Mr. Michael Grady's Blog

WASHINGTON — Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was under intense pressure on Tuesday to end his decades-long political career and step aside because of a jury’s finding that he violated federal ethics laws by failing to report tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and services he had received from friends.

His fellow Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona called for him to resign his seat, saying, “I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/us/politics/29ste
vens.html?hp

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News accounts, including on CNN, report that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will be doing more than dropping the puck during her visit to St. Louis later today.

Various sources (including some partisan ones) say that the Alaska governor also will be deposed by lawyers in connection with the “Troopergate” controversy, which centers on allegations that she and her husband had tried to use her clout to get her ex-brother-in-law fired as an Alaska state trooper.

St. Louis sources say the deposition will taken in Palin’s hotel room here. (For security and news reasons, we are NOT disclosing where she is staying.)

The regional spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign declined comment yesterday on the matter.

According to MSNBC’s First Read, Palin is to be deposed “by the independent investigator working for the Alaska personnel board. The interview will be under oath.”

Todd Palin is to be deposed separately.

Her personal attorney, Thomas Van Flein, was traveling on the campaign plane Thursday, according to news reports.

UPDATE — At the moment, Palin is in Springfield preparing for what is expected to be a huge rally of supporters. Here’s from the Associated Press:

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Dozens of people bundle up to wait almost nine hours to get a good spot to see GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at a campaign rally in Springfield.
 
The Alaska governor is scheduled to begin her speech at noon Friday at a rally in the parking lot of Bass Pro Outdoor World. Some spectators braved a stiff wind and chilly air to arrive by 3:30 a.m., long before gates opened at 9 a.m.
 
The event was initially scheduled for an arena at Missouri State University. But after all 4,000 tickets were snapped up within 90 minutes Wednesday, the Republican Party moved the event to Bass Pro’s massive parking area to accommodate a larger crowd.
 
Speeches in advance of Palin’s address are set to begin at 11 a.m.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect

The Bhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effectradley effect, less commonly called the Wilder effect,[1][2] is a proposed explanation for observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some American political campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other.[3][4][5] Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in some voter polls, the Bradley effect refers to an alleged tendency on the part of some voters to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, and yet, on election day, vote for his/her white opponent.

The theory of the Bradley effect is that the inaccurate polls have been skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias.[6][7] Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. The reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well. The race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor in to voters' answers.

Some analysts have dismissed the theory of the Bradley effect as "baseless",[8] while others argue that it may have existed in past elections, but not in more recent ones. One analysis of 133 senate and gubernatorial elections between 1989 and 2006 suggests that "before 1996, the median gap for black candidates was 3.1 percentage points, while for subsequent years it was -0.3 percentage points."[9]

Similar effects have been posited in other contexts, notably the Shy Tory Factor and spiral of silence.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/obama.bradle
y.effect/index.html

(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama has a sizable lead over Sen. John McCain, polls show, but those numbers could be deceiving if the "Bradley effect" comes into play.

Polls show that Sen. Barack Obama has a sizable lead over Sen. John McCain.

The Bradley effect is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who ran for California governor in 1982.

Exit polls showed Bradley leading by a wide margin, and the Democrat thought it would be an early election night.

But Bradley and the polls were wrong. He lost to Republican George Deukmejian.

The theory was that polling was wrong because some voters, who did not want to appear bigoted, said they voted for Bradley even though they did not.

"People will usually tell you how they voted after the election, but we found in the Bradley campaign ... that people were actually not telling us who they voted for," said Charles Henry, who researched Bradley's election.

The Bradley effect is also called the "Wilder effect," after Douglas Wilder, Virginia's former governor. He won by just one-tenth of a percent, but as he pointed out to CNN, "people forget -- in the exit polls, I was still double-digits ahead."

Imagine, if you would, our nation without any taxes whatsoever! No income taxes, no Social Security taxes, no Medicare Taxes, no Estate taxes, no Sales taxes, no Personal Property taxes, no Real Estate taxes, no Excise taxes, no Capital Gains taxes, NO TAXES whatsoever!

Now, imagine, I you would, the cuts in Public Services because of the lack of taxes. There would be no POLICE, FIRE or EMS Services. There would be no street cleanings. No libraries, no Public Schools, no bridge maintenance, no road construction, no military protection, no public parks, no museums, no nothing!

