boston.com has the story...

...Overall, for the six networks that aired the program simultaneously, the spot had a household rating of 21.7% (meaning that 21.7 percent of all households watching television were tuned to the spot)...

I watched Obama's "address" tonight and I really enjoyed it.  [EDIT: If you missed it, it's on YouTube here.]  I think the thing I enjoyed most is how positive it was.  I'm not sure but I don't think Obama mentioned McCain once.  It was about what the problems were as he sees them, and what he wants to do about them.  I have no idea how many of those things he's realistically going to be able to pursue given how bad things are right now, but I believe he will try, and having a president I believe in would be refreshing.  For years I've felt this country has needed major, daring changes--we need to stop beating around the bush and just face up to our responsibilities and get it done.  I think there's a decent chance with Obama in office that we'll take bold steps in that direction.  He's got my vote.

Now I'm going to surf the web for a bit and see what other people are saying about the infomercial.  Cue the cynical conservatives denouncing it as BS in 5, 4, 3, ...

EDIT: If for some reason you don't want to see the video, you can read a transcript here.

TPM Election Central has the full text of Obama's speech delivered in North Carolina today.

...I'm sorry to see my opponent sink so low. Lately, he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in Kindergarten.

That's his choice. That's the kind of campaign he chose to run. But you have a choice too. The fundamental question in this election is not "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" We know the answer to that. The real question is, "Will this country be better off four years from now?"...

...Whether you are Nancy the Nurse, Tina the Teacher, or Carl the Construction Worker - if my opponent is elected, you will be worse off four years from now than you are today. So let's cut through the negative ads and the phony attacks - under John McCain, the middle class will watch wealth get favored over work, jobs get shipped overseas, and the cost of health care and college go through the roof. North Carolina, we know that just won't do. Not this time. It's time for change. It's time to do what's right for you, for our economy, and for our country

I know that my opponent is worried about losing an election, but I'm worried about Americans who are losing their homes, and their jobs, and their life savings. I'm worried about the middle class. And I won't just fight for your vote in the final days of election - I will fight for you every single day that I'm in the White House. That's why I'm running for President of the United States of America.

So I can take six more days of John McCain's attacks, but this country can't take four more years of the same old politics and the same failed policies. It's time for something new...

MarketWatch reports on the results of an unusual Presidential Election Poll which has accurately predicted 12 of the last 13 elections by polling children...

...voting has concluded in the Weekly Reader Student Presidential Election Poll. And the nation's students resoundingly say that Barack Obama will be the country's next leader. In the 14th Weekly Reader election survey, with more than 125,000 votes cast from kindergarten through 12th grade, the result was Obama 54.7% and John McCain 42.9% (with "other" candidates receiving 2.5% of the student vote). The Obama victory in the classroom electoral vote was even more resounding: The Democrat won 33 states and the District of Columbia, garnering 420 electoral votes, while McCain took 17 states and 118 electoral votes...

I'll take any good news I can get!

This time police needed to rescue two Obama supporters who were the target of their misguided rage...

...After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob...

...police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone...

"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."

Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."...

Conservatives would be so much better served if they didn't pander to knee-jerk nutjobs who wouldn't know a terrorist or a communist if they saw one.  Inciting mobs with inflammatory speech does nothing but make the Republicans look like the party of hate.  FiveThirtyEight.com has the story.

The other day a friend of mine was comparing this election to 2004, warning that we [Democrats] should not become complacent, because in 2004 Kerry was edging ahead in the polls and after the disaster of the Bush '01 administration it was unimaginable that Bush could win a second term.  And yet the unimaginable came to pass, and another unimaginably bad 4 years followed.

So here we are again, a very smart Democratic candidate, ahead in the polls going up against a Republican party with a terrible track record.  If past performance is any indicator, the Republicans should win, right?

This time around though, the Democratic candidate is even smarter and better spoken, even further ahead in the polls, and the Republican party is looking even worse.  Is it enough to make the difference?  Enough to buck the trend of Americans giving the keys back to the guy who crashed the car?

