Obama is running a new ad mocking McCain for being unable to use a computer:

An AP story has some background:

John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain’s long Washington career. . .

“Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. “We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.”

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early ’80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik’s Cube. . .

Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said the campaign was not making an issue of the 72-year-old McCain’s age, but the time he’s spent in Washington.

“Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats,” Pfeiffer said. “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.”

McCain has said he relies on his wife and staff to work the computer for him and that he doesn’t use e-mail.

ASIDE: Not making his age an issue? Please, that doesn’t even pass the laugh test. (Frankly, I think his age is a legitimate issue.) Also, is whether McCain can send email really one of “the big issues that matter to the American people”? But anyway. . .

Why do you think that McCain never learned to use a computer? Jonah Goldberg has a good theory. This Boston Globe story sheds some light on the matter:

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan – Ted Williams is his hero – but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

(Emphasis mine.) Hard to use a computer when you can’t use a keyboard, isn’t it?

I think this will prove to be a major unforced error by Obama. The rebuttal ad writes itself, and how many chances does one get to rebut an unfair attack while simultaneously highlighting your war record? This is much better material than the lipstick business.

UPDATE: Goldberg’s post is on Drudge now.

UPDATE and BUMP: Instapundit has been rounding up comment on this, and finds a fair amount of evidence that, notwithstanding his inability to type, McCain actually is pretty internet savvy. Plus, this comment at Ace of Spades:

I think they spent months trying to figure out how they can position Obama as better qualified than McCain, and basically came up with the fact that Obama can type.

Heh.

UPDATE : It gets worse; there’s not even a shred of truth to the attack. An eight-year-old Forbes story reported:

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Worst. Rebuttal. Ever.  In an effort to contradict Goldberg, the Huffington Post points out that McCain can use a Blackberry and a cell phone.  Not only does it fail to contradict Goldberg’s defense — since injuries that keep you from using a keyboard effectively would not necessarily keep you from using a Blackberry or a cell phone — but it eviscerates the entire point of the Obama ad.  Bravo.

(Via Perfunction, via Instapundit.)

The AP reports:

Republican John McCain has taken a modest lead over Barack Obama entering the final seven weeks of their presidential contest, buoyed by decisive advantages among suburban and working-class whites and a huge edge in how people rate each candidate’s experience, a poll showed Friday. . .

The survey—conducted after both parties staged their conventions and picked their vice presidential candidates—conforms with others that have shown the Republicans grabbing the momentum after a summer in which Obama had steadily maintained a slim lead. According to the AP-GfK Poll, McCain leads Obama 48 percent to 44 percent. . .

Eighty percent say McCain, with nearly three decades in Congress, has the right experience to be president. Just 46 percent say Obama, now in his fourth year in the Senate, is experienced enough. Another 47 percent say Obama lacks the proper experience—an even worse reading than the 36 percent who had the same criticism about Palin, now in her second year as governor after serving as a small-town mayor in her state.

(Via the Corner.)

Rassmussen reports that McCain is in striking range of Obama in Washington State, 49-47.  (Via the Corner.)  If Washington is in play, Obama is in very deep trouble.

We’ll have to see if Dino Rossi is allowed to win the Governor’s race this time.

The USA Today/Gallup poll I blogged two days ago has finally been published. (Internet Scofflaw: tomorrow’s news today!) The 50-45 advantage for Republicans I reported is among likely voters.  Among registered voters, the Democrats have a narrow 48-45 lead, but that’s still much closer than the double-digit lead they’ve enjoyed all year.  Bottom line:

The positive impact of the GOP convention on polling indicators of Republican strength is further seen in the operation of Gallup’s “likely voter” model in this survey. Republicans, who are now much more enthused about the 2008 election than they were prior to the convention, show heightened interest in voting, and thus outscore Democrats in apparent likelihood to vote in November. As a result, Republican candidates now lead Democratic candidates among likely voters by 5 percentage points, 50% to 45%.

If these numbers are sustained through Election Day — a big if — Republicans could be expected to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

That’s how the NYT describes Joe Biden and his predilection for embarrassing gaffes.  I can’t believe they ran this story.  Are the gatekeepers on vacation?

(Via Instapundit.)

