AmericasBlood.com

The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Barack Obama’s speech in Canton, Ohio, as provided by the Obama campaign.

(continue reading…)

Can anyone clarify for me exactly what a “Process Question” is? The Palin camp defended her answering various questions from the media as her not being particularly good with “Process Questions” but I’ve never heard that phrasing before…

From Tha Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s largest newspaper:

Alaska enters its 50th-anniversary year in the glow of an improbable and highly memorable event: the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate. For the first time ever, an Alaskan is making a serious bid for national office, and in doing so she brings broad attention and recognition not only to herself, but also to the state she leads.

Alaska’s founders were optimistic people, but even the most farsighted might have been stretched to imagine this scenario. No matter the outcome in November, this election will mark a signal moment in the history of the 49th state. Many Alaskans are proud to see their governor, and their state, so prominent on the national stage.

Gov. Palin’s nomination clearly alters the landscape for Alaskans as we survey this race for the presidency — but it does not overwhelm all other judgment. The election, after all is said and done, is not about Sarah Palin, and our sober view is that her running mate, Sen. John McCain, is the wrong choice for president at this critical time for our nation.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand. The same cannot be said of Sen. McCain.

Sen. Obama warned regulators and the nation 19 months ago that the subprime lending crisis was a disaster in the making. Sen. McCain backed tighter rules for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but didn’t do much to advance that legislation. Of the two candidates, Sen. Obama better understands the mortgage meltdown’s root causes and has the judgment and intelligence to shape a solution, as well as the leadership to rally the country behind it. It is easy to look at Sen. Obama and see a return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies of the last Democratic administration in Washington, which left the country with the momentum of growth and a budget surplus that President George Bush has squandered.

On the most important issue of the day, Sen. Obama is a clear choice.

Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn’t show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.

It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans — not Iraqi oil — have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.

The unqualified endorsement of Sen. Obama by a seasoned, respected soldier and diplomat like Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican icon, should reassure all Americans that the Democratic candidate will pass muster as commander in chief.

On a matter of parochial interest, Sen. Obama opposes the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but so does Sen. McCain. We think both are wrong, and hope a President Obama can be convinced to support environmentally responsible development of that resource.

Gov. Palin has shown the country why she has been so successful in her young political career. Passionate, charismatic and indefatigable, she draws huge crowds and sows excitement in her wake. She has made it clear she’s a force to be reckoned with, and you can be sure politicians and political professionals across the country have taken note. Her future, in Alaska and on the national stage, seems certain to be played out in the limelight.

Yet despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) — With 10 days until Election
Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov.
Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense,
they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become
increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going
rogue.”

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is
simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a damaging and
mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone
off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the
incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled
robocalls — recorded messages often used to attack a candidate’s
opponent — “irritating” even as the campaign defended their use. Also,
they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign’s
decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain
adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us,
her family or anyone else.

“Also, she is playing for her own
future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember:
Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the
beginning and end of all wisdom.”

A Palin
associate defended her, saying that she is “not good at process
questions” and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were
answers to process questions.

But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more
control of her message, pointing to last week’s impromptu news
conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Palin’s press
secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the
press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the
unscheduled session.

“We acknowledge that perhaps she should
have been out there doing more,” a different Palin adviser recently
said, arguing that “it’s not fair to judge her off one or two sound
bites” from the network interviews.

The Politico reported
Saturday on Palin’s frustration, specifically with McCain advisers
Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin’s
initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of
ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly
damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she
gave the Politico: “If people want to throw me under the bus, my
personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there.”

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain
adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited
after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and
that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain’s record.

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was
dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the
process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was
probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in
history.”

Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to
deliver a statement to traveling reporters: “Unnamed sources with their
own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have
one agenda, and that’s to win on Election Day.”

Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

“This is what happens with a campaign that’s behind; it brings out the
worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating,” this senior adviser
said.

This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s
running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well,
most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America’s enemies
will try to “test” Obama.

Tensions like those within the
McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates
also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.

John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John
Kerry’s strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in
public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack
dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political
interests.

Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton’s, some
of Al Gore’s aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was
being scheduled for campaign events.

Jack Kemp’s aides
distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists
had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by
Gov. Palin’s aides.

With the presidential race in its final days
and polls suggesting that McCain’s chances of pulling out a win are
growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.

“She’s no longer playing for 2008; she’s playing 2012,” Democratic
pollster Peter Hart said. “And the difficulty is, when she went on
‘Saturday Night Live,’ she became a reinforcement of her caricature.
She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day,
voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and
personally.”

It sorta looks to me like if we put the spending freeze in place as McCain proposes, excluding the programs he can’t stop, we get to cut a total of 28 Billion. which coincidentally is almost perfectly identical to the 26 billion we currently collect in Estate anf Gift taxes, a tax that McCain wants to eliminate. The spending freeze wouldn’t do anything to impact the 407 Billion budget deficit, but hey, why worry about that when there’s estate taxes that rich people pay that can be eliminated in full by cutting the social programs that middle-income and poor people rely on. Let’s separate the classes by an even larger gulf!

