Hallie Leighton http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/10/how-biden-can-win-the-debate.php
Makes some interesting points in her blog, but I think the strategy is fundamentally flawed: there is no way to "win" the debate. The expectations for Sarah Palin are so low at this point that if she manages to avoid tripping over her shoes, she will have "held her own" against Biden. And...
by all accounts, when Governor Palin is prepared, she debates pretty well. Expect her to do better than just not tripping over her feet.

So, how can Biden "beat" her in the debate? He can't. Any attempt to beat Palin in terms of a debate will be doomed to failure. Instead, Biden most forgo debating Palin as an opponent, and "take her under his wing" and HELP her (sincerely and with no trace of being condescending) to do her best in the debate. He should treat her almost as though he were her debate coach: willing to throw out helpful suggestions on how she might phrase things more clearly, giving positive feedback... "I believe that you meant to say this..." and encouraging phrases like "Interesting perspective..." and the like. But always with sincerity and respect. As though she were his student or daughter, practicing for a debate whom he had agreed to help prepare.
Then,  he should kindly and sincerely counter her assertion, and always give her the last word in every exchange. Play no gotcha games with her at all. Try to help her win the debate in every way possible without sandbagging his own position.
Contrasting his knowledge of the issues with hers by killing her with kindness and magnanimous gestures will go far further than one-upmanship in this situation, I think.

It has NEVER been about Bristol Palin. The whole thing with speculation about Bristol's pregnancy way back when came out of an Alaskan rumor justified by a few oddities in Sarah Palin's delivery of her youngest child. For me, the choices were:

Palin made a decision to fake her own pregnancy to keep her daughter's pregnancy out of the media. It would have been a strange thing to try, and so on, but would have revealed the attitudes of a mother concerned about her child, as well as a politician concerned about image.

The alternative apparently was (and apparently is), if the worst of the rumored factoids are all true,

that Governor Palin was:

1) willing to travel to Texas in the last 4-5 weeks of her pregnancy with a special needs child with potential health problems (Downs Syndrome baby);
2) after her water broke (or she "started leaking amnionic fluid"), she chose to give her speech anyway instead of going to a hospital;
3) boarded a plan knowing that she had a potential medical issue with her pregnancy while not informing the pilot so that she could
4) travel 10 hours by plane to return home and
5) didn't take advantage of the better-equipped hospital in Anchorage or
6) drive 6 miles to the better-equipped clinic closer to her final destination and instead
7) drove 45 miles to her relatively poorly equipped local clinic where she had her baby and
8) returned to work only 2 days later, rather than resting from her trip and bonding with her new special-needs infant.

In other words, we were left with deciding if she had attempted to pull a "fast one" to cover up her family's embarrassing private matters OR that she was a crazy woman.

Since she has now admitted to the same embarrassing private matter anyway, but that it is ongoing instead of taking place months ago, we are left with the impression that she is just plain crazy.

The possibility that the potential VP of the USA is "just plain crazy" is a national security matter, and NOT merely a political attack on her mother via an attack on her pregnant 17-year-old in what should be a private family matter.

It is Sarah Palin's behavior that is the issue here, either way, not her daughter's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2TaGxB1n-U

This video says it all: While Obama appeals to those who are thoughtful and who read and think, McCain appeals to those who neither read NOR think, but merely react, even when the words they are applauding go against everything that they allegedly hold dear in their religion.
Were I the Rev Warren, I would be wincing inside during the reaction of his flock to McCain's words, but obviously, Warren knows how to play that audience well, so either he's a huge hypocrite,  or as "Christian" as his flock.
Either way, I'm pretty sure I know who won over the audience during THAT presentation, and their applause gives a tremendous insight into the kind of "Christian" who votes Republican these days. 
Let us pray that there are more Christ-followers than Christians voting this election.