The blogosphere is abuzz about Palin’s answer to Charlie Gibson about Bush Doctrine, asking for clarification. I have to confess, I thought everyone agreed on what the Bush Doctrine is, but I was wrong. Apparently, different people take the phrase differently. (Dan Froomkin makes this point in a Washington Post column today attacking President Bush.)

I thought that the Bush Doctrine referred to President Bush’s pronouncement that we will not distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them. But Charlie Gibson takes it differently, saying that it refers to the right to “anticipatory self-defense.”

So I think Palin was wise not to assume that she and Gibson meant the same thing by the phrase. But I think there’s no escaping that her answer wasn’t very strong. After Gibson gave his (incorrect, I think) definition of the Bush Doctrine, her answer was rather unfocused.

This would have played out better if she had given her own definition, rather than asking for clarification. Particularly if she had used the definition I think is correct, she could have said that she did agree with it, and lamented the fact that Bush has abandoned it.

Since it turns out that no one knows what the Bush Doctrine is (or, more accurately, everyone knows but no one agrees), I think we have to acquit Palin of not knowing what Gibson was talking about. But she should have been more assertive about it, rather than deferring to Gibson for his definition.

POSTSCRIPT: Let me close with this letter, posted at the Corner:

Gibson: What do you think of the Constitution?
Palin: Could you be more specific?
Gibson: [Stares over glasses]
Kos: OMG SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE CONSTITUTION IS!!!!

UPDATE: A reader points out that Barack Obama has his own offbeat definition of the Bush Doctrine.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer, who coined the phrase “Bush Doctrine”, says Gibson was confused, not Palin. He says my version is Bush Doctrine #2, and Gibson’s is Bush Doctrine #3. “The” Bush Doctrine (his current policy), is Bush Doctrine #4, and is distinct from both #2 and #3. Given the ambiguity, it was reasonable to ask for clarification.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: A page one Washington Post story agrees with Krauthammer:

Intentionally or not, the Republican vice presidential nominee was on to something. After a brief exchange, Gibson explained that he was referring to the idea — enshrined in a September 2002 White House strategy document — that the United States may act militarily to counter a perceived threat emerging in another country. But that is just one version of a purported Bush doctrine advanced over the past eight years.

The Intrade prediction market now favors McCain for the first time. McCain is selling at 50.6 and Obama at 48.8. This means that speculators think it’s ever-so-slightly more likely that McCain will win than Obama.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: McCain has opened up a bit of a gap now: 51.6 versus 46.7.

UPDATE: Now 51.8 versus 45.5.

Reuters reports:

Canada’s Conservatives appeared on Monday to be riding a wave of public support that could hand them their first majority government since 1988, but the party did all it could to minimize such expectations.

The Conservatives, who formed a minority government after the last election in 2006, entered the second day of the campaign for the Oct. 14 vote with clear signs of being better organized and financed than their main opposition, the Liberals. Polls also showed voters strongly prefer Prime Minister Stephen Harper over Liberal leader Stephane Dion.

A Segma poll in Monday’s La Presse newspaper put support for the Conservatives at 43 percent, which would translate into about 183 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons. The poll gave the Liberals 25 percent, or about 62 seats.

(Via Vodkapundit.)

Or not.  (Via Hot Air.)

He says Hillary Clinton would have been a better VP pick:

At a rally in Nashua, N.H., a man in the audience told Biden how glad he was that Obama picked him over Hillary, “not because she’s a woman, but because, look at the things she did in the past.”

“Make no mistake about this,” Biden responded. “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Let’s get that straight. She’s a truly close personal friend, she is qualified to be president of the United States of America, she’s easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America, and quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me. But she’s first rate, I mean that sincerely, she’s first rate, so let’s get that straight.”

Biden’s mouth is his worst enemy.

(Via Instapundit.)

The latest Fox News poll agrees with the other major polls, giving McCain the lead 45-42. A major cause of McCain bounce is a surge among independents, who now favor McCain by 15 points, 46-31.

Like most polls, Fox is overweighting Democrats, with 42% in their sample against 35% Republicans. If it’s true that the GOP is closing the party gap (and McCain’s surge with independents makes that sound likely to me), this race isn’t even as close as the polls show.

In possibly related news, the Obama campaign is pulling out of Georgia.

