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Movement for Obama in the Sunshine State: Barack Obama has caught up to John McCain in Florida. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds Obama with a statistically insignificant one-point advantage over his rival, 46% to 45%. When “leaners” are included, the Democrat leads 49% to 47%.

Over the past six months, McCain has maintained leads ranging from seven to sixteen percentage points. Last month, McCain led 48% to 41% in the Sunshine State.

A big push for Obama this month in Florida comes from unaffiliated voters. Last month, he had just a three-point lead in this demographic. This month, he leads by twenty-three. That's quite a jump.

Keep in mind, Democratic registration has been surging in the Sunshine State. Just two weeks ago, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported on a "huge swing" to Democrats in voter registration:An escalating number of voters registering as Democrats is providing evidence that the 2008 election could produce a wave of support for Barack Obama — and trigger a decades-long shift of party allegiance that could affect elections for a generation.

The numbers are ominous for Republicans: Through May, Democratic voter registration in Broward County was up 6.7 percent. Republican registrations grew just 3 percent while independents rose 2.8 percent.

Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans.There are also a slew of competitive House races in Florida this year, which should also help bolster Democratic turnout. For years, there was an unwritten rule among the Florida delegation that the opposing party wouldn't challenge incumbents. Those days are over. By my count, there are eight GOP held seat that are very interesting in Florida. We'll spend more time on these races over the next couple weeks, but keep an eye on:

Florida 8: August 26 primary winner v. incumbent Republic Ric Keller;

Florida 9: Democrat John Dicks v. incumbent Republican Gus Bilirakis;

Florida 12: Democrat Doug Tudor v. incumbent Republican Adam Putnam; (Because Putnam chairs the GOP conference, he is the third ranking Republican in the House.)

Florida 13: Rematch between Democrat Christine Jennings and incumbent Republican Vern Buchanan;

Florida 18: Democrat Annette Taddeo v. incumbent Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; (Everyone who reads AMERICAblog knows we love Annette.)

Florida 21: Democrat Raul Martinez v. incumbent Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart;

Florida 24: Democrat Susan Kosmas v. incumbent Republican Tom Feeney;

Florida 25: Democrat Joe Garcia v. incumbent Republican Mario Diaz-Balart;

You'd think these people would learn. Apparently not. Opvortex reports that this time they show a guy, who looks awfully gay - they even show a close-up of his ass wiggling back and forth - speed-walking (i.e., walking fast instead of jogging). Mr. T shows up with some kind of submachine gun and shoots the guy, with Snickers bars or something, yelling at him to act like a man and "get some nuts." Yeah, nothing gay implied about the guy looking like a big fag in short-short jogging shorts, wiggling his ass, and then yelling at him to "be a man" while shooting him.

So sick of these people.

Even Ad Age says the thing is anti-gay. You may remember two years ago when Snickers ran the horribly homophobic, and violent, ads during the Super Bowl. Apparently Snickers liked the publicity, or they wouldn't be doing this again. Really disgusting.

Watch this:



Jed does it again. Bravo.

Jed posted this video last night. So far, it's had over 25,000 views, which is very impressive for a nine-minute video. Jed also reports that the McCainiacs have been trying to bury it on Digg. So, he's trying again. Digg it.

Wow.A concierge at 1700 K Street said that she saw a bicyclist yelling and walked outside to see what the commotion was about.

"This guy hit somebody and he won't stop so I'm going to stay here until the police come," Aleta Petty quoted the unnamed bicyclist as saying, as he stood in K Street, blocking traffic.

A source who saw Novak put in the police car and saw the pedestrian on the ground, motionless, said other witnesses said the biker jumped on Novak's car to stop him.

While attending the Symi Symposium in Greece last week, I was able to spend some time with Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize-winning economist from Columbia University. Stiglitz not only won the Nobel prize in Economics a few years back, but he also served as the chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. Stiglitz is an amazing man. He kind of reminds you of your favorite college professor. The one who took the time to explain things to you, and who actually seemed to enjoy doing it. I can't say enough about the guy (and his wife, who was a real gem as well) - it was just a pleasure and honor to be able to sit down with someone like this.