On this day in 2004, one of my favorite electoral news sites electoral-vote.com was estimating 260 votes for Kerry, and 254 for Bush with 24 votes (Iowa and Michigan) listed as "tie".   Had the tie votes gone to Kerry, it would have ended 284 Kerry 254 Bush.  Had they gone to Bush, it would have ended 260 Kerry 278 Bush.  The actual outcome was 252 Kerry 286 Bush with the tied states going both ways (Iowa to Bush, Michigan to Kerry) and a few of the "barely/weakly Kerry/Bush" states flipping sides (Colorado flipped from barely Kerry to weakly Bush, Ohio flipped from barely Kerry to barely Bush, and Hawaii flipped from weakly Bush to weakly Kerry.)

All in all, the indicators from this day in 2004 showed a very close race with the candidates having similar electoral scores.  It was clear that the tied states alone could change the outcome.

This time around things are very different. The same predictor is estimating 364 votes for Obama and 157 for McCain with 17 votes in a tie.  If all the tie votes go to McCain, the score is 364 Obama 174 McCain, and Obama wins.  If all the tie votes went to McCain and all the states rated "barely democrat" (58 votes) flipped into his column, the score would be 306 Obama 232 McCain, and Obama still wins.

So it looks decidedly better for the democrats this time around than last time.  However, of the 4 states (Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire) being rated as "weakly democrat", three are states that were either Republican last time, or flipped republican at voting time (VA, OH, CO)--I don't really like Obama having to depend on these states for victory.  But he surely does.

Obama can afford to lose any one of these 4 states, and can even afford to lose any two.  But if he loses 3 of them, then McCain is likely to win.  I think the reason McCain is attacking Obama's hold on Pennsylvania is because if PA folds up for Obama, then he has to rely on VA, OH, CO even more and at that point Obama losing OH spells victory for McCain.

The upshot of all the number crunching is that I am more optimistic than I have been over the last couple days, but I largely agree with my friend that there is no room for complacency.

These polls are making me nuts. One poll says Obama has a huge lead, another says the lead is within the margin of error. At least two of the places I tend to frequent are suggesting that McCain is catching up.

McCain Has the Momentum in Seven of Nine States

Gallup Daily: Presidential Race Narrows Slightly

CNN: Early voting reaching record numbers, election officials say

State election officials said Monday that early voting already has reached record levels as the presidential campaign enters its final week. Nearly a fifth of registered voters in Georgia already have cast ballots, an election official says. As of Monday, 30 states either are allowing voters to vote in person early or are accepting absentee ballots, and election officials are reporting record turnouts. Voting problems, ranging from computer glitches to long lines, have been reported in a few states...

I heard from a couple of my friends on MOTL who have voted early.  First Ryan, who voted in Texas:

Wylie, TX - Monday 10/27 2:30 pm:
Voting station was organized, I did not have to wait a long time, the staff was professional. It was the Wylie municipal complex. Voting machines were touch screen and they were working fine.  I didn't see any voter challenges while I was there. Voting early worked out real well, no lines and easy to do.

Secondly Albert, who submitted an absentee ballot in an undisclosed region of California, simply said "it went fine."  Glad to hear it!

It's getting harder and harder to take seriously McCain/Conservative claims about the voter registration organization ACORN.  You've probably heard McCain and others decrying Barack Obama's "connections" to ACORN.  In a recent debate McCain went so far as to claim that ACORN was "maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

This is lunacy, folks--unabashed lunacy--and it's fair to say John McCain knows it.  Yes, there was a form of voter fraud at ACORN, but that fraud does NOT result in phony votes being cast.

ACORN uses (thousands of) paid employees to canvas regions knocking on doors and helping unregistered citizens to register for the vote.  Like any company or organization, it turns out that some small number of employees are basically deadbeats who want to collect a paycheck without actually working.  So a few of ACORN's employees, instead of walking neighborhoods and knocking on doors decided to sit in their living rooms and fill out voter registration cards with fake names.

These fake registrations generally have the names of famous people, fictional cartoon characters, or nonsense names.