Joe Biden:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”

(Via the Corner.)

Of course this is incredibly offensive, but I want to point out that it’s also idiotic. Let’s count the ways:

• Republicans (and Palin in particular) do support stem cell research. Opposing stem cell research that destroys embryos is not the same thing as opposing it in general.
• McCain has gone further than many Republicans (and further than me), and reluctantly supported stem cell research on embryos discarded by fertility clinics. This is substantially similar to the Democratic position. I’m not aware that Palin has taken an official stand on fertility-clinic embryos.
• Induced pluripotent stem cells, which carry no ethical problems, have now come to dominate stem cell research anyway.
• Stem cell research cannot cure Down’s Syndrome. The promise of stem cells is their ability to take the form of any cell in the body. There is nothing to suggest that stem cells could be used to remove an extra chromosome from a body’s existing cells. To suggest otherwise indicates that Biden does not understand stem cells, or Down’s syndrome, or both.

A note to Gordon Brown and Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland: The United States was founded on the principle that the British aren’t going to tell us what to do.  You can look it up.

At Opensecrets.org: (1) Dodd, (2) Kerry, (3) Obama, (4) Clinton.

Hmm.

(Via Instapundit.)

Jennifer Rubin writes:

Obama and his supporters never tire of telling us that we should assess his ability to govern as president by his performance in the campaign. Fine — let’s do it.

Has he shown grace under pressure? Not exactly. Has he controlled his own message? Nope. Did his own personnel pick (the serially obnoxious Joe Biden) set this slow-motion pile up in motion? Yup.

So here’s the rub: Palin has energized the GOP base, driven women and independent voters into McCain’s camp, and flummoxed the MSM, but her greatest accomplishment has been to unveil the Democrats’ true liability.

That basic liability has nothing to do with the fact that they are ultra-liberals and lack credibility on national security issues. Their biggest problem is that they have never led, never managed, never navigated during a crisis, and as a result never demonstrated calm under fire. It is one thing for the GOP candidates to state that in a speech — as many did at the Republican National Convention — but it is quite another to see it being played out before your very eyes.

The Democratic primary systematically eliminated their most experienced candidates, leaving the three least experienced, then the two least, before settling on the least experienced of all, a man who has never been in a seriously contested race. By taking advantage of the Democratic primary’s bizarre rules, he was able to win the nomination despite losing every big state to Hillary Clinton. It seemed inevitable that Obama’s inexperience would show as soon as his campaign faced adversity, but he never really faced adversity until now.

(Via Instapundit.)

Angus Reid Global Monitor reports:

Public support for Republican Party candidates to the House of Representatives increased dramatically this month in the United States, according to a poll by Gallup released by USA Today. 50 per cent of respondents would vote for the GOP contender in their congressional district, up eight points since August.

Democratic Party contenders are second with 45 per cent, down six points in a month. Six per cent of respondents would vote for other candidates or are undecided.

But don’t get too excited yet.  The poll has yet to appear on Gallup’s or USA Today’s web site.

Power Line reports that Obama did not, as he has claimed, sponsor legislation to secure loose nuclear weapons.

Here’s the video of Obama’s lipstick-on-a-pig remark:

I don’t think Obama meant to call Sarah Palin a pig, since there’s no upside for him to do so, but it’s very clear that his audience took him that way. You don’t get cheers and catcalls for an ordinary cliche.

What Obama should have done is disclaim the pig-as-Palin interpretation, while accepting some small responsibility for having been the one who actually chose the words. The problem with that is Obama would have to admit a mistake, which he is generally unable to do. Barring that, he has had to claim 100% innocence. But it’s disingenuous for him to argue that it was a purely innocent phrase when his own supporters took the insult and cheered.

McCain-Palin, on the other hand, should have stood back and taken it with good humor. It’s not a lie, and it’s not an attack on Palin’s family, which makes it less bad than 99% of what has been thrown at Palin lately. To get outraged at this cheapens their legitimate outrage at other attacks.

POSTSCRIPT: On the other hand, I can’t help playing the “if this were a Republican” game. Remember the hysteria when it was reported that Newt Gingrich, in a private conversation with his own mother, called Hillary Clinton a bitch? If McCain were the one who made this gaffe, the press would make it the defining moment of the campaign.