So... I was able to pigeon-hole Stiglitz for about 25 minutes and interview him on a variety of topics. I've split the interview in to three portions.

1. The first deals with Stiglitz's new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War." Stiglitz argues that the Bush administration lied to us about the true cost of the Iraq war, and then when all is said and done, it will be costing us around $3 trillion dollars - and that's being conservative. (9 minutes)

2. The second portion of the interview deals with the physical cost of the war on our troops, and then we delve into the issue of oil prices. A really fascinating discussion about whether or not OPEC can produce more oil, how the dollar is affecting the price of gas at home, and how speculators are impacting the market. (8 minutes)

3. And finally, in the third part of our interview we talk about how increased US domestic production of oil won't help lower oil prices, and about the mismanagement of the US mortgage crisis by the Bush administration. (5 minutes)

This is the first part of the interview, below. The other two parts you can watch via the links above. Part 1 is okay, but it's in parts 2 and 3 that Stiglitz really gets going and the interview takes off. Altogether it's probably 23 minutes or so of video. I highly recommend it. I learned a ton, and hope you will as well.

As I wrote yesterday, the Democrats let the Republicans attack their patriotism, and now their humanity, with impunity, and we're surprised that the Republicans keep doing it? This is classic Karl Rove, who is now advising John McCain. Rove clearly told McCain to do this, in order to steal attention from Obama's overwhelmingly successful international tour. Also, Rove and McCain must believe that Jewish voters are going to fall for this ridiculous line - that Obama might have been for the Holocaust. Abusing the memory of six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, in order to help your election. Kind of puts the Brandenburg Gate kerfuffle, and McCain's criticisms that Obama's trip was just political, into perspective. And what's worse, it's not the first time the Republicans have tried to use the Holocaust as some kind of political weapon against Obama. Remember when the GOP tried to make hay out of the fact that Obama couldn't remember the name of the Nazi labor camp that his uncle helped liberate? The Republicans are right. Jewish voters should take note... of who is abusing the memories of their ancestors.

By the way, I'm waiting for the ADL to weigh in and tell McCain to cut it out. Or do they just weigh in against Democrats who invoke the Holocaust for political gain?

Okay, this NY Times article was just waiting to be written. Eric Lichtblau probably put it in his calendar to give it six or seven months. How can Chuck Schumer really be disappointed? Seriously. Mukasey works for George Bush: When President Bush tapped Michael B. Mukasey to lead the scandal-plagued Justice Department nine months ago, Senator Charles E. Schumer could not say enough good things about his fellow New Yorker. Mr. Schumer ran out of time in ticking off Mr. Mukasey’s accomplishments at his Senate hearing, and the senator’s vote of support ensured his confirmation as attorney general.

Yet at a hearing this month, face to face with his pick for attorney general, Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, did not hide his disappointment in what he saw as Mr. Mukasey’s reluctance to move more aggressively in investigating accusations that the Justice Department had brought politically inspired prosecutions against Democratic politicians.

Mr. Schumer was still fuming a short time later as he went to the Senate floor for a vote. “That was terrible,” Mr. Schumer told a colleague privately in assessing Mr. Mukasey’s performance, an official privy to the conversation said.Articles like this are hard to stomach. Last November, Schumer and Diane Feinstein voted to approve Mukasey, despite his bizarre transformational performance during the confirmation hearings. They should have known better then. They shouldn't be surprised now. No one else is.

Read Dan Froomkin's column about how Bush rolled the Senate -- again -- to get Mukasey appointed. Disappointed. Ha.

Remember, in May, how the right wingers went into a frenzy because Obama named the wrong concentration camp when speaking of his uncle, Charlie Payne, who served in World War II? And, many of the traditional media types, including the Washington Post, played along like it was some kind of game. Oh, they really thought they caught Obama in a whopper.

