. . . because he just might get it.

Regardless of how you view media coverage of the presidential election, there is one thing we can all agree on: Barack Obama receives far, far more media coverage than John McCain.

The McCain campaign portrays this as a fawning press corps engaged in media bias.  However, increased media coverage also equals increased media scrutiny.

I am hoping to get some input from people that understand the cultural issues better than I.

When I first saw the photo of Obama laying the wreath at the Holocaust memorial and saw him wearing a skullcap (Yarmulke, etc.).  I was not sure of how that would be interpreted by practising Jew's and muslims. And what it really meant to people that understand the true meaning of this symbolic garb. Nevermind what it might be portrayed as by Fox etc. in the U.S. So I ask for some enlightenment from people more knowledgeable than I on this particular subject.

another one of him at the wailing wall

Yesterday, the RNC released a new web ad intended to prod the media back towards uniformly hostile coverage of Obama. With this ad, McCain's increasingly desperate staff hoped to cement the idea that "the media loves Barack Obama." Pathetically, their proof for this assertion was a couple of hyperbolic rants from Chris Matthews and some sarcastic comments from the likes of Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson. It was truly the saddest thing anyone could imagine coming out of a 90+ million dollar campaign. In fact, any idiot with basic video editing tools could put together an effective response ad. As it so happens, I'm just such an idiot, and with a little help from Google, I've put together what, by the McCain campaign's own loose standards, can only be interpreted as undeniable proof that the media is consumed by a collective infatuation with John McCain.

A title which sums up John McCain's quest for the Presidency.

Looking back, early June was a utopia. Barack Obama, the embodiment of change, a historic candidate, was racking up the delegates. His rival, Hillary Clinton, was about to capitulate. Obama rented out an NBA arena to claim the nomination. Poll after poll showed the Democrats had a great chance to win in November.

This is great, I thought.  I have never voted for a winning candidate for national office in any election in my life. It's going to feel so nice to win one.  

But then it was all taken away from me. I was not only mad, but dejected. For months, politics were simultaneously news, entertainment, a passion, and something to look forward to.

No longer.

I went on a self-imposed diet of no MSNBC...no Politico....no Kos...no Huffington Post.  There was nothing for me there.

But that's not where this story ends. This is a redemption tale. I have found a way to root for Obama again. Come election night, I will be happy. If you were feeling down on Obama, read on, because I have a way for you to get excited about progressive politics again.

Look at this picture of Obama (from a diary on the Rec List) and you will understand why  Republicans are scared shit-less by him:

Obama looks like he  already is President. The snarky caption  by the Right wing rag is not what catches your eye.  Or even the odd  expressions on his fellow Senator's faces. Obama understands the power of visuals and rhetoric  like no Presidential candidate since Reagan. He exudes a cool confidence not seen since  Reagan. Obama is the anti-Reagan.

And it is driving Reagan's acolytes up the wall. They can't oppose Obama effectively because he is using all of Reagan's tactics against them. At the same time, McCain is channeling Dukakis and Sen. Clinton, two of the worst campaigners in recent  history.

...at least implicitly.

While Sen. McCain has been going off on a tangent accusing Sen. Obama of selling America down the river for political gain, there is a question that isn't being asked of the senior Senator from Arizona.

"If Sen. Obama is putting politics over the national interest, do you think your friend and Republican colleague, Chuck Hagel, whose policy proposals and words on Iraq have been almost indistinguishable, is doing the same?"

Any kind of study on the functionality of individuals, society, and governments has to deal with the area of compassion. As we have learned over the past 70+ years of the New Deal, compassion is essential for governments, society, and individuals to function. Without it, people will have no stake even if Dennis Kucinich were running for office. Without it, people would be killing and being killed, and society would not function as people would be quarreling over little things. Without it, people cannot be happy in this life. Nietzsche himself said that people have to operate based on consequences, and the consequences in this case are clear enough.

As you're all well aware, John McCain enjoys repeating over and over and over that:
-he will never surrender in Iraq
-we must achieve victory in Iraq
-Barack Obama advocates defeat in Iraq (Joe LIEberman frequently repeats this statement as well)
-Barack Obama cares more about winning an election than the wellbeing of the American people.

Of course John McCain has never sufficiently defined what victory in Iraq would look like, and even if he has done that to some extent, he certainly has not offered any course we can chart to achieve that victory. It is fairly obvious that McCain wants to stay the course of the last 5-6 years, hoping things will fix themselves.

I don't know why I feel like crying, but these pictures move me. I just feel like Obama is evolving before my eyes.  All these pictures from this trip have been quite moving...

Drudge just reported this:

OBAMA VISITS WESTERN WALL IN OLD CITY JERUSALEM... ARRIVES AT 5:08 AM LOCAL TIME [10:08 PM ET]... SUNRISE... SHOUTING MAN: 'JERUSALEM IS NOT FOR SALE, OBAMA'... MOB SCENE... CHAOS... BOWING HIS HEAD IN PRAYER... PLACES NOTE IN WALL... POSES FOR PHOTOS... LOTS OF SHOUTING... LEAVES 5:20 AM... DEVELOPING...