UPDATE: Well, they’re obviously not doing it my way.

I’m not kidding. The left has officially gone off its rocker.

UPDATE: Heh: Pilate voted present.

UPDATE: Sheesh.  This line has now been used on the floor of the House of Representatives.  Do these guys even want to win?

This poll result from Rasmussen is striking, and frightening:

Most American voters (60%) [say] the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. . . While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

Only about a quarter of Obama voters think the Supreme Court should be bound by the Constitution.  Wow.

(Via Hot Air.)

Another of Obama’s high principles is now shown as a fraud:

There’s been a spurt of 527 activity on behalf of Sen. John McCain, but Barack Obama campaign has suddenly gone silent on the subject.

That’s because, after a year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama’s Democratic Party, Obama’s strategists have changed their approach.

An Obama adviser privy to the campaign’s internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies — what another campaign aide termed “the cavalry” — will come to Obama’s aid.

The Obama campaign can’t ask donors to form outside groups; it can only communicate, through the public and the media, with body language, tells and hints.

The upshot: Obama’s campaign will no longer object to independent efforts that hammer John McCain, just as, in their mind, the McCain campaign has not objected to those efforts targeted at Obama. “I assume with their 527s stirring, some [Democratic] ones will as well,” another senior campaign official said.

(Via Hot Air.)

Is there anything left of Obama’s supposedly high principles?  His claim not to take money from lobbyists always was a fraud.  He’s reneged on his pledge to accept public financing.  Now he’s encouraging 527s to attack McCain.  Barack Obama is an ordinary politician, except with much less experience.

Tom Smith wonders.  (Via Instapundit.)

The NYT reports:

After months of record-breaking fund-raising, a new sense of urgency in Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising team is palpable as the full weight of the campaign’s decision to bypass public financing for the general election is suddenly upon it. . .

The signs of concern have become evident in recent weeks as early fund-raising totals have suggested that Mr. Obama’s decision to bypass public financing may not necessarily afford him the commanding financing advantage over Senator John McCain that many had originally predicted. . .

Obama campaign officials had calculated that with its vaunted fund-raising machine, driven by both small contributors over the Internet and a powerful high-dollar donor network, it made more sense to forgo public financing so they could raise and spend unlimited sums.

But the campaign is struggling to meet ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the campaign and the party. It collected in June and July far less from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s donors than originally projected. Moreover, Mr. McCain, unlike Mr. Obama, will have the luxury of concentrating almost entirely on campaigning instead of raising money, as Mr. Obama must do.

The Obama campaign does not have to report its August fund-raising totals until next week, so it is difficult to tally what it has in the bank at this point. A spokesman said that August was its best fund-raising month yet and that the campaign’s fund-raising was on track. But the campaign finished July with slightly less cash on hand with the Democratic National Committee compared with Mr. McCain and the R.N.C. The Obama campaign has also been spending heavily, including several million more than the McCain campaign in advertising in August.

A California fund-raiser familiar with the party’s August performance estimated that it raised roughly $17 million last month, a drop-off from the previous month, and finished with just $13 million in the bank.

(Via Hot Air.)

The fact that he’s losing now will hurt his fundraising too.  People don’t like to waste their money.

The latest Gallup tracking poll now fully incorporates McCain convention speech, and according to it, McCain has widened his lead to 5 points, 49-44 among registered voters. (Via Hot Air.)

This roughly agrees with yesterday’s USA Today/Gallup poll that gave McCain a 4-point lead among registered voters (50-46) . That lends credence to its stunning finding of a 10-point McCain lead (54-44) among likely voters.

Rasmussen gives McCain a smaller lead (47-46). Zogby (for what it’s worth), gives McCain-Palin the lead 50-46.

There’s a long way to go yet, but I’d certainly rather be up than down.

UPDATE: A reader points out this note on the Rasmussen poll:

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.

This goes a long way toward explaining why Rasmussen is seeing a smaller McCain lead than other polls; they weight their results by party affiliation to a balance that may no longer be accurate.  Rasmussen currently uses a weight of 40% Democrat and 32% Republican, whereas Gallup is finding that party identification has moved to near parity.  The note above doesn’t give any numbers, but suggests that Rasmussen might be seeing a similar shift.

