Today Sarah Palin gave a softball interview to Hugh Hewitt. It was part of the McCain campaign’s reintroduction of Sarah Palin on friendlier turf. Most of the interview focused on the mean media’s unfair attacks on the Governor. Toward the end of the interview, Hewitt asked her a "foreign affairs" question.
Here is the exchange:
HH: Governor, let’s close with some foreign affairs. It is reported that you had an Israeli flag in your governor’s office. You wore an Israeli flag pin occasionally. One, is that true? And two, why your support for Israel?
SP: Well, it is true, and I ran into Shimon Peres recently at a meeting, and he even pointed that out. He said I saw a picture of you on the internet, and you had an Israeli flag in your state government office, and I said I sure do. You know, my heart is with you. And all of those trials and tribulations throughout history that Israel has gone through, not only does that allow me to want to support that country, but Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. And they are a democratic country who I believe deserves our support, and I know that John McCain believes as I do that Israel is our friend, and we need to be there to support them. They are there for us, and I do love that country.
In this telling of her Israel flag story, she asserts that Shimon Peres asked her about the flag after seeing a picture of her on the internet.
In the previous telling of this Israel flag story, it went like this:
Upon meeting the Israeli president Palin told him she has wanted to meet him and get to know him for years. She added that the only flag in her office, aside from the American flag, is the Israeli flag, stressing that she wants Israelis to know that she’s been a longtime friend of the Jewish state, and will remain such.
Another published account of the Peres meeting also was similar:
President Peres of Israel yesterday met for the first time with Governor Palin and with Senator McCain, who called the veteran Israeli statesman "my old friend." The warm handshake and exchange of broad smiles occurred during an international gathering known as the Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by President Clinton. "I wanted to meet you for many years," Ms. Palin told Mr. Peres, according to an aide to the president. "The only flag at my office is an Israeli flag," she was quoted as saying, "and I want you to know and I want Israelis to know that I am a friend."
Never mind that the "only flag" statement from her is itself a lie. Consider now that she is claiming it was Peres who asked her about the barely visible flag. The earlier news accounts of the meeting are that she volunteered the information about her Israeli flag.
You have to start shaking your head at all the lies, big and small, Sarah Palin tells. Some are simply inexplicable, like the one about her visiting Ireland when she had done no such thing. Some are whoppers like her "bridge to nowhere" lie.
Now we have another that we can add to the long and growing list.
The House Republicans are a bunch of financial morons. They played politics today with the life savings of the American people - apparently on the altar of ideology. Just like John McCain, who turned this very serious situation into a farce, they put politics over country.
When the closing bell rang this afternoon at the New York Stock Exchange, $1.2 trillion of wealth was wiped out. That is not money from the pockets of Wall Street fatcats - that is money from all of our retirement plans and college savings plans. The Dow plunged 777 points - the largest point drop in history and the biggest percentage drop since the first day of trading after 9/11. The S&P plunged 9% and the Nasdaq plunged 10%.
After the House and Senate leadership worked throughout the weekend to add homeowner protection, oversight, and executive pay caps to the initially flawed bailout plan, it appeared the bailout bill was going to pass this afternoon with bipartisan support. But, then the House Republicans took up with a case of free market tunnel vision and political posturing.
To add insult to injury, the House of Representatives has decided to take tomorrow off because of the Jewish holidays. So, on Tuesday, the American people and their retirement savings are on their own. The Dow plummeted hundreds of points at the closing bell this afternoon. Foreign markets are plunging as I write this. It is a near certainty that tomorrow will see another bloodletting on Wall Street when the opening bell rings. With no plan to fix the credit crisis as Congress left town without doing their job, the markets tomorrow will do well not to end up in a free fall.
Hold on to your ATM cards, we are in for a wild ride. As credit freezes up worldwide and as the financial markets go south, it is only a matter of time until there is a run on banks, and jobs on "Main Street" start to disappear.
It is the economy, stupid! The House Republicans today slapped the American people with the back of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. It is time for the American people to slap them back at the polls.