If you’re going to say someone attacked you, and carved a B in your cheek because of your mcCain bumpersticker, please make sure to have the letter pointing in the right direction…

And don’t try to set up Barack Obama as the attacker!
A Republican campaign worker who told police she was assaulted by a
man angered by a John McCain sticker on her car admitted she made up
the report, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, assistant police chief said
Friday.

Ashley Todd,
20, of College Park, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police
report, a misdemeanor, and may face more charges, said Pittsburgh
police spokeswoman Diane Richard at a news conference.

Todd is incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail but had not been arraigned Friday night.

Todd was a volunteer for a John McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, the campaign said.

“This has wasted so much time. … It’s just a lot of wasted man
hours,” Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at the same briefing.

The woman told investigators a man approached her Wednesday night at an
ATM in Pittsburgh’s East End, put a blade to her neck and demanded
money, Richard said.

Police said they found “several
inconsistencies” in Todd’s statement and she was not seen in
surveillance videos taken at the ATM. She was asked to take a polygraph
test Friday morning, Richard said. The results were not made public.

Later, Todd came to the police station to help work on a composite
sketch of the alleged attacker. When she arrived, Todd “told them she
just wanted to tell the truth” — that she was not robbed, and there
was no attacker, Bryant said.

Todd originally told police a man
“punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, and
he continued to punch and kick her while threatening to teach her a
lesson for being a McCain supporter,” according to a police statement.

The woman also told police her attacker “called her a lot of names and
stated that ‘You are going to be a Barack supporter,’ at which time she
states he sat on her chest, pinning both her hands down with his knees,
and scratched into her face a backward letter ‘B’ on the right side of
her face using what she believed to be a very dull knife.”

Bryant described Todd as “very cordial, polite, cooperating,” and said
the woman was surprised by all the media attention. Asked whether the
false report was politically motivated, Bryant replied, “It’s difficult
to say.”

“She is stating that she was in her vehicle driving
around, and she came up with this idea,” she said. “She said she has
prior mental problems and doesn’t know how the backward letter ‘B’ got
on her face.”

However, Todd was the only one in the vehicle, and
“when she saw the ‘B’ she thought she must have been the one who did
it,” Bryant said.

“We’re talking with the district attorney’s
office and conferring on just how we’re going to handle it,” she said.
“It’s been different stories through the night and this morning.”

She said there was no indication that anyone else was involved.

Richard said the woman had described her alleged attacker as an
African-American, 6 feet 4 inches tall with a medium build and short
dark hair, wearing dark clothing and shiny shoes.

Before the revelation that the report was false, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said that McCain and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin “spoke to the victim and her family after learning about the incident.”

The Obama campaign also had issued a statement wishing the woman a “speedy recovery.”

The Republican machine has released it’s latest attack and this one is sneaky in a particularly dastardly way. The McCain camp is actively letting be thought in certain circles that they think this will be a Obama landslide. The reasonong is pretty simple, energize your own base to try and stop the flow, and lull the opposition voters into thinking it’s in the bag and they don’t have to show up. Don’t fall for the trickery. Vote! Early.

Please return your stimulus checks to the Bush Government that gave YOU taxpayer money for nothing.

Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy positions could encourage
America’s enemies to test it during the early days of an Obama
administration, Sen. John McCain said Wednesday.

Sen. John McCain says he will consider a second economic stimulus package if he is elected president.

“And the thing that probably may encourage them a little is that Sen.
Obama has been wrong,” McCain said in an interview to be aired on CNN’s
“The Situation Room” at 6 p.m. ET Wednesday.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they
would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to
usher in a McCain presidency.

The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web
site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily
and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen.
John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as
McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American
soldier,” the message said. “Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain
in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his
predecessor, Bush.”

SITE Intelligence Group, based in Bethesda, Md., monitors the Web site and translated the message.

“If al-Qaida carries out a big operation against American
interests,” the message said, “this act will be support of McCain
because it will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so
that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaida. Al-Qaida then will
succeed in exhausting America till its last year in it.”

Guess since I don’t live in Western PA, I’m just a traitorous heathen in John McCain’s eyes..
In Moon Township, Pennsylvania, John McCain said

“I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America, and this is a great part of the country,” McCain said Tuesday, to cheers.

As of the census of 2000, there were 22,290 people, 8,445 households, and 5,767 families residing in the township. The population density was 939.1 people per square mile (362.5/km²). There were 9,200 housing units at an average density of 387.6/sq mi (149.6/km²). The racial makeup of the township was 93.17% White, 3.58% African American, 0.06% Native American, 1.94% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.25% from other races, and 0.97% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.99% of the population.

Guess when your population is over 90% white, things are more patriotic and god fearing? So far McCain and Palin have tried to stick to venues where minorities represent well under the national average.