The Washington Post takes a look at how the deal to build an Alaskan natural gas pipeline came to be.  (Via Instapundit.)

The same poll that gave McCain a 10-point lead among likely voters also has the GOP only one point behind Democrats in party identification, 48-47. This is huge if it’s accurate, as the GOP always does quite a bit better than party identification would suggest.

In 2006, polls showed the Democrats had pulled near even with Republicans on the question of national security. Now, a wide advantage for Republicans has returned.

Ed Morrissey credits the shift to the contrast between party spokesmen, with various Democratic know-nothings (e.g., Reid, Pelosi, Obama) measured against John McCain. I’m sure that’s some of it, but I think the main point is even simpler.

On the central national security question of the last two years, the Surge, Republicans were right and Democrats were wrong.  Now they continue to hurt themselves by refusing to admit they were wrong.  Many things escape the public’s notice; the success of the Surge has not.

Old line: Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is Sarah Palin’s comeuppance for supporting abstinence-only education.

New line: Sarah Palin’s support for condom education puts her out of step with her party, and will hurt her with evangelicals.  (Via Instapundit.)

ASIDE: I’m amazed to see the press recycling this “something-or-other will hurt Palin with evangelicals” line.  It’s pure wishful thinking.  These guys clearly don’t even know any evangelicals.

The latest Gallup poll, with two-thirds of the interviews coming after McCain’s speech, gives McCain the lead 48-45. That’s outside the margin of error, and a 13-point bounce since the day the convention was supposed to start. (Via Hot Air.)

The latest Rasmussen poll finds the race precisely even.

Expect the media to redouble their efforts.

UPDATE: Wow, this poll has to be an outlier, but I’m loving it anyway: USA Today has McCain up by 10 (54-44) among likely voters, and by 4 (50-46) among registered voters.  (Via Instapundit.)

Jonah Goldberg notes that the Atlantic is starting an advice column.  As I am sure countless others are finding, my question writes itself:

There’s a blogger I used to read; let’s call him “Andy”.  Andy was my first blogger.  I read him first every day, and he introduced me to everyone else that I still read today.

For a long time, I agreed with Andy about everything.  But then one day, Andy started to change.  At first it was little things, like imputing bad motives to people he once had lauded, for following policies he once had advocated.  Then he started reversing all his political views.

Now, he seems to practice everything that he used to stand against, like spreading vicious smears about politicians’ families.  When I started reading Andy, he would have named an anti-award after someone who behaved as he does now.

My question is: is there any way to reach someone like Andy?  I don’t imagine we can turn him back to his old views, but can he be convinced to behave like a decent human being again?  Please help.

Nick Cohen writes:

Instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor’s office.

On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter’s. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right. . .

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did. . . In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does.

(Via Instapundit.)

Yet another minor error in Obama’s biography:

Obama disclosed that he had once considered serving in the military.

“You know, I actually did,” Obama said. “I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school. And I was growing up in Hawaii. And I have friends whose parents were in the military. There are a lot of Army, military bases there.

“And I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honorable option. But keep in mind that I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”

There’s no way for anyone to controvert what Obama did or did not consider. But, Selective Service was discontinued between 1975 and 1980, so Obama could not have registered when he graduated in 1979. (Selective Service was reinstated the next year. Having been born in 1961, Obama would have registered the week of July 28, 1980, roughly a year after he graduated.)

UPDATE: Obama registered in September 1980. (That’s within a month of the required date, which I’m sure was no big deal.)

My original post is retracted. I was taken in by a bogus video. Here’s the full context and, if anything, it shows the exact opposite of the doctored clip.

Thanks to Hot Air for the correction.

POSTSCRIPT: This one is pretty interesting too, though. Obama is trying to have it both ways; to tie McCain to the excesses of the right while escaping the excesses of the left. Stephanopoulos will have none of it.

Dean Barnett writes:

Given that we’re more than halfway to the century mark in Palin smears, I think it’s time to take another brief look at the left’s method of smear dissemination. Yesterday on a blog hosted by the prestigious magazine the Atlantic, a post popped up at 11:49 a.m. with the breathless title, “Here We Go.” The post read in its entirety, “Todd Palin’s former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.” The post linked to the Alaskan court system where you could see the motion if you cared to click through.

