JimEd Speaks Out

Limbaugh May Hold Key to McCain's Fate

Rush Limbaugh may be John McCain’s best friend in the fight against Barack Obama, writes Zev Chafets in the LA Times. Vociferously anti-McCain during primary season, Limbaugh is now on board and can't be underestimated. "A lot of Limbaugh's critics dismiss him as a buffoon or a fanatic," Chafets writes. "These are people who don''t listen to his show."

McCain turned things around with Limbaugh, and with the GOP base, by picking Sarah Palin, writes Chafets, adding that the radio titan described his support of the ticket as "balls to the wall" in an email. "This is a very big deal," he writes. "A satisfied Limbaugh means an enthusiastic Limbaugh, and an enthusiastic Limbaugh could be the difference in a close race."

I don't think Rush has that much influence. He certainly didn't persuade many Republicans during the primaries. But I absolutely LOVE the way he TERRORIZES the left wing nutcases. Yea, Rush.

House defeats $700B financial industry bailout

In a stunning vote that shocked the capital and worldwide markets, the House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive without it.

Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was officially announced on the House floor.

"No" votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill.

This is a great day for America and Americans. Keep up the good work, everyone.

David Yepsen is the Des Moines Register's political columnist:


The Arizona senator was cool, informed and forceful in Friday’s first presidential debate of the general election campaign.


He repeatedly put Barack Obama on the defensive throughout the 90 minutes session. Obama did little to ease voter concerns that he’s experienced enough to handle foreign and defense policy. That was his number one task Friday night and he failed.


Instead he was often his old meandering self, unable to state a quick, forceful position. Polls taken in the coming days should show McCain holding on to his trump card in the race - the view that he’s better equipped to be commander in chief.


He condescendingly called Obama “naive” at a couple points in the debate, like an old master lecturing a young understudy. Obama never seemed able to attack back.


McCain’s victory came at a good time for him in the race. He has fumbled around for a week on questions involving the economy and the federal bailout of Wall Street. His vice presidential candidate has become a running joke of late night comedy shows. As a result, his poll numbers sagged.


The debate came against the backdrop of a close presidential election at a time when the country faces its greatest economic crisis since the 1930s and some of its greatest military threats since World War II. The nation’s adversaries - Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Taliban terrorists - seem to be on the ascendancy.


It has rattled Americans and between the two, McCain came off as the most reassuring. The crabby, grumbling, hotheaded McCain was nowhere to be seen. Instead we saw a calm, seasoned commander in chief . If you looked at your television and squinted slightly, you could better picture him addressing the country during a time of national crisis than Obama. Obama was often left flashing his smile and shaking his head at McCain.


McCain was expected to win on questions of foreign policy and national defense. That’s been his background. Where he routed Obama was on economic and spending questions as he repeatedly accusing Obama of using earmarks and wanting to spend too much.


When Obama tried his line about how McCain voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, McCain slapped back by ticking off a lit of issues where he has disagreed with Bush - like torture, conduct of the war in Iraq and federal spending and Guantanamo Bay. McCain never got rattled or flustered, he just constantly stayed focused on the attack.

Every Presidential race is a decision on Commander in Chief, and this election more than most. Americans will have to decide if they can trust Mr. Obama's assertions that he'd combine a desire for diplomacy with toughness when it counts. Our own sense is that Mr. Obama sometimes seemed flustered by Mr. McCain's attacks on his foreign policy "naivete," in particular on Iraq and his failure to support the "surge."

The Mac is back
By ROGER SIMON
John McCain was very lucky that he decided to show up for the first presidential debate in Oxford, Miss., Friday night. Because he gave one of his strongest debate performances ever.

While Barack Obama repeatedly tried to link McCain to the very unpopular George W. Bush, Bush’s name will not be on the ballot in November and McCain’s will.

And McCain not only found a central theme but hit on it repeatedly. Obama is inexperienced, naive, and just doesn’t understand things, McCain said.

Sure, McCain is a pretty old guy for a presidential candidate, but he showed the old guy did not mind mixing it up. He stood behind a lectern for 90 minutes without a break — you try that when you are 72 — and he not only gave as good as he got, he seemed to relish it more.

At least twice after sharp attacks by McCain, Obama seemed to look to moderator Jim Lehrer for help, saying to Lehrer, “Let’s move on.”

Yep. John did a real good job.