Tonight’s CBS News interview is quite sad really. Sarah Palin brought a chaperone to the interview with Katie Couric. John McCain tried to clean up Palin’s recent Pakistan remarks by jumping in and speaking on her behalf, before letting her speak. I am not sure if McCain realizes how this kind of joint interview, where he answers on her behalf, undermines the image of readiness that they are trying now to project.
When finally allowed to answer what she meant by her Pakistan remarks over the weekend, she said this:
Well, as Sen. McCain is suggesting here, also, never would our administration get out there and show our cards to terrorists, in this case, to enemies and let them know what the game plan was, not when that could ultimately adversely affect a plan to keep America secure.
I thought the problem that McCain had about announcing that we might strike Pakistan is that he did not want to threaten an ally overtly. Palin seems to believe the issue is that we do not want to tip off the terrorists. Isn’t it already McCain’s doctrine that he will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell? What "game plan" is she talking about? Do the terrorists not know that the United States wants to go after them?
Just when I think this farce has reached maximum absurdity, Palin takes it to another level.
Recent national and state polling shows that the election may be breaking in Barack Obama’s direction. With the so-called Palin "bounce" behind us, and the economy front and center with just over a month until election day, now is a good time to take stock of the race. The race is starting to firm up, and barring an October Surprise or a McCain solo bombing run over Waziristan, the current polling trends should hold up.
With that in mind, I have used the new Pollster charting features to create charts (see below) for the battleground states. The customizations I have made to the composite polling results are:
I am using more sensitive smoothing to give newer polls more weight. This may result in skewed trendlines if the newer polls are found to be outliers - but I am willing to risk it for our purposes.
I have dropped ARG and Zogby polls. If you are fan of these two pollsters, you won’t like this, but I have found that throwing a dart at the wall is just as reliable as these two pollsters.
I am only looking at poll numbers starting September 1.
With these changes, Obama is now leading McCain nationally 49.5% to 43.7%.
Barack Obama can pretty safely count on 197 electoral votes from the following states (and DC): California, Connecticut, Washington DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
John McCain can safely count on 174 electoral votes from the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
That leaves 13 battleground states worth 167 electoral votes that will determine this election. These states are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Of these battleground states, Obama is expected to hold Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for a total of 62 electoral votes. If he holds these states he would only need 11 more electoral votes to win the election. These are targeted to come from 2 of the 3 southwestern states in the battleground.
Of the states Obama must hold, he is beginning to pull away in Michigan and Wisconsin. He is ahead and moving further up slowly in Pennsylvania. However, even though he is still up, he is losing ground in both New Hampshire and Minnesota.
Of the remaining battleground states, Obama is ahead and pulling away in Colorado and New Mexico. If he can hold New Hampshire and Minnesota, these two states with a total of 14 electoral votes will give him the election. Obama holds a slim lead in Nevada and is trending up while McCain’s numbers are plummeting fast. Nevada’s 5 electoral votes look likely to go to Obama.
Obama is also ahead and trending upwards in both Virginia and North Carolina. It looks like he has a genuine chance of winning in Virginia. A victory in North Carolina would be stunning, but it appears that it may be within reach. Obama has a chance to pick up 13 and perhaps even 28 electoral votes from these two states.
Obama is behind but gaining in Florida while support for McCain appears to be slipping. A state that had looked to be solidly in McCain’s column now appears to be a genuine tossup. Obama is behind in Ohio, even though he is showing some improvement in the polls. However, it seems to me, with McCain’s support holding steady, Ohio will probably be a bridge too far for Obama.
The remaining state, reliably red Indiana (which had recently crept into the battleground) promises to remain red, in spite of better performance by Obama in the polls. Obama is behind in the polls and there is little indication that he will be able to pass McCain here.
The battleground polls bode very well for an Obama victory in November. With the southwestern states and Virginia he is poised to carry the election by 291 electoral votes to 247. If Obama flips North Carolina and Florida, McCain could be facing a 333 to 205 electoral thumping in November. My sense is that Obama will win North Carolina but lose Florida and win with a 306 to 212 electoral vote margin.
All this of course is just a parlor game since the only poll that matters is the one on November 4th. Still, looking at the current state of the electoral map, the McCain camp must be hard at work on their next political stunt.
