BARACK RETAKES 'POLL OF POLLS' LEAD BY 1 POINT AS BIDEN BLASTS MCCAIN FOR BEING OUT OF TOUCH

Guess which vice presidential nominee is in the news today?
Don't call it a comeback. Joe Biden's been here for years, rockin' his peers and puttin' suckers in fear.
No? Oh yeah, sorry, that was LL Cool J.
But you get the idea.
Scranton Joe was out on the trail, representin' for Barack, who, you'll see in this latest CNN story is back to leading the national poll of polls by 1 percentage point. Can the post-convention Republican bounce finally be evaporating?

msnbc.com

JOHNNY FLIPS THE SCRIPT (AGAIN): GOP CANDIDATE DOES DOUBLE-TAKE ON REGULATING BANKING, INSURANCE BUSINESSES

Hmmm...what do John McCain and rapper Busta Rhymes have in common?
They both like to "flip the script" -- Busta on the mic with his improvisational freestyle rhymes and McCain with his own freestyle...economic policy?

Here are the details in a new Associated Press story...

msnbc.com

WHITE ANTI-RACISM ACTIVIST: WHITE PRIVILEGE CLOUDING CAMPAIGN

In this unprecedented time of an Afrcian-American getting a major party's presidential nomination and the campaign surrounding him and his opponent, the following is a thoughtful essay a few of you have emailed me in recent days, so it deserves a post -- and your equally thoughtful comments. It's written by Tim Wise, a white American who has authored the books, White Like Me and Speaking Treason Fluently.

*This is Your Nation on White Privilege*

By Tim Wise

9/13/08
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

[*]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.

[*]White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

[*]White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

[*]White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

[*]White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

[*]White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

[*]White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

[*]White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

[*]White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

[*]White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

[*]White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

[*]White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

[*]And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.

GET IN THE RING, HILLARY! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO CAN KO PALIN FOR OBAMA AND BIDEN

Am I the only one concerned that lately that Sarah Palin has gotten into all of our collective heads -- including my own?
The latest news is that the McCain campaign has announced that their moose mom, or whatever they're calling her now, won't cooperate with a state investigation up in Alaska about whether she abused her power in firing a state official for not firing the State Trooper who was her former brother-in-law.
All Palin has managed to do is steal the national spotlight since the announcement of her being McCain's running mate. Love or hate her politics, her image or her persona, she's a lightning rod.
Seriously, had anyone even seen Joe Biden -- remember him, Barack Obama's running mate? -- until recently?
But the Democrats have one person who can publicly neutralize Palin by going toe-to-toe with her, in words. That someone is equally dynamic, far more in touch with what mainstream women want, dwarfs Palin in intellectual capacity and political experience, got 18 million people to vote for her in her presidential campaign and has the credibility with both genders to bury her once and for all.
So I must ask:
WHERE THE HELL IS HILLARY CLINTON?
Where's the fire she showed in busting Barack Obama when she competed against him?
Can we get more out of her in her rallies for Obama than the uninspired mantra, "No McCain, no Palin, no more of the same"?
Obama and his staffers have become so annoyed by Palin the irritant and are so shocked that she's actually developing a cult following that Obama -- like many of us -- are spending far too much time on her.
That's where Hillary must now come in, take one for the team and run interference for her party's candidate. Why can't Hillary let loose some of those sharp barbs against Palin and tell the country she's not the right woman for the job?
Why can't she shout from the mountain that while plenty of other women are mothers, shop at Wal-Mart, support their children and balance their careers and family lives, that that's where the similarities stop?
Why can't Hillary communicate with some conviction that while having a woman as president or vice president is long overdue, that the country would be making a grave mistake by installing someone as utterly unqualified as Palin.
Dammit, Hillary, get off the bench!
Get in the game and expose Sarah Palin for what she is -- as much of a cynical, token pick now by John McCain as Clarence Thomas was more than a decade ago by George H.W. Bush. And both are anethemas to the aspirations and sentiments of the majority of the people to whom they belong.
When Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and announced she would throw all of her support behind Barack Obama, I wanted to believe her. When she praised him at the Democratic National Convention, I thought she was sincere.
But why now do I get the sneaking suspicion that Hillary's not getting in Palin's face not so much because she doesn't want to get medieval on another female politician, but because maybe deep down she believes Palin might actually drag McCain into the White House by his lapels, buoyed the wave of faux protest votes?
Maybe Hillary's saving some bullets for 2012 to fire at Palin in another presidential run.

FOR THE SISTERS: PLAYWRIGHT AND FEMINIST EVE ENSLER HAS PALIN 'NIGHTMARES' AND OBAMA DREAMS

While Sarah Palin tells half-truths in scripted, public stump speeches -- where the GOP hands out "homemade" signs for the screaming lemmings in attendance to wave for the cameras -- about her professed opposition to the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," Eve Ensler, the writer and creator of the stage show, "The Vagina Monologues," weighs in on the vice presidential candidate, with these words...

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member
of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved
polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe
it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the
Arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the
fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar
bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to
build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard
to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more
insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and
solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to
Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth,
ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of
my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be
so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never
recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the
rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have
seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with
regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her
world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or
evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the Actic, the
storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are
all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the
endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil
is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As
she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are
raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to
determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine
her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has
tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who
think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and
difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president
of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on
the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has h er own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has
been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from
the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But
when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in
God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of
separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever
tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our
hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S. ,
but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the
earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we
move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for
oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will
free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent
on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of
killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a
closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get
Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at
the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think
of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military
exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt,
ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the
sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more
holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

TIME: HOW MUCH WILL RACE BE A FACTOR IN 2008 ELECTION?

From this week's issue of Time comes this piece, about how race and ethnicity will overtly and subtly affect this presidential election, even as class and economic status issues seem far more important.

Here it is:

time.com

LATEST ELECTORAL POLLS: USA ELECTION POLLS -- OBAMA 281, MCCAIN 257; NY TIMES -- OBAMA 238, MCCAIN 227; 73 TOSSUP

While this estimated lead may seem safe, nothing is guaranteed.
According to the latest data from the New York Times, you live in a tossup state if you're a resident of Michaigan, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire or Virginia.
If you have friends or family members in these states who may be on board with us, make sure they're registered and spreading the word.
We can DO this!
The latest:

nytimes.com