Missouri

With 99% of precincts reporting, the current tally in Missouri is 1,418,537 for McCain and 1,415,983 for Obama. McCain is ahead by only 554 votes! With 100% of precincts reporting in Buchanan county, Obama leads by 47 votes. In Washington county, with 9415 votes in, Obama leads by 9 votes. Incredible!

Check it out on CNN.

Obama's Speech

Read the full text here.

I personally thought it was a great speech. It was amazing to be cheering along with the crowd in Hindle auditorium, seeing people with tears in their eyes.

What did you all think of it?

Karl Rove Predicts Obama Win

Rove, the man whose name has become synonymous with dirty political tactics, has posted a final electoral college prediction on his website giving Obama a 338-200 win.

Rove was allegedly the mastermind of the effort to smear McCain in the '00 South Carolina primary, when voters were asked the question "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" McCain's "illegitimate black child" is, of course, his adopted daughter from Bangladesh-- which makes the question about as reasonable as "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Al Sharpton...if you knew that he had sold weapons to top Al-Qaeda leaders and has been videotaped freebasing with Fidel Castro?"

Thanks a bunch, Karl. Where would we be without you?

White Privilege and the '08 Campaign

The following link is to a blog post which purports to give examples of white privilege from the presidential campaign, which I thought the rest of you might find interesting since it bridges class topics. Warning: contains liberal content.

http://www.siasaduni.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-is-white-privilege.html

An excerpt:

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

What do you all think of this?

FauxNews pulls article expressing uncertainty about Palin

While visiting Google News a few minutes ago, I was surprised to see a link at the top section of the page to a FOX News article titled "Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin’s Heft". I was less surprised, however, to find that the page now reads "You've requested an America's Election HQ page that cannot be found. The page you are looking for may have moved or it may no longer be available. We apologize for the inconvenience." The link on the Google page has also since been removed.

Luckily though, despite Fox's efforts to protect their candidate, the article is still floating around. You can read it here.

Matt Damon comments lead to joke trailer

Matt Damon's recent likening of the possibility of a Palin presidency to a bad Disney movie was followed up by College Humor, who created this trailer.

[http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1831461]

NYT reports Rick Davis paid by Freddie Mac

The New York Times ran a front page article today confirming that a firm owned by John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, was given $15,000 a month by the mortgage giant Freddie Mac from 2005 until a month ago when it taken over by the government. This news comes a day after McCain's senior campaign adviser slammed the Times for reporting on Monday that Davis "had been paid nearly $2 million by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to head a group devoted to defend the mortgage giants against the imposition of stricter regulations." It also contradicts a claim made by McCain in an interview that took place on Sunday, in which he stated that Davis has had "nothing to do" with them:

HARWOOD: You mentioned cronyism and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, and you've criticized Obama for self dealing here. How do you square that with the fact that your campaign manager, Rick Davis, was involved in some lobbying activities on behalf of Fannie Mae? And secondly, what specifically would you prevent, would you outlaw--what activity would you outlaw in Wall Street to make sure this doesn't happen again?

Sen. McCAIN: Now, on Wall Street, I'd--obviously we need to stop--we need to more--have more transparency. We need to take the regulatory agencies and merge them together in one effective agency. These regulatory agencies, this alphabet soup, was really designed for a different era. We're now in global transactions. We need more transparency. We need to combine the regulatory agencies, and we need to give them some more authority, if necessary, to do so. You know, Secretary Paulson had a package of recommendations sometime ago that basically did not really go anywhere. Maybe we can look at those and other recommendations in the future.

In Washington, I still think that it was the special interest money that went--and Fannie and Freddie money that went, and everybody was involved in this--not everybody, but certainly Senator Obama got next amount of money, except for the two Democratic chairman. His vice presidential search team was headed by Mr. Johnson, and...

HARWOOD: And your campaign manager?

Sen. McCAIN: And my campaign manager has stopped that, has had nothing to do with it since, and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.

Davis' connection to Freddie Mac is almost laughably ironic when one considers that the McCain camp recently released a video attempting to link Obama to the economic crisis, claiming that Obama has received advice from the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines. The ad claims that Raines gave Obama "advice on mortgage and housing policy." Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed "extensive financial fraud." Raines immediately denied providing advice to the Obama campaign, and campaign a spokesman denied seeking or receiving any advice from Raines. A fact checker for the Washington Post reported that the only evidence substantiating the claim was that Raines had "a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign" and that the McCain campaign "is clearly exaggerating wildly". It's yet another example of the misleading distortions put out the campaign, which is now using dishonest tactics to protect its own members and attack Obama, all while reaching new levels of hypocrisy. How low will they go to put McCain in office?