Obama starts breaking out in the polls since the economy started to go under. Its clear William Ayers and Wright stuff would have been more hurting if it were not for the economy. It has made Obama's job that much easier. 

When the election came down to wire in NH for John McCain in the primaries, he promised 100 townhalls and that turned things around for him. Since that primary victory in NH, McCain has nothing but constant praise for retail politicking through townhall settings. 

Obama has outspent McCain 3 - 1 last week and 2 - 1 when combining McCain's spending with the Republican National Committee's independent expenditures.

"Make no mistake -- all the wonderful bio ads that the Obama campaign has been running have had an impact by allowing the campaign to impart critical information about their candidate that voters would not now otherwise be hearing or seeing," he writes on his blog at the New Republic.

The majority of Kenyan population is Christian. A majority of the Somalia population is Sunni Muslim. So it should not be surprising that the garb is Muslim.

From the CIA fact book:

Religious divide in Kenya:   Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 33%, Muslim 10%, indigenous beliefs 10%, other 2%
note: a large majority of Kenyans are Christian, but estimates for the percentage of the population that adheres to Islam or indigenous beliefs vary widely

Religious divide in Somalia: Sunni Muslim

Obama has ties to Kenya and not Somalia. So the talking point out that says Somlia is Obama's native is factually incorrect.

The column today by Gideon Rachman in the FT poses the question: Is Obama really a better speaker than JFK?

his most famous phrases are vacuous. The “audacity of hope”? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. “The fierce urgency of now”? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this – other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president.

And then there is “Yes we can” 

“Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.”

This sounds to me like a man doing an impression of what he thinks a great speech might be like.

The substance of this criticism is that the speech writer for Obama (which in to large degree: himself) is not as great a speech writer as Sorenson, the writer for JFK. But even on the substance Gideon has ignored the call by Obama for people to engage and organize and the proof of it has followed in quick succession to show the effectiveness of that call. Given the trend lines for participation in the American democracy has been remarkably low, Obama's campaign has sought to set the course on this to high shores.

Gideon adds a good example himself.

Peter Sellers, a British comedian of the 1960s, caught the genre nicely in a parody speech: “Let us assume a bold thrust and go forward together. Let us carry the fight against ignorance to the four corners of the earth, because it is a fight that concerns us all.” Mr Obama might easily give a speech like that – although he would probably strip out some of the detail.

Clearly words alone do not matter as much the ability of a  speaker to use those words. Other campaigners have equally tried to deliver their share of good speeches; there is nothing wrong with the words, only with the speaker.

Gideon ends with this as some kind of a peace offering:

So Mr Obama is not relying on empty exhortation because that is all he is capable of. It is a deliberate political strategy. And it makes sense. The more a candidate gets stuck into the detail, the more likely he is to bore or antagonise voters. Appealing to people’s emotions is less dangerous and more effective.

Really?

Both Clinton and Obama has not made any distinction on the inducements they make for low income folks to opt in to the system. Since on the offer of subsidies in either plan is essentially the same, I don't see how Hillary has "won over" low income people that Obama hasn't. There are two categories of people who can be left out

1. those that don't want to buy insurance even when they have a good enough income to do so.
2. Low income folks who cannot afford it.

Wherever I see there is no clear argument or estimate of how many there will be in either of these category.

Clinton claims that everyone is mandated to buy insurance and has not spelled how these mandates will be enforced. Its clear her mandates would technically be possible on the folks in Category 1, but needs to be spelled out for Category 2 for whom this can be big blow. Clinton if I understand right, claims folks from category 1 will provide and subsidize for folks in category 2.

Obama is wary of folks who will game the system (Cat 1) and is open to penalties. What those penalties will be is not spelled out, although such an enforcement is technically possible. Obama can then potentially use enrollments from Cat 1 to offer further subsidies to folks in Cat 2, just as Clinton argues.

So Obama can get away with providing essentially everything Hillary plans to provide with some weaker form of mandate which he calls penalties to gaming the system. At the least, in Obama's plan, if you didn't buy insurance and the income is really low, it won't be grounds for penalty. At the same time both Obama and Clinton can offer the same inducements of subsidies to low income folks to make it possible for them to buy health care if they chose to.