A couple of my friends were interviewed by another friend on the topic of the early days of the  transformation of the internet from 2D to 3D:
http://www.metanomics.net/archive080408

This kind of presentation will become more and more common as time goes on and it will only get more sophisticated the technology matures. I am sure that by the next presidential election cycle, you'll see serious debates, town halls, interviews, etc.,  conducted in this venue.
Great fun.

Just heard on NPR's Science Friday, that for the last 7 votes in the Senate having to do with solar energy, McCain was not present for ANY of the votes, while Obama was present for 5 of the 7 and voted "yes" each time.
Given that McCain is the Senator from Arizona, which stands to benefit mightily from solar energy power creation (they could supply the entire nation's electrical needs using solar plants in Arizona), this was an irresponsible lapse on his part. Given the crisis of energy of the past 18 months, it shows something beyond mere irresponsibility.
Obama's campaign should take advantage of this lapse on McCain's part and point out just how out-of-touch he is with the needs of the 21st Century.

Well, it had to happen. The next step. 
Teleport from one virtual world to another:

http://torley.s3.amazonaws.com/Across-the-Metaverse.mp4


And read all about it:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/


I somehow find it hard to visualize John McCain tromping around a virtual world, but I suspect that Obama will fit in just fine. I expect to visit his Second Life re-election campaign HQ by next election cycle, and by then things will be far more interesting, visually, than a few cartoony avatars.

I'm no economics expert, far from it, but I read recently that the entire rise in oil prices tracked the fall of the American dollar vs the Euro.
But why would that matter, I asked, since oil is still traded in American dollars?
Well,  if the price of gas tracks the American dollar,  then WE pay more at the pump, while all other countries based on the Euro, pay relatively little more in Euros (or local currency based off the Euro exchange rate) at the pump that they did before the dollar's fall and the subsequent price rise of oil vs the US dollar.
So, for a given exchange rate of US dollars and Euros:
US Euro barrel of oil US barrel of oil Euro1.00 1.00 $139 $1391.00 1.10 $139 $1261.00 1.20 $139 $1151.00 1.30 $139 $1071.00 1.40 $139 $99.31.00 1.50 $139 $93
So, if my math and interpretaton is correct, at today's price of oil of $139 and today's exchange rate of 1.55 euros per dollar, people on a Eruo economy are paying less than $90 Euros per barrel.
Which could explain why much of the rest of the world isn't screaming as loudly as we are: for them, the price of oil hasn't risen  much compared to what we pay. Their price will have been relatively steady while ours has been shooting through the roof.

This won't have any affect at all on THIS election cycle, but will be of major significance by 2012 and conceivably by 2010: A friend from IBM just announced a few minutes ago that 3 virtual world avatars from Linden Lab, makers of the Second Life virtual world, just logged into a developers-only version  of Second Life and ended up in a virtual world hosted by IBM, that was using software written by another group of people unaffiliated with Linden Lab. In other words, just using publicly available protocols, and not sharing ANY software between the two worlds, it is now possible to move between two entirely different (but compatible) virtual worlds written by different companies and groups of people.
The dawn of the 3D internet has arrived, around 11:30 AM pacific coast time, June 5, 2008. 
If you can't see the significance of this, you're living in a pre-internet world. 3D virtual worlds will have at least as big an impact on politics in the next few decades as the internet does now and quite possibly much more.

...or something. I have no idea what is going on, but this
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/198681.php

can't bode well for Senator Obama. Apparently Rush has been making similar noises since last night, so, we're left with the possibility that
1) Rush and Fox are now ultra-liberals who favor Obama;2) McCain is going to "discover health issues" at the RNC Convention that force him to resign while an Obama-killer candidate magically appears to be elected by approbation of the entire RNC, as some have suggested;
or...
3) Some new revelation is waiting for unveiling by the Republicans  that will be so bad that Fox News can tearfully reverse themselves and denounce Obama forever after, even though they felt "originally" that he was better than McCain.
My bet is on the latter and that Fox will suddenly discover that the good Rev. has cooties, but it might actually be a politically relevant issue, who knows?