Taxes may be something we despise and grumble about when we pay it, but it is a NECESSARY EVIL for our nation!

The news that retired Gen. Colin Powell will appear this Sunday on "Meet the Press" has set off a frenzy of speculation that former secretary of State could throw his endorsement to Barack Obama.

Powell has made little secret of his admiration for the Illinois senator in the past but has always stopped short of outright endorsing him.

Will that change on Sunday? And, if it does, how much is Powell's endorsement really worth?

Seen through the prism of our handy-dandy endorsement hierarchy, Powell's endorsement of Obama would qualify as the highest powered of all endorsements: a symbolic one.

Here's several reasons why a Powell endorsement could matter:

1. Turnabout is Fair Play. Powell is best known for his most recent job in government -- as the secretary of State for President George W. Bush. The idea that a high-ranking cabinet official in a Republican administration would come out for the Democrat is simply too juicy a story for the media to ignore. That it would be someone as high profile as Powell would only add to the titillation.

2. The Most Popular Man in America? Powell, unlike almost no other official with ties to the Bush Administration, has retained remarkable popularity ratings. In an August Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of voters viewed Powell favorably while just 13 percent saw him in an unfavorable light. A large part of Powell's appeal is his perceived bipartisanship -- a direct result of his decision to repeatedly turn down overtures to run for president in his own right. For a certain (not insubstantial) portion of the electorate, when Powell speaks, they listen. The Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll reinforces that fact; more than one in three voters said a Powell endorsement of Obama would make them more likely to vote for the Democrat. (Hat tip to Jon "The Numbers Man" Cohen for the polling data.)

3. Iraq, All Wrong. Powell, thanks to his immense popularity, was the Bush Administration's choice to make the case in front of the United Nations for the invasion of Iraq. Powell has since called that incident a "blot" on his record, and made clear his disappointment with the prosecution of the war. An endorsement of Obama, who built his candidacy on his early opposition to the conflict, would mark a clean break with the Bush Administration on the war and would add significant heft to Obama's argument that he alone possesses the judgment to lead the U.S. in a dangerous world.

4. The Final Straw. With polling -- both in the key battleground states and nationally -- showing that voters trust Obama more than John McCain to handle the current economic morass, one of McCain's last hopes is that the the election turns back somehow to a foreign policy focus. If Powell does endorse Obama, it would shore up the Illinois senator even if that eventuality occurred; it would be hard for McCain to slam Obama's approach on the war if the Democrat had a Powell endorsement sitting in his back pocket.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/10/why_th
e_powell_endorsement_cou.html?hpid=topnews

What are your expectations for the last debate between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama?

What do you hope to see here?

What would change your vote and why?

Are these debates helpful or harmful to the cause?

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) – A minister delivering the invocation at John McCain’s rally in Davenport, Iowa Saturday told the crowd non-Christian religions around the world were praying for Barack Obama to win the U.S. presidential election.

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens,” said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport.

The remark was made before McCain arrived at the rally but the Republican nominee's campaign quickly put out a statement distancing itself from the remarks.

“While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama's judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief,” said McCain campaign spokesperson Wendy Riemann.

This incident comes a day after a Minnesota voter asked Senator McCain if Barack Obama was an Arab at a town hall in Lakeville, Minnesota and just three days after Lehigh GOP County Chairman Bill Platt made a speech at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania where he refered to the Democrat nominee for president as Barack Hussein Obama.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/11/spe
aker-at-mccain-rally-says-non-christians-want-an-obama-
win/

It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.

William Kristol

• Read Full Comment »

He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.

He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.

But I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.

The 2008 campaign is now about something very big — both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past — running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio — and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters. The American people have by no means turned decisively against them.

The bad news, of course, is that right now Obama’s approval/disapproval rating is better than McCain’s. Indeed, Obama’s is a bit higher than it was a month ago. That suggests the failure of the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama.

So drop them.

Not because they’re illegitimate. I think many of them are reasonable. Obama’s relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is, I believe, a legitimate issue. But McCain ruled it out of bounds, and he’s sticking to that. And for whatever reason — the public mood, campaign ineptness, McCain’s alternation between hesitancy and harshness, which reflects the fact that he’s uncomfortable in the attack role — the other attacks on Obama just aren’t working. There’s no reason to think they’re suddenly going to.