Obama told a true story about his uncle's involvement with liberating a Nazi concentration camp -- and admitted that he got the name of the camp wrong. Jake Tapper wrote an excellent piece putting this issue into context. Tapper also made the point that Obama never raised this issue on its own. He brought it up in response to a question about veterans and PTSD.

Now, Obama's uncle, who is clearly very proud of his nephew, has come forward to tell his story of arriving at Ohrdruf: Charles T. Payne was 20 years old and, like any good Midwesterner, he knew how to listen.

He was making conversation, in pieced-together English and German, with a freed prisoner of Ohrdruf, the Nazi work camp Payne's infantry division had just liberated at the end of World War II.

"With great difficulty we conversed and, if I got what it was he was telling me about, it was that the Germans had killed a million Jews and that the world didn't really know this yet," Payne, 83, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday as, on the other side of the world, his great-nephew, Barack Obama, prepared to visit the Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Helping liberate Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945 was Payne's first close brush with history.Like his nephew, Mr. Payne is clearly a very smart and thoughtful man: As attention turns to the Holocaust with Obama's expected visit to the Israeli memorial on Wednesday, Payne reflected on the lessons of history.

"Clearly to me it's proof that there's no limit to what a man will do to man and what government out of control will do," he said. "I guess we need to be on our guard eternally." We sure do.

Good morning.

We've been waiting for John McCain to go off the deep end. He took a dive in that direction yesterday with his way over-the-top attack on Obama's patriotism saying, "Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." It was disgusting. The video is here if you haven't seen it. Watch McCain's extended and very creepy grin at the end. Brandon Friedman wrote about the backlash from veterans. Jed Lewison accurately analyzed it as an attack on any American who opposed the war. Even Joe Klein was appalled: I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency.Desperation is the best word to describe it.

Thread the news, please.

I think Halliburton might have a job waiting for this guy. The good thing about Halliburton and the other Western contractors working in Iraq is that having a criminal record would probably only enhance his chances of landing a juicy job.Sgt McKay denies stealing Ministry of Defence funds. John Mackenzie, defending, told the court martial at Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire, that the astonishing profits Sgt McKay made from his alcohol shop were achieved by buying cases of beer for £10 and selling them on to coalition troops for £37 or £50, Mr Mackenzie said.

In the first week he made £1,502 from his enterprise, which, said Mr Mackenzie, was carried out with the permission of the unit quarter master. In week six of the deployment he made £16,228 in profit, the trial heard.

"His estimate is that over the 12 weeks this venture made a $371,000 (£185,825) profit," said Mr Mackenzie.

Republican economics continues to show America how costly it is to ignore the basics. Failure to properly regulate and letting financial institutions do pretty much anything they liked is going to cost the US much more than any regulation would have cost. So now that we're in an economic downturn and funding two costly wars, where are we supposed to find the cash for this?Congressional budget analysts put a $25 billion cost estimate on a Bush administration plan to bolster mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but raised questions about a key assumption underlying the plan.

The Congressional Budget Office said the estimated cost to taxpayers would be incurred over 2009 and 2010, if Congress approves the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson amid a deep slump in the U.S. housing market.

Sure, if you like that kind of thing. Anyway, we could never do such a project in the US because we don't have any sunny regions that are ideal for solar energy and besides, our current energy program is really good. Just ask the people who are selling it. It's probably better that the US stays out of these programs because it will only encourage more ventures and more jobs and more revenue.A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent.

A new supergrid, transmitting electricity along high voltage direct current cables would allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland.

This one is hard to even explain, it's so bizarre. McCain, looking just awful on camera, made yet another major gaffe about national security policy, on CBS. So what did Katie Couric do? She aired the interview with McCain, aired the question that led to the gaffe, and then inserted an "answer" to the question that wasn't the real gaffe-filled answer - it was something McCain said in a total other part of the interview. It's absolutely astounding how far the corporate media is willing to go in order to defend John McCain. And seriously, take a good look at McCain in this video, I was kind of shocked by his appearance - he doesn't look well at all.