Or...How I won the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidential Nomination, by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Barack Obama was just declared the presumptive winner of the 2008 primary by the MSM, TPM and his own supporters, based on tonight's tallies as interpreted by the DNC's Rules Committee.
Most  Obama supporters appear to think that this ruling is final, but from what I have gathered, it is not: the assembled delegates at the DNC Convention can vote to overturn this ruling, or so I gather.
AND they just might, because while the DNC Rules Committee ruled on the first-round nomination voting status of the Michigan and Florida delegations, that shouldn't affect their vote on other matters in any way.
So, she may be planning on speaking to the 100 or so super-delegates who apparently STILL have not committed and say "hold off until I take this to the floor."
At that point, she would have her Michigan and Florida delegates backing her at the full vote they would be entitled to in such a vote, and combined with the currently uncommitted Supers (and any others who have publicly committed to Obama merely because he is the obvious nominee), she might win the nomination despite what the MSM and everyone else says.
This would be a long-shot, and perhaps she doesn't really believe she can pull it off, but even the threat of that scenario might be enough to win massive concessions for her both at the Convention and later on..
Just a thought...

Well, as I pointed out, the MSM is ignoring LIz Trotta's hoof-in-mouth-disease joke. I suggested that perhaps they had a Blue Code of Silence for fellow journalists, and I think that I was right. Goggling: 
liz trotta obama osama assassination
yields over 1600 hits on the web while only 16 via news.google.com.
There are quite a few suggestions for what people can do about the remark. 
They have included signing a petition to get her fired (2700+ hits since last night):
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/fox-news-has-to-sack-liz-trotta

calling the sponsors of fox news and expressing outrage:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/05/re-liz-trotta-mainstream-media.php#comment-2846787


complaining directly to Fox and the FCC:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-vogel/fox-news-guest-says-obama_b_103522.html

Contacting the AP board about Rupurt Murdoch's programming:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/25/15389/8576/115/522617

Contacting local Fox Affiliates:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/25/23341/6138/940/522833


But no-one seems to know how to break the media's Blue Code of Silence. The Fourth Estate appears eager to protect one of their own, but unless the Fourth Estate polices itself in some way, why do they continue to deserve protections? Any ideas on this? I'm at a loss.

Everyone logging into TMP has seen the reference to Liz Trotta's little joke at her mis-speak of Osama's, er, Obama's name...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/196939.php

What is interesting is that while there are over 9,000 google web hits on: Liz Trotta Obama, there are only 3 hits from google news, all of them non-MSM.
A fine example of a Blue Code of Silence for reporters, I think.

She could always nominate her husband if she won. Can't beat THAT name recognition....

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/clinton_democrats_must_back_no.html
Senator Clinton shows she got my point  (which was obvious, I thought, but apparently not, given the silence on TPM that met my suggestion in an earlier blog) that party unity trumps whoever wins the nomination and whomever most loudly proclaims their party loyalty will sound most presidential. Now it is time for Senator Obama to take my advice (which is obvious enough that only TPM partisans on both sides could possibly have ignored it, which they did) and spend a decent portion of his campaign war chest doing what Clinton did in a speech: promote party unity --whoever wins the nomination has the full support of Obama and his supporters must understand that it is all about a not-Bush winning in November. Barack Obama must start a reasonably large ad campaign promoting the Democratic nominee, man or woman, for President of the USA and show it in the states where primaries have already been held (especially  in states neighboring those about to hold primary elections, for reasons that should have been obvious when I first suggested it).

What can one say? Wright reiterated all his most controversial hits in a way that seemed calculated to maximize his negative effect and made Obama look and feel like an idiot. Regardless of any objective way in which Wright might have been correct,  or at least, "not-wrong," he left Obama no choice in his reaction.  It will be interesting to see what happens next.