There are still enough doubts about Obama to allow McCain to win. But McCain needs to make his case, and do so as a serious but cheerful candidate for times that need a serious but upbeat leader.

McCain should stop unveiling gimmicky proposals every couple of days that pretend to deal with the financial crisis. He should tell the truth — we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.

McCain can make the substantive case for his broadly centrist conservatism. He can explain that our enemies won’t take a vacation because the markets are down, and that it’s not unimportant that he’s ready to be commander in chief. He can remind voters that even in a recession, the president appoints federal judges — and that his judges won’t legislate from the bench.

And he can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism.

At Wednesday night’s debate at Hofstra, McCain might want to volunteer a mild mea culpa about the extent to which the presidential race has degenerated into a shouting match. And then he can pledge to the voters that the last three weeks will feature a contest worthy of this moment in our history.

He’d enjoy it. And he might even win it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/opinion/13kristol
.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Published: Friday October 3, 2008
A Florida middle school teacher faced disciplinary action after using the word "n****r" to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, WJHG's Kristy Wolski reported.

The 7th grade teacher, Greg Howard, asked his students what "change" stood for in relation to the Obama campaign and proceeded to write out the acronym "come help a BOOGEDY get elected."

The school suspended Howard without pay for 10 days and removed him from his position at the school.

"That shouldn't happen," said Billy Delahunt, an Obama supporter. "Because they're there to learn, they're not there to discriminate."

Jackson County's Deputy School Superintendent confirmed that the teacher used the racial slur in class and that such actions would not be tolerated.

But school officials said Howard has been transferred to Jackson County Adult Education Program, where he will continue to teach.

Howard has also been removed from his position as football coach and may face further action from the Florida Department of Education.

This is not the first instance of racism in the presidential race.

A conservative convention in September included vendors selling "Obama Waffles" that featured a caricature of the candidate reminiscent of Aunt Jemima maple syrup.

During the Democratic primaries early this year, MSNBC analyst Keith Olbermann called an editorial by former Bush strategist Karl Rove attacking Obama "outright racist."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Florida_teacher_uses_
N_word_against_1003.html

Passage of the $700 billion financial rescue package came after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at a meeting last month shocked congressional leaders into action by warning of pending economic collapse without immediate congressional intervention.

Paulson said after the climactic House vote Friday that he already had staff working out details and was lining up advisers from outside the government to get the money flowing.

The immediate response to the 263-171 vote was not promising. Wall Street, which plunged a record 778 points after the House initially rejected the bill last Monday, fell 157 points on Friday as more economic bad news, such as a jump in job losses, outweighed news that Congress was finally coming to the rescue.

Bush was buoyed by the outcome but nevertheless spoke cautiously about the economy's future. "While these efforts will be effective, they will also take time to implement," Bush said in his weekly radio address Saturday. "My administration will move as quickly as possible, but the benefits of this package will not all be felt immediately. The federal government will undertake this rescue plan at a careful and deliberate pace to ensure that your tax dollars are spent wisely."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-10-04-bai
lout-next_N.htm

Compensation consultants who work with companies on pay packages say the bill's sections on executive compensation are so broadly and vaguely written that executives and companies will create dozens of new ways to boost leaders' pay anyway.

"This is tinkering around the margins, without really taking a fundamental look at executive compensation plans," says Howard Sherman, CEO of the Governance Metrics International,

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/200
8-10-03-bailout-ceo-pay_N.htm

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"The real test will be how individuals involved in oversight choose to exercise their authority," says Matthew Jacobs, a former federal prosecutor now at McDermott Will & Emery.

The bill establishes oversight by Congress, the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller and a new Financial Stability Oversight Board to be run by the Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and others.

But the bill was passed so quickly, with so little study, that "there almost certainly will be potential for fraud and abuse," Jacobs says.

Critics say letting Wall Street police itself led to the mortgage crisis. Business leaders worry that the government overreacts in crises.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/regulation/
2008-10-03-bailout-oversight-powers_N.htm

Who won the Vice Presidential Debate between Governor Palin and Senator Biden, and why??

Now that the First Presidential Debate is in the can, what is your reaction to the topics, questions, actions and words of Senator John McCain and Senator Barak Obama?

What was the good, the bad and the ugly of this first debate?

What are your suggestions to the candidates as they prepare for the next debate?

What are your suggestions for Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden as they prepare for the Vice Presidential Debate that will be held at Washington University next Thursday?