IOWA
PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
Iowa...
Where Presidents Begin
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on each candidate to see today's news stories
(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Monday, Sept. 15, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
Wall Street crisis:
Barack
Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was "the
most serious financial crisis since the Great
Depression: and blamed it on policies that he said
Republican rival John McCain supports.
"This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy," Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion...
Wall Street turmoil underscores the need to overhaul "the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington," Republican presidential contender John McCain said Monday.
... the Arizona senator said he agreed there should be no taxpayer-financed bailout of Lehman Brothers even as the investment banking giant faced the specter of liquidation. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch was selling itself to Bank of America for less than half of the iconic brokerage firm's recent value.
"It is essential for us to make sure that the U.S. remains the pre-eminent financial market of the world. This will be a highest priority of my administration. In order to do this, major reform must be made in Washington and on Wall Street," McCain said in his statement.
Obama tried to stall
troop withdrawal from Iraq
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview...
Barack Obama contends that a John McCain presidency would amount to little more than President Bush's third term. But as it turns out, an Obama presidency might look a bit like Bush's second.
Barack Obama raised more money in August than any presidential candidate has ever recorded in a one-month period, with his campaign disclosing on Sunday that it collected $66 million and drew 500,000 first-time donors to his candidacy.
The record-setting figures and particularly the new supporters who can contribute again before Election Day were crucial for Mr. Obama, who was heading into the general election as the first major-party candidate to forgo public financing.
see also:
Despite record month, Obama needs more cash
The billion-dollar race for President
Records show McCain more bipartisan than Obama
Sen.
John McCain's record of working with Democrats easily
outstrips Sen. Barack Obama's efforts with Republicans,
according to an analysis by The Washington Times of
their legislative records.
Whether looking at bills they have led on or bills they have signed onto, Mr. McCain has reached across the aisle far more frequently and with more members than Mr. Obama since the latter came to the Senate in 2005.
In fact, by several measures, Mr. McCain has been more likely to team up with Democrats than with members of his own party....
Dowd:
"Sarah
has single-handedly ushered out the “Sex and the City” era, and made
the sexy new model for America a retro one — the glamorous Pioneer
Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible."
"Her explosion onto the scene made Obama seem even more like a windy, wispy egghead. Like W., Sarah has the power of positive unthinking..."
Rove
says McCain ads went too far
Karl Rove, the hard-line political guru of the Republican right, Sunday made Democrats giddy when he took a shot at Team McCain.
"There ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad?'" Rove said Sunday on Fox News. "McCain has gone, in some of his ads, similarly [one] step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100% truth test."
Still the Big Four:
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Florida
As in the past two campaigns, four big states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Florida -- are expected to dominate the attention of the candidates. Democrats won the first two in both 2000 and 2004; Republicans won the other two both times.
... Both candidates brought their campaigns to New Hampshire this weekend, signaling the importance of a state with just four electoral votes. Four years ago, the Granite State was one of three states in the country that switched allegiance between the campaigns of 2000 and 2004.
... "I think one of the things driving the national polls is that the red states are redder," said David Axelrod, one of Obama's closest advisers. "In the battleground states, the race has held pretty firm."
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
The SNL Palin skit with Amy Poehler & Tina Fey
Palin shifts outlook for undecideds
Trina
Green said she worries about her lack of health insurance and the
price of groceries. On her bookkeeper's salary, she needs cheaper gas
to shuttle her baby and her 7-year-old around. She is concerned about
the quality of her son's school and the war in Iraq.
And vice presidential pick Sarah Palin is making her take a second look at voting for John McCain.
"She's not soured; she's not influenced yet," said Green, a registered independent in Jefferson County, a key battlefield where there is a roughly equal measure of independent voters compared with Republicans and Democrats. "She's young, she's vital. You can see the life coming out of her. Our schools need help. Maybe because she's a young mom, she'll have some ideas about that."