Although the author didn’t care to make his innuendo explicit, the insinuation was clear – the National Enquirer had previously reported on what it called “a rumor” that the former business partner in question had had an affair with Sarah Palin. The breathless title and the brevity of the post implied that the smoking gun for the affair laid in the court filings that the former business partner wished to conceal. Naturally, because the purported scoop had the imprimatur of the Atlantic, many other news sources picked it up in rapid order.

Quicker than you can say “conspiracy theory lunatic,” this particular lunatic theory jumped off the tracks. The Court denied the motion to conceal the papers, allowing the curious to sniff through them. Shock of shocks, Sarah Palin’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the filings. Nor was there anything regarding an affair with her. In this particular wild goose chase, the goose flew free.

The Washington Post reports:

“Many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime — by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.”

Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention in Denver was full of costly promises, including expanded health-care coverage ($65 billion annually), increased education spending ($18 billion) and investments in green technology ($15 billion). But it is misleading for him to say he has shown how he will “pay for every dime” of his plans.

According to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Democratic proposals would cost the federal budget about $377 billion in 2013. The analysis is based on the Obama campaign’s own figures, including the optimistic assertion that he can save $75 billion a year by closing tax loopholes and $55 billion by initiating a phased withdrawal from Iraq.

Committee President Maya MacGuineas accused both the Obama and McCain campaigns of “wishful budgeting.” She estimates that Obama’s promises to extend most of the Bush tax cuts put in place in 2001 and 2003 and to lessen the bite of the alternative minimum tax would probably cost the U.S. Treasury about $400 billion a year.

It will be worse than the $377 billion. Closing tax loopholes never generates the predicted amount of revenue, and although Obama might save some money (in the short term) by pulling out of Iraq, he has promised to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. And that’s before we even consider the cost if he goes through with his promised invasion of Pakistan.

In the interest of balance, the Post needs a questionable assertion from McCain, but what they came up with is ultra-flimsy:

“Russia’s leaders . . . invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world’s oil supply, intimidate other neighbors and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire.”

McCain’s explanation for the Russian invasion of Georgia is oversimplified in the extreme — and omits an important fact that has never been recognized by the McCain campaign: Georgia attacked first.

The Post is parroting Kremlin propaganda. Oversimplified in the extreme? I would say it’s completely accurate. At worst, it’s a judgement call. Even if you reject Georgia’s claim that Russia actually attacked first (for which there is support), it is undisputed that Russia provoked Georgia and had a massive response moving much more quickly than it could have without prior preparation.

Finally, they conclude with questionable assertions from Biden and Palin, both of which are fair but minor.

The latest Palin smear is a bogus allegation that she tried to ban a long list of books. Some of the books she supposedly tried to ban weren’t even published yet when the supposed banning took place.

It is also being said that the allegation is being circulated by the Obama campaign. That’s not quite fair. The allegation was merely being circulated on the Obama campaign website. For some reason, the Obama campaign decided to make their website into a miniature Daily Kos and let anyone post there. Predictably, their lack of control has resulted in Kos-style smear material appearing there. So it’s fair to say that the Obama campaign paid for the smear and gave it a home, but didn’t actually authorize it.

(Via Volokh, via Instapundit.)

CNN reports:

The Alaska state trooper at the center of a probe into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power says he has “made mistakes, and I’ve learned from those mistakes.” But in an exclusive interview with us, Mike Wooten, Palin’s former brother-in-law, also denies some of the biggest allegations against him.

Wooten says he has been offered $30,000 to tell his story to a tabloid. The Obama campaign has reached out to the head of his union.

(Emphasis mine.)  I’m surprised.  The media has shown no lack of enthusiasm on their own, and I would think Obama would rather keep his hands clean.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Denver Post blog reports:

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin. . .

“What you see in the picture I sent you is less than half of total flags,” a Republican official emailed. “We estimate the total number to be around 12,000 small flags and one full size 3×5 flag.”

I’m not sure what the DNC was supposed to do with unused hand-flags, frankly. But the Republicans are obviously questioning someone’s patriotism here.

(Via Hot Air.)

