McCain Unveils New Strategy Of Aggressive Whining

McCain camps unveils new strategy of aggressive whining about coverage of Obama's foreign trip. From the NYT ...

The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

"It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered," said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. "That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week."

News executives say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of his primary battle with Clinton, which was at a peak when McCain last went to Iraq.

First McCain wanted Obama to go to Iraq; now he's complaining that people care more about Obama's trip than his dog-and-pony show last spring. I think the American people have to admit that they're biased against John McCain.

Let's be honest. Hardly anyone cares about McCain or his campaign. No one's excited about it in any way. I don't think that's an overstatement. Caring or being excited about isn't the same as supporting. Lots of people support McCain -- but as the anti-Obama, the alternative. This isn't to say he can't win; he definitely can. But very little of this campaign is about him. Virtually all of it is about Barack Obama.

Article source: Talking Points Memo.

Bush On Gas Prices: "Where Are They Now?"

In February, when President Bush was asked what his “advice” would be to the average American who is “facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline,” he replied, “That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard that.” At a press conference this morning, a reporter followed up and asked the president about his previous comments in light of nationwide average gas prices hovering well above $4/gallon. Apparently unaware of current gas prices, Bush blurted out, “Where are they now?” Watch it:

Post courtesy of ThinkProgress.

Obama's Missing 2 Percent

Jonathan Brown and Paul Maslin at Salon are wondering today whether pollsters are undercounting Barack Obama's support by millions of voters because they are failing to survey cellphone-only users, a growing portion of the population, especially the population of young adults most likely to have only cellphones and which showed a strong preference in the primaries and caucuses for the Illinois Senator. (Maslin was Howard Dean's pollster in 2004, and polled for Bill Richardson this year. Brown works for Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, a public opinion research firm.)

Say you want to reach a representative sample of the U.S. electorate for a presidential poll. The Obama-McCain race is relatively close these days, with the Democrat's lead hovering around 5 to 6 points in most surveys. Someone tells you that he's selected a sample that's predominantly under 40 years of age (oops, that one favors Obama); disproportionately renters rather than homeowners (Obama-leaning again); full of college students (sounds like a Starbucks Obama thing to me) - and, for good measure, includes a higher proportion of blacks and Hispanics than the national population does.

At this point you throw up your hands and exclaim: "Why are we concentrating on such a pro-Obama universe? He could be leading by 20 points or more among those people!"

He could. He probably is. But in actuality, the sample I've described is either not being included at all in many national polls or is being undercounted. Why? Because I'm talking about the growing number of American cellphone users who have no other type of phone or who choose to go wireless for the vast majority of their interactive needs. And this election cycle -- for the first, and perhaps only, time -- this group has the chance to render presidential polls "wrong from the start": potentially disguising at least 2 to 3 percentage points of Obama support and maybe more. Heretofore my industry has dismissed the cellphone-only population with a troika of "yes, buts." Yes, they're undercounted, but 1) they don't vote anyway; 2) their numbers are still small; and 3) we can find acceptable substitutes in the land-line population.

And to be honest, there is a fourth, still more powerful rationale that remains unstated: "Yes, they're undercounted, but it's too damn difficult and expensive to reach them."

In 2004, the National Election Pool exit poll found that 7.1 percent of voters were cellphone-only users, a figure the authors think could be twice as high this year.

Pollsters, Brown and Maslin write, don't like to survey cellphone-only users because, by law, they can't automatically dial them, and manually dialing them costs more and takes more time. Moreover, these users tend to be less cooperative. But taking the easy way out could prove problematic.

This year, the increasingly inexcusable failure to count a growing pool of voters could prove mathematically embarrassing. Let's say that with the campaigns' increased focus on the Web, Facebook, phone-texting and other targeted ways to communicate to younger Americans, voter turnout rises and this cellphone-only universe climbs from under 10 percent of the electorate to something closer to 20 percent. If these voters' preference is 60-40 for Obama, they alone will increase his national total by 2 percentage points. And those could easily be conservative projections. In fact, Gallup Poll results from earlier this year (prior to Obama's designation as the presumptive Democratic nominee) had a 4-point swing in favor of Obama once cellphone-only respondents were folded into the overall sample.