So, if you are worried about voter registration fraud, ask yourself if you seriously expect someone to walk into a polling station claiming to be "Donald Duck" or "Fruto Boy" or "Nancy Pelosi" and be handed a ballot?

Not to trivialize registration fraud, it does indeed make the administration of elections more difficult, in that someone has to review all the registrants and remove the bogus registrations.  I guess it's a good thing ACORN reported the problem and identified the suspect registrations--another little tidbit you won't be hearing from the right.

Yes, the reason we know about this problem is because ACORN itself reported it.  ACORN isn't authorized to throw away any registrations it receives--that would potentially disenfranchise a voter.  But they do review the registrations before submitting them to local authorities, and in that process they separate the registrations into three separate categories--those that have been verified, those with missing information, and those which are suspect.  So when the registrations are submitted, the official in charge can easily identify the problem registrations and make their own decision what to do with them.

In the end, the only defrauded party would appear to be ACORN, which has paid wages to someone who didn't do their job.  The fabric of our democracy appears to be wholly untouched by this manufactured controversy.

A real threat to democratic elections is systematic voter suppression--underhanded techniques to keep people from showing up at the polls, or keeping them from voting if they show up.  If McCain would like to tackle a real problem, he might want to take a look at this one.  I'm not holding my breath though since voter suppression seems to be a favorite tactic of the Republican Party.

Links:

• The Truth About ACORN [The Washington Independent]
• McCain presses case on ACORN [Political Intelligence - boston.com]
• Challenging the Vote (mp3 audio) [NPR: On Point with Tom Ashbrook]
• Brennan Center: 2008's Voter Suppression Incidents So Far [AlterNet.org]

Reuters: Obama assassination plot thwarted

Sick people in this world, man.  Sick people.

Well this weekend has been half-busy. Went to see my Mom on Saturday... Friday was a rough day for her too since it was her and Dad's wedding anniversary. I helped her rake leaves and we got the pictures off her camera for her. She seems to be enjoying her new point-and-shoot and has been taking a lot of pictures.

We had a little cake for my birthday and then I told my Mom about something I had seen on YouTube--the story of Charles Ingram, who cheated at "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and won the $1000000 prize--he eventually ended up in court and was sentenced to 18 months (suspended) and had to pay fines. It was an interesting story--here are the links if you want to watch it (the entire documentary is about 75 minutes):

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQoNWw0G2AY
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XpDMxyFakY
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOhfQk5-58
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q0K_I4DMX4
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obswP-3JFss
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpBLsLCMQ8
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve5lx_LowaI
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU14bYbJWVw

Mom loves game shows like Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, and so forth, so she found the story interesting too. We got back here pretty late Saturday night.

Sunday was the slow day. Patty went to Pickety Place with her family and I stayed home with Lynnea. She had a friend over and they seemed to have a good time. I did some photo work, played some video games, and enjoyed my new birthday gift.

Last year, my trusty old SAMSUNG YP7 MP3 player went through the wash in the pocket of my sweatshirt. :( So I was without a player for a long time. Sometime months ago I came into a little money (probably a gift from someone--don't remember now) and Pat asked if I wanted to replace the MP3 player. But at the time I felt it was better to put the money in my photography business account. There's still a couple pieces of equipment I am trying to save up for.

But over the ensuing months I realized just how much I missed having music whenever I wanted it, especially when I go to sleep. So, having received a little birthday money, I decided on Saturday to go out and get a new one. It's a Sansa Clip (4Gb)... and I can fit almost my entire song library on it. (No iPods for this music lover!) Plays great, and it includes an FM tuner and voice recorder for those rare moments when I want to take notes.

Let's see what else has been going on? I've been watching the election polls with trepidation I *really* want Obama to win... 8 years of Republican mismanagement has been more than enough. I'd like to finally see universal health care become a reality in this country. I'd like to see a serious move away from fossil fuels. I'll probably run a blogathon on election day.

So here it is around dinnertime on Sunday, and I am trying not to think about work tomorrow. Figured I'd write a blog post for y'all. It's been forever, it seems, since I was blogging regularly.

Oh, I've had Mara and Kennis knocking about in my head again recently... I may write a little more of their story at some point.