It would be hard to dispose of so many flags properly (although they could have managed it if they had cared to), but it’s not at all hard to think of other things they could have done with them: First, ask attendees to take a flag home, and second, store the leftover flags, rather than throwing them away. Frankly, these are obvious things to do, if they had even thought about the problem. They even could have gotten a little bit of good press for it. Instead, they underscored their existing reputation.

It’s nice for the Republicans to rescue the flags, but I hope they don’t make too big a deal over it. It would look cheap, I think. Better to keep it in the background and leak the story to friendly media. And I sure hope they dealt with the RNC’s flags properly.

UPDATE: The Democrats are outraged, of course:

Democratic convention organizers claimed the flags were not going to be discarded — but instead were snatched from the site of Obama’s historic address to carry out a “cheap political stunt.”

UPDATE: The person who found the flags says they were sitting for over a week in bags near the trash.  Sounds discarded to me.  Until the Democrats decide to call him a liar, this is settled.

New blog here.  I just love the Internet.  (Via Instapundit.)

Charles Rangel gets the interest waived on a beachfront resort investment.  Also, he failed to report the income on his taxes.

(Via A Blog For All, via Instapundit.)

Hot Air has the Nielsen numbers: 28.3 million for McCain, 27.7 for Obama.

At Hot Air.  I guess he didn’t get the memo.

What might have been a defensible point becomes a lie with the use of one word:

“You’re hearing an awfully lot about me — most of which is not true — but you’re not hearing a lot about you,” Obama said. “You haven’t heard a word about how we’re going to deal with any aspect of the economy that is affecting you and your pocketbook day-to-day. Haven’t heard a word about it. I’m not exaggerating. Literally, two nights, they have not said a word about it.”

Emphasis mine, obviously.  The Republicans said plenty about pocketbook issues, but Obama could probably have defended his comment nevertheless, until he got fancy with the “literally” bit.

Or maybe he just doesn’t know how to use “literally” correctly.  Far too many people don’t.

(Via the Corner.)

Rasmussen also finds a bounce, pulling about even at 46-45.  This is with polling all before McCain’s speech, and two-thirds before Palin’s speech.  (Via the Corner.)

Interesting thoughts at Edgelings. Punchline:

Microsoft only wanted all of our money. Increasingly, it seems that Google wants all of our data. In running away from the Evil Empire, have we now instead rushed into the arms of Big Brother?

(Via Instapundit.)

More popular than Obama, McCain, or Biden, according to Rasmussen.  When asked whether Obama or Palin is more qualified to be president, people split about even, with a slight edge to Obama.  Of course, Palin isn’t running for president.

(Via Instapundit.)

At Real Clear Politics.

Well, at least Biden has promoted her from mayor:

“I heard a very — by the way, and I mean that sincerely — very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governor of Alaska, who I think will be very formidable — and very formidable not only in the campaign,” Biden said.

(Via Instapundit.)

ASIDE: By the way, I don’t know anyone, in politics or out, who feels the need to reassure people of his sincerity nearly as often as Joe Biden.  (And I really mean it.)

The Obama campaign has come up with a new strategy for dealing with Sarah Palin: ignore her and hope she goes away.

Think it’ll work?

This summer, twice as many Americans were killed in Obama’s Chicago as in Iraq.  (Via Instapundit.)

For that matter, Iraq’s government is probably less corrupt.

Also, many believe Palin is more experienced than Obama, according to a new Rasmussen poll:

Over half of U.S. voters (51%) think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage, and 24% say those stories make them more likely to vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain in November.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) also believe the GOP vice presidential nominee has better experience to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

But 49% give Obama the edge on experience, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey – taken before Palin’s historic speech Wednesday night to the Republican National Convention.

While Republicans and Democrats predictably favor their party’s candidate by overwhelming margins, the experience gap among voters unaffiliated with either party is even narrower than the national totals. Forty-two percent (42%) say Obama has better experience to be president, but 37% say Palin does.

This was before her speech, too.  (Via Althouse, via Instapundit.)

A few days ago, we were told Sarah Palin was a helpless noob, with no business in a national campaign. Today, Joe Biden is lowering expectations:

I will be unrelenting in my debate with governor, the governor of Alaska in terms of the positions she has taken. But I will not do what she is able to do so well, and many of it’s not bad. I am not good at the one-line zingers that go at, you know, that’s not my deal. So if that is going to be the measure of how these debates go, then I’m not going to do very well.