Though Green says she is still undecided about her vote in November, her growing affinity for the McCain-Palin ticket — attributed solely to Palin — means that McCain's effort to target "Wal-Mart moms" may be working. ..
PALIN POWER - lines snake throughout Jeff Co. fairground
Sarah
Palin's first stop in the Denver area is being greeted
by a few thousand supporters packed into a large,
dirt-floored exhibition hall at the Jefferson County
Fairgrounds.
As the press vans arrived about 1/2 hour before the start of the rally, multiple lines consisting of hundreds of people were slowly making their way into the facility.
Palin discusses financial crisis
Sarah Palin used the start of her remarks to a Colorado rally to speak in broad terms about the crisis on Wall Street, offering a dose of populist language about the behavior of CEOs.
"I’m glad to see the Fed and Treasury have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out," Palin said...
She called the current regulatory system "outdated" and in need of a "complete overhaul."
"Washington has been asleep at the switch and management on Wall Street has not run these companies responsibly," Palin said. "John McCain and I are going to put an end to the mismanagement and abuses on Wall Street."
McCain's deep Florida ties to Florida vets
McCain has ties to the military that stretch across North Florida. Whenever he returns to Jacksonville, he thanks the people for their ''kindness and goodness'' to his wife and their children while he was imprisoned.
He returned to Florida after being hospitalized upon release from his 5 ˝-year ordeal as a Vietnam prisoner of war. First, he was sent to Pensacola Naval Air Station, where he endured months of grueling physical therapy to allow him to fly again.
In 1976, he was given command of the Navy's largest air squadron at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, training pilots and crews for the A-7 light attack jet.
McCain revs up N.H. NASCAR race
Looking
to appeal to "Hillary Clinton Democrats," Republican
presidential candidate John McCain opened a NASCAR race
yesterday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
"There are a whole lot of what we used to call Reagan Democrats there, maybe Hillary Clinton Democrats; I think a lot of those votes are up for grabs," said McCain.
Those voters, he said, will determine the outcome of the November presidential election, not only in New Hampshire but around the country...
McCain team hustles amid rising interest
The exploding interest in Sen. John McCain's campaign, fueled in part by the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket, has his staff scrambling to expand events.
... The campaign is expanding the number of Pennsylvania offices to 30 from 14, and its Ohio offices to more than 35 from 18. The formerly lean McCain campaign and Republican National Committee payrolls have doubled in size in recent weeks, an expansion that can be attributed in large part to Gov. Palin joining the team.
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
Obama's NY lead falls to 5 pts.; down from 18 pts. in June
Seven weeks until Election Day, the race for President has tightened in New York, with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) leading Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 46-41 percent among likely voters, according to a new Siena (College) Research Institute poll released today. Obama’s five point lead is down from eight points in August, 13 points in July and 18 points in June, when he led 51-33 percent.
On
the stump, Obama moves past hope
The “hopemonger” is gone.
Barack Obama sounds more like a man trying to shake a rain cloud these days, dispensing a teeth-clenching, I-get-your-pain stump speech in town after town that offers only snippets of the unbridled optimism that long permeated his campaign pitch.
Beginning in the days before his party's convention, the inspirational has given way to the traditional: attacks on John McCain, a register of policy prescriptions and partisan language with the sting of a needle...
Joe
Biden will deliver a high-profile first attack in a
sustained anti-McCain offensive in a speech called "Bush
44" Monday in the key battleground state of Michigan.
... Biden will deliver the speech in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in Macomb County, the area whose voters inspired Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg to coin the term “Reagan Democrats.” The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Barack Obama with a 2-point lead in Michigan, which Democrats won by slim margins in the last two elections.
The speech is touted as matching the aggressive new strategy the Obama campaign has promised to unleash in the remaining days of the campaign to counter the recent poll gains of McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
see also:
Press section of Biden's plane is 'totally deserted'
take a look at this video - now with over 6 millions views:
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