Bill Clinton: I won't trash talk McCain

Former President Clinton says if Democrats want someone to dump on John McCain, he's not the guy.

Some members of his party have been complaining that Clinton has not been enthusiastic enough in his support for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, who defeated Clinton's wife in the primary campaign, and heaping too much praise on McCain.

But Clinton told CNN's Larry King Live on Wednesday that he doesn't thinking "dumping" on McCain or his running mate, Sarah Palin, is a winning strategy. He said undecided voters aren't interested in attacks but solutions for the problems they face.

"I just don't believe that getting up here and hyperventilating about Gov. Palin, or Sen. McCain for that matter, is a productive use of a former president's time and is not a vote-getter," he said, adding that he admires McCain even though he disagrees with several of his positions.

Obama couldn't see this coming?? Come on. It's the Clintons! Not much judgment, huh??

Here is one of the beat analysis pieces I've seen in a long time:

The Palin Effect
Her enemies are bellowing like a wounded moose.by Noemie Emery 09/29/2008, Volume 014, Issue 03

Now that the dust is beginning to settle from the whirlwind descent of Hurricane Sarah, it may be time to stand back a little and assess in perspective what the moose-hunting beauty from Wasilla, Alaska, has wrought. Things will change between now and November, but she has already had a sizeable impact, and four major themes do stand out:

1.Call off the funeral. Three weeks ago, the wisdom was that the conservative movement was over and done with.... In the wake of the Palin pick, the numbers in the generic polls started to shift: edging away from Democratic preponderance that prevailed from late 2006 onward, swinging back to the 50-50 (or 49-49, or 51-49) balance that existed through most of the past decade. Republicans may not win, but they will not receive the massive rebuke most expected, and even a slim loss will send the party ahead, energized, and with a new set of leaders. The cause, it seems, was not dead; it was dozing, or maybe hung-over. And now it's awake...

2. Angry White Women. Palin's pick was a hand grenade tossed into the old-fashioned feminist movement's aged and tottering hulk. "Can someone please tell me what the hell happened?" pled Michelle Cottle of the New Republic, as Sarah made landfall.... All in all, gender politics is a delicate subject. As one blogger on the right observed, "the thought of watching progressives tie themselves in knots over the next two months trying to square the inevitable attacks on the 'bimbo' beauty queen with poor, poor Hillary's sexist treatment by the media is worth it even if we lose."

3. Hillary's Angle. As fate had it, the phone finally rang at three in the morning chez Hillary Clinton, and this time, it was a true crisis: It was Barack Obama, begging her to save his rear end.... And so, Hillary is missing in action from the Palin--hating brigade. She and McCain are said to be friends, and to work well together. In the primaries, she often compared Obama unfavorably to her friend in the Senate. Her comment that she and McCain had credentials in the national security area while Obama had a speech made four years ago has already appeared in McCain's commercials, and it is hard to believe when she said it that she could not foresee this happening. It is also hard to believe that after she and Bill vote for McCain in the privacy of the voting booth up in Chappaqua, they will not be among the first to make phone calls to Sarah Palin, and then to John McCain.

4. Bombs Away. McCain picked Palin for a number of reasons--youth, pizzazz, energy, appeal to the base and to middle-class women, to the West and to blue-collar voters--but it may turn out that the main contribution she makes to his effort is in goading the Democrats into spasms of self-defeating and entirely lunatic rage....

There were signs too that Palin was confounding Obama almost as much as she was enraging the left and the press, assuming there still is a difference between them. Planning to run as the agent of change against boring old white guys, he was knocked off his balance by the sudden emergence of a rival barrier-breaker, and someone as young and as jazzy as he.

And the article concludes:

It's a long way to November, but all of this Sarah Palin has managed in just three weeks. The past may be prologue. If so, one may wonder, to what?

Thanks Noemie!

This is MUST READ. Please read the whole piece HERE.

Living near the Marine Corps' largest base and watching new houses and schools going up to hold military families, Roger Denoncourt doesn't feel much of the economic pressure that is defining the 2008 presidential election.

The retired Marine says his vote will go to candidates he sees as supportive of the military.

Voters across the USA will go to the polls Nov. 4. They will consider the military debate that has divided the nation as they choose between Democrat Barack Obama, who has opposed the Iraq war from the start, and Republican John McCain, who backed it, favored sending more troops and argues for keeping them in Iraq for the long haul.