SO I went looking for pictures, and I found these

The last few days have seen former RNC eCampaign director, webmaster for Bush-Cheney '04, and former Giuliani '08 advisor Patrick Ruffini hitting Barack Obama hard on his campaigning initiatives overseas, particularly with regard to the Germany event and the flyers printed By Obama for America.

In a recent post on the subject, Ruffini calls out Obama as arrogant, saying:

The sea of Germans drummed up by the Obama campaign will be used as props to tell us Americans how to vote, and the campaign isn't trying to pretend otherwise. That's breathtakingly arrogant, and par for the course for Barack Obama.

A press conference was held today at offices of Fox News in New York. The purpose of the gathering was to deliver a petition with over 600,000 names to network executives calling for an end to the racist attacks against black Americans including Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle. The petition is the work of Color of Change and MoveOn and asks Fox News CEO Roger Ailes to respond to the allegation that...

"Fox has developed a pattern of airing racially offensive attacks, then apologizing only after controversy erupts. Forced, half-hearted apologies do not demonstrate good faith when the larger pattern of offensive rhetoric continues."

This is the first part of a new semi-regular series I will be doing called Focus on Florida.  The purpose of this series is to give people insight into the politics of Florida and how Obama will make a play for Florida's 27 electoral votes.  Despite Obama's poor showing in the delegate-less Florida primary, Florida is definitely a state than can go blue this year with enough effort from the Obama campaign.  So far, the Obama campaign has risen to the challenge, and shown that they intend to make Florida a top priority this year.

The first diary in this series will be about winning in the I-4 corridor.  For those of you unfamiliar with Florida geography, the I-4 corridor refers to the area in Florida that borders the 132 mile stretch of the I-4 highway, which runs spans central Florida from Tampa in the West to Daytona Beach in the East.  For those of you familiar with Florida politics, you already know that the I-4 corridor is considered the holy grail of Florida politics.  Win the I-4 corridor, and you're almost guaranteed to win the state. With North Florida and South Florida usually canceling each other out (North Florida going Republican, South Florida going Democratic), Central Florida is the key battleground area up for grabs in the state.

I'm sorry if this has been diaried. A quick scan and I didn't see it, but I'll delete if this is redundant. I also apologize for the brevity. This is just supposed to be a fun one.

So I guess McCain's feelings are hurt. Nobody's paying any attention to him! Everywhere you look--there's Obama's face! So, he's asking his supporters to vote for the "love song" that best describes the media's love affair with Barack Obama. No kidding. This is on the FRONT PAGE of McCain's site:

THE MEDIA IS IN LOVE
PICK YOUR FAVORITE SONG

http://www.johnmccain.com/

Colorado

Rasmussen. 7/21. MoE 4.5% (6/17 results)

The Pollster.com composite is 47.6 Obama, 44.9 McCain.

Michigan

EPIC/MRA. 7/13-15. MoE 4% (5/19-22 results)

The Pollster.com composite is 47.6 Obama, 39.1 McCain.

Florida

Rasmussen. 7/22. MoE 4.5% (6/26 results)

American Research Group. 7/19-21. MoE 4% (6/13-17 results)

Those Ras numbers are a little goofy. That's a big shift in a single month, and one seen in few other states. Then we have ARG giving us the exact opposite trendline, though we all know ARG sucks you-know-what.

Thank heavens we can fall back on the composite, which is less sensitive to wild swings and outliers. And on that front, it's really, really, really tight: 45.7 McCain, 44.9 Obama.

New Hampshire

American Research Group. 7/19-21. MoE 4% (6/13-17 results)

U of New Hampshire (PDF). 7/11-20. MoE 4.5% (4/25-30 results)

Two crappy pollsters, but let's plug their numbers into the composite anyway. Currently, it's 47.4 Obama, 40.4 McCain in New Hampshire.

Ohio

Rasmussen. 7/21. MoE 4.5% (6/17 results)

Did Ras juice their (D) sample this month? Or did Obama hit upon the holy grail of Florida and Ohio swing-state politics? I don't know if I buy these particular numbers, but there's no need to. The composite actually feels quite right: 45.9 Obama, 42.4 McCain. Give Obama the twitchy, very nervous lead. Essentially, this one's tied (like Florida, like every fucking election cycle, it seems).

Update: I reversed the Ohio numbers. It's McCain that's up.

Virginia

Public Policy Polling. 7/17-20. MoE 2.7% (6/26 results)

Just float within the MoE. The composite remains razor tight: 46.7 Obama, 44.1 McCain.

Other: Monmouth University reiterates that yes, Obama is crushing McCain in New Jersey 50-36 (PDF).

"For me he already is the American president," wrote one user of a Website about Obama's Berlin visit. "He may not be have been elected, but he's the president in people's hearts."

I think I just saw the first 527 ad of the 2008 campaign season.  A group calling itself "LetFreedomRingUSA.com" has a new ad out charging that Barack Obama is "worse than a flip-flopper."  If anyone has had any previous experience with these wingnuts, please enlightenment me.  In the meantime, to the fold...

Over the last few days the McCain camp has started to get desperate with all the good news for Obama. So what does a campaign run by the architect of negative campaigning do?

Do some good 'ole negative campaigning of course. Here's a recap.