A USA Today/Gallup poll released last night shows that viewers thought Barack Obama did a better job in the first presidential debate than John McCain. The internal poll numbers show that Obama helped himself across the board with his debate performance:
A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows 46% of people who watched Friday night’s presidential debate say Democrat Barack Obama did a better job than Republican John McCain; 34% said McCain did better.
Obama scored even better — 52%-35% — when debate-watchers were asked which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve the country’s problems.
More than six in 10 people or 63% in the one-day poll, taken Saturday, said they watched the first faceoff in Oxford, Miss. For those 701 people, the margin of error was +/- 4 percentage points.
The poll suggested the debate was to some extent a wash for McCain: 21% of those who watched say it gave them a more favorable view of him, 21% say less favorable and 56% say it didn’t change their opinion much.
Three in 10 said their opinion of Obama became more favorable after seeing the debate, compared to 14% who said less favorable and 54% who said it didn’t make much difference.
I just returned from the Barack Obama and Joe Biden rally at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I went equipped with a camera. I had hoped to have a lot of pictures of Obama and Biden on stage to share with you. But I have no such pictures to show you. I never got to see them.
I am absolutely thrilled by the experience.
I left my home in Loudoun County, Virginia this afternoon under sunny skies for the one hour drive to Fredericksburg. I took my seven year old daughter with me. We arrived near the campus a little after 4pm and found parking about a mile and a half away. As I drove past the university I saw the line of people waiting to get in. It seemed to go around the perimeter of the university campus. I was undeterred. I had been to the Obama rally at the Nissan Pavilion in Northern Virginia right after the primaries. Although it was crowded, the lines were not too bad and I was still able to watch the rally from the cheap seats.
By the time my daughter and I made it from our car to end of the line, the line had grown much longer. Then it began to rain. I figured a little rain wasn’t going to keep me from this rally.
Then it began to pour. Luckily the two men behind us in line had a big umbrella, and they offered my daughter space under it. I was a little too big to make it four under the umbrella. So I, like the thousands of others in line, took the downpour in stride. The line inched forward slowly. More the rain came down, the longer the line grew behind us. I spent my time chatting with the grand mother and her grand son in front of me and the two middle aged men behind me. All four said that this is the first political rally they had ever attended in their lives.
An hour and a half in the rain, and about one mile on from where we started in line, we finally entered the campus. And then we made our way toward the field where Obama would speak.
We never got to the field. It was full. Instead, we stood along with thousands of others within hearing distance of the field, but not within view of it.
And finally the rain stopped, and we waited and chatted with our very wet fellow Virginians.
Just before 7pm, Joe Biden took to the stage (or, what I assume was a stage) to an immense cheer. We heard him warm up the crowd. He skewered McCain with some post-debate contrast. "Time and again John was wrong…Barack was right. It is about judgment."
Then he introduced Obama. And the crowd went wild. We heard Obama say "Hello Virginia" and the place erupted, including those of us in the audio only section.
I am sure you will see YouTube of Obama’s speech shortly. All I can say is that it was rousing and he connected with the crowd, as he always does. Even those of us who could only hear him felt part of the moment. The importance of this election, and the sudden importance of Virginia in the electoral math, was on all of our minds.
What I find amazing is that all these people stood in a line for hours, in the pouring rain, just to hear - not see - the candidate speak. The enthusiasm level was far greater than it was at the previous raucous rally at the Nissan Pavilion. The crowd was much bigger tonight, and no one seemed to want to go home.
Virginia was a red state. Democrats do not usually draw crowds like this here. I do not really know what the crowd size was - I couldn’t see the field where the rally was held. But judging by the length of the line, and the size of the audio only crowd, the total number had to be massive. This was something extraordinary.
Virginia is poised to turn blue. There is something afoot here. We were wet today, but we came and stayed - by the thousands. Come Election Day, this kind of enthusiasm will carry the day for the Democratic candidate for president. We here in Virginia fully intend to put Barack Obama over 270 electoral votes on the night of November 4th.
Yes we can.
Update:Washington Post is reporting that the crowd at the rally was 26,000. 12,000 watched Obama in Ball Circle, while 14,000 of us were outside the Circle listening to him.
sarah palin 