Actually, Biden isn’t good at n-liners, for any n in less than three digits.

Jonah Goldberg:

One definition of fascism might be onomatopoetic: “fascist!” is simply the sound liberals make when they stub their toes on the hard corner of reality.

Whoa.  If CBS’s poll is to be believed, McCain has picked up 8 points since the weekend, with most or all of the polling conducted before Sarah Palin’s blockbuster speech last night.  The race is now tied, with McCain speech (and most of the impact of Palin’s) yet to be seen.

What’s happened since the weekend?  Thompson and Lieberman were good, but not 8 points good.  I think this is backlash against the disgusting behavior of the Democrats and their media enablers with regards to Gustav and Sarah Palin’s family.

Fox News reports:

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

But even with this admission, Obama cannot admit he was wrong:

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

That’s right, nobody could have anticipated that the Surge would work. No one at all. He certainly can’t be blamed for it; it’s beyond our wildest dreams.

Well, actually there are a few people who anticipated it would work. His opponent, John McCain, is a notable example. General Petraeus, with whom Obama refused to speak until recently, is another.

Survey USA:

Is the media rooting for Barack Obama? Rooting for John McCain? Or trying its best to be fair to both?

52% Barack Obama
8% John McCain
35% Being Fair To Both
5% Not Sure

(Via the Corner.)

The London Times reports:

A hotel that refused a wounded soldier a room, forcing him to spend the night in his car, was backed into a “grovelling” apology today after receiving a barrage of abusive phone calls.

Metro Hotel, in Woking, Surrey, had to call in the police as their lines were flooded with angry, abusive and threatening calls from members of the public.

The attack on the switchboards came after it emerged that Corporal Tomos Stringer, 24, had been told by hotel staff that it was company policy not to accept members of the Armed Forces as guests.

A soldier since the age of 16 and veteran of multiple tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, Cpl Stringer had travelled to Surrey to help with funeral preparations for a friend killed in action.

Cpl Stringer, who was not in uniform, presented his army warrant card when asked by the hotel for proof of identity. After the receptionist refused him a room, he was left with no choice but to bed down in his tiny, two-door car, his wrist, broken during a convoy ambush, encased in plaster.

Metro Hotel did not exactly get out in front of this:

After a resolute silence, the hotel, owned by a company called American Amusements, issued a statement.

“The Metro Hotel, Woking, sincerely regrets any upset caused towards Corporal Stringer and his family. The hotel management has always had an open-door policy to all its visitors and guests, including members of the military and Armed Forces.”

The statement said that the receptionist on duty at the time had made a mistake.

But their belated statement’s “open-door policy” turns out to be a lie:

A personal letter received by Mr Williams, MP for Caernarfon, went further, saying that the hotel had recently experienced “some rather serious incidents” involving soldiers from the nearby barracks.

Michael Chaussy, the manager of Metro Hotel, insisted there was no blanket policy, but that it was “a decision for the manager to assess whether the hotel booking is to be accepted”.

Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (who still apparently does not belong to a party) has pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third.  He will resign within two weeks.  (Via Politico.)

His appointee, Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings has also resigned.  The article does not say why, so I assume it’s unrelated to Kilpatrick’s legal woes.

Anyone who hoped she would wilt under pressure is sorely disappointed tonight. I just hope people were watching.

UPDATE: By the way, you know that a speech is a home run when the talking heads find it necessary to point out that she didn’t write it herself. Speechwriters? Who knew?

UPDATE: People were watching.  Excellent.  (Via the Corner.)

Also: these guys actually seem to be serious about the speechwriter line of attack!  I can’t believe it.

Anchor Rising has a rundown of Sarah Palin’s executive orders.  (Via the Corner.)

ABC’s Political Radar reports:

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with “a fine-toothed comb” and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

“If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation,” he said, “they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution – out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no one, no attorney general, no president, no one is above the law.”

(Via LGF.)

He’ll have the support of the “Netroots” gang. Jerry Pournelle’s insight is relevant here.

UPDATE: Now Biden says he didn’t mean it.

(Via The Line is Here, via Instapundit.)