In North Carolina, home to five military bases, the question has added significance.

Leaving Iraq would risk thwarting gains in security, says Denoncourt, 57, after shopping at a Kmart near Camp Lejeune.

An average of state polls taken Sept. 6-14 by the website RealClearPolitics puts McCain up 51% to 42% over Obama.

This is great. This should be a push across the entire nation. The military has never acted as a 'voting block.' They would make a powerful one.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac execs now offering advice to Obama



Senator's links to mortgage giants also include campaign
contributions

Campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made to Barack Obama may backfire if the Democratic presidential hopeful wages an aggressive campaign to cast blame on rival John McCain and the Republicans in Congress for the mortgage-related losses that forced the U.S. Treasury to take over the quasi-governmental mortgage giants.

A review of Federal Election Commission records back to 1989 reveals Obama in his three complete years in the Senate is the second largest recipient of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions, behind only Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the powerful chairman of the Senate banking committee. Dodd was first elected to the Senate in 1980.

Once again. Please repeat after me, "A scumbag is always a scumbag."

Under Fire, Rangel Hires Accountant to Analyze Finances

A new set of potential problems in Rep. Charles Rangel's financial papers has prompted the tax-writing lawmaker to hire a forensic accounting expert to try to unravel the mess.

Rangel, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is already the subject of ethics committee investigations on several fronts, including unreported income and unpaid taxes on his beach house in the Dominican Republic.

Those issues and others have led the New York Democrat to hire the expert to pore over Rangel's finances over the past 20 years, and issue a report to the House ethics committee.

Rangel's lawyer, Lanny Davis, said the hiring shows Rangel "has nothing to hide and does not believe he has done anything intentionally wrong."

The report will be given to the committee "as quickly as possible," Davis said, and the congressman will not get to see it before the committee.

The tax issue is particularly embarrassing for a lawmaker whose job is to guide new tax law. Rangel is resisting calls from Republicans that he should lose his committee post, among the most coveted on Capitol Hill.

This is one guy I wouldn't mind seeing in jail. Or at least lose his Chair of W&Ms.

Whites lift McCain to slim lead over Obama in poll

An overwhelming advantage in experience and lopsided support from working-class and suburban whites have lifted Republican John McCain to a slender lead over Barack Obama less than two months from Election Day, a poll on the presidential race said Friday.

The Arizona senator has a 13-percentage-point lead over his Democratic rival both with men and senior citizens, and a 23-point advantage among rural residents, according to the Associated Press-GfK Poll of likely voters. He's also doing better than Obama at consolidating support from party loyalists: 94 percent of Republicans back McCain, while 83 percent of Democrats prefer the Illinois senator.

Obama has good news, too. He's preferred two-to-one by those who say the nation's economy is in poor shape - a strong position on an issue many surveys say is the public's top worry. He also has an 18-point advantage among voters who look more to a candidate's values and views than experience, and his weak showing with whites is generally no worse than Democrat John Kerry did in his losing but close 2004 race against President Bush.

[My emphasis]

Say, that is GOOD NEWS. I'll bet Obama's folks agree.

The poll is in line with others showing that in the days since both parties picked vice presidential candidates and held their conventions, Republicans have gained momentum and erased a modest lead Obama held most of the summer. McCain leads Obama among likely voters, 48 percent to 44 percent, according to the AP-GfK Poll.

This is great!

Scientists Activate Particle Collider

After 14 years and $8 billion, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, succeeded in turning on the most powerful microscope ever built for investigating the elemental particles and forces of nature.

Others, worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, have called it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.

Yep. They are worried. Of course the same folks almost stroked out over Y2K. (I never gave it a second thought.)

The Republican National Convention has propelled John McCain into the lead in the race for the White House, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Sunday.

McCain now leads Democratic rival Barack Obama by 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters -- the Arizona senator's biggest margin since January. The results are even more remarkable considering that before last week's convention, McCain actually trailed Obama by 7 percentage points.

More significantly, the poll shows McCain with a 10-point lead among voters who are most likely to vote, 54 percent to 44 percent over Obama.

"The Republicans had a very successful convention and, at least initially, the selection of Sarah Palin has made a big difference," political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told USA Today. "He's in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point."

It was only a matter of time. Obama is going down. Great job, Gov. Palin.

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