When the Politico starts being mean to Republicans, the four horsemen can't be far behindRepublican Senate leaders — terrified by the prospect of losing five or more seats in November — have freed their members to vote however they need to vote to get reelected, even if that means bucking the president or the party’s leadership....

It’s unusual for rank-and-file members to get a green light to blow off their party leaders. But these are unusual times for Republicans. They are genuinely worried they could get their clocks cleaned in November. The prevailing attitude: It is better to lose some big votes now than big races in November.

This helps explain why so many Senate Republicans are taking flight from President Bush and their own leaders — and doing it loudly and proudly.

Surprise. Though it does make you wonder if McCain has any accomplishments post-1972 that he's proud of.“Now Salter has one last chance to write a great convention speech for his boss. He is headed to his summer cottage in Maine--purchased with his share of the book royalties he splits with McCain (who gives his half to charity)--to focus on a task fellow McCainiacs acknowledge will be critical. ‘It's a big moment,’ says Mark McKinnon. ‘The convention is a big damn deal.’ Salter hints the speech will spotlight McCain's moments of self-sacrifice, as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform. The contrast, he says, will be the ‘selfishness’ of ‘self-interested’ political partisans--i.e. Obama--who, he argues, have risked nothing of substance in their lives."Kind of bitchy.

I'm getting a bit tired of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative, Bush-loving party trying to interfere with our upcoming presidential elections. When Merkel decided to weigh in against Obama giving a speech before Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, I suspected she might be doing Bush's and McCain's dirty work, but I cut her some slack. But now that Obama has agreed to speak at another site, and a member of Merkel's own party is criticizing that location too, it's looking increasingly like Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party is trying to give Obama a hard time because he's a Democrat. Merkel and her party should get their noses out of our presidential campaign - we can pick our own president without their help, thank you very much.

Great move by Obama. Nice catch by Crooks and Liars. The big dog from Fox, Chris Wallace, wasn't invited on the overseas trip.

Fox isn't a news network, as Netroots Nation made clear, it's opinion media.

It's good to see the Obama campaign treat Fox the way the network and its overtly Republican pundits deserve to be treated. MoveOn makes it easy to give Obama a shout out for saying No to Fox.

Jason Linkins cracks me up. Consistently. His latest post, "GOP 'Love' Ad Furthers the Pot-Kettle Dialectic," nails the absurdity of McCain complaining about favorable media coverage of Obama:Senator John McCain is running a pair of ads that say -- get this - that the media is "in love" with Barack Obama. I know, I know...take a moment to cradle your poor head tenderly in your hands and note the attendant irony of the candidate best known for courting the press, straight up, as his "base," complaining bitterly about this. The press' great affinity for John McCain is well-known. There's a book about it. Even an RSS feed.Yes, Obama is getting some great coverage on the trip that McCain pushed and pushed. But, lest we forget, it was McCain who got the Dunkin Donuts with sprinkles (his favorites) from AP's Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier. That incident alone negates any complaining by McCain -- ever.

This is why John McCan is trying to desperately to change the topic. The troops love Barack Obama.

This is predictable but still a bad sign for the economy. The tough times are spreading even to wealthier Americans.Late Monday, New York-based American Express reported a 38% drop in second-quarter earnings and warned that it won't be able to meet long-term financial targets until the economy improves.

American Express shares, which are part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to $37.12 in morning trading.

The company said that even its most creditworthy, long-standing customers felt the effects of the economic slowdown currently sweeping the U.S.

Without giving specifics, AmEx said it plans to cut staff and reduce other costs, noting that the resulting charges will hit results in the second half of 2008.
"With bad debt occurring even in the superprime card segment, AmEx's earnings clearly show that the credit crisis is going upscale, which does not bode well for the U.S. economy," Red Gillen, senior analyst at consulting firm Celent, commented via email.