If Maslin and Brown are right, pollsters who continue to take the easy path this election year could wake up red-faced on the morning of November 5.

New Jersey Republican Party Compares Obama To OJ Simpson

Stay classy, GOP.

This, only a couple week after the Texas Republicans got caught selling buttons that read, "If Obama is elected president...will we still call it the White House?"

And the same week wingnuts are haling Jesse Helms as the greatest conservative hero of the century.

They just can't help themselves. Expect lots more before November.

The Conservative Mind

From Daily KOS:

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

They do live in a state of fear, and what's more, they want everyone else to join them hiding under their bed, in their pool of urine.

Oh, they'll talk tough. They'll bluster and pound their chests like the neanderthals they are.

But inside, they are scared little children, terrified of the world, of people not like them, of change.

And they can't fathom any other way to live.

Unlike McCain, Obama can use a computer...

...and he uses a Mac!

McCain Breaking the Law in Plain Sight

By Josh Marshall

I mentioned earlier today that it was quite a thing to see John McCain denouncing Barack Obama for breaking his word on public financing when McCain himself is at this moment breaking the law in continuing to spend over the spending limits he promised to abide by through the primary season in exchange for public financing. (By the FEC's rules, we're still in the primary phase of the election and will be until the conventions.)

I want to return to this subject though because this is not hyperbole or some throw away line. He's really doing it. McCain opting into public financing, accepted the spending limits and then profited from that opt-in by securing a campaign saving loan. And then he used some clever, but not clever enough lawyering, to opt back out. And the person charged with saying what flies and what doesn't -- the Republican head of the FEC -- said he's not allowed to do that. He can't opt out unilaterally unless the FEC says he can.

The most generous interpretation of what happened is that McCain's lawyer came up with an ingenious legal two step that allowed him to double dip in the campaign finance system, eat his cake and spend it too. But even if you buy that line, successful gaming of the system doesn't really count as strict adherence. And the point is irrelevant since the head of the FEC -- a Republican -- says McCain cannot do this on his own.

Like everything that has to do with campaign finance, the details are a little ... well, detailed. But they're worth understanding.

Congress To Investigate Iraq Fuel Deal Involving McCain Fundraiser

An NBC News exclusive report that ran on msnbc.com about an unusual Pentagon fuel deal has sparked an inquiry by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to the committee's Web site. As the NBC News report said, the lucrative contract to ship fuel through Jordan to Iraq involved an influential group of people, including Florida businessman Harry Sargeant III, who is now a top fundraiser for Sen. John McCain's presidential bid. It also involved the brother-in-law of the king of Jordan, who is suing Sargeant, alleging fraud. Sargeant is the president of the International Oil Trading Company (IOTC), which won the contract. The Committee Chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent letters requesting information about the deal. One went to Sargeant, the politically active company president. Sargeant, who has raised over $100,000 for McCain, was listed on June 3 as the co-chair of the McCain Victory Committee in Florida. The other letter was sent to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Both letters cite the msnbc.com report, and request contract information.

As NBC News reported, starting in 2004, after the invasion of Iraq, Sargeant's IOTC repeatedly won contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. NBC cited Pentagon officials, saying that even though it was not the lowest bidder it was the only firm that met the necessary conditions. The letter, signed by Waxman, quotes the NBC story: "According to a recent press account regarding International Oil Trading Company (IOTC), 'For each gallon of jet fuel that is delievered to the U.S. military in Iraq, IOTC charges the Pentagon $1.08 over the market price.'" The original NBC report said that "Sargeant's IOTC has experienced phenomenal growth since the Iraq war started, transforming itself from an unknown business in 2004 to a major Pentagon contractor in only a few years."

To read the original msnbc.com story, click here.