NEWS FLASH-Palin Report Unveiled...And Post-Debate Remarks

Before we begin with the regularly scheduled post-debate remarks after I settled down, we have a big news story coming from Juneau. The Alaska State Legislature's bipartisan investigation on the firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan by Gov. Sarah Palin (R), the Vice Presidential nominee for president, has been released by a unanimous 12-0 vote. The findings of the report state that, Gov. Palin unethically stepped in to fire Mr. Monegan and the claim that he was fired for not terminating state trooper Michael Wooten (the former brother-in-law of the Governor) is true; however, it is not the exclusive reason, and the Governor followed all procedural rights and requirements, as stated in the report by Stephen Branchflower, leader of the investigation: "Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her consitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads."

What do I make of this? I think that this will be another mitigating factor for Palin (as we haven't seen them already); she was put on the ticket as a "Washington outsider", but now she is seen as corrupt and possibly in need of disciplinary action. However, will it affect the campaign? Possibly, although there are a boatload of other things flying around that I will elaborate on in this post.

Click on the post title to get the full PDF file of the report by the Alaska State Legislature (NOTE: This file needs the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in to work; also, it's 263 pages long, so it's not recommended for a connection with a low bandwidth).

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging...

Obama got a huge boost from the debate on Tuesday. States such as Georgia, Arkansas, even Montana are in play. According to FiveThirtyEight, Obama is behind in Arkansas only by 7 points, 5 in Georgia, and just under 5 points in Montana. Obama even has a chance to win not one, but two electoral votes in Nebraska: since they are one of the only two states (along with Maine) that apportion electors by district, along with the at-large electors for the senators (which will, without question go to McCain), Obama is only behind by 6 points in East Nebraska, and by 4 1/2 points in Omaha. Overall, FiveThirtyEight has a projection of a 348.3-189.7 for Obama in the Electoral College, along with a 90.9% chance of victory, while Electoral-Vote has Obama leading 343-184, with the state of Missouri tied. According to Electoral-Vote, Obama leads in swing states Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada, while McCain leads in Indiana and North Carolina, which has inexplicably become a swing state. There are also 235 Strong Democratic EV's (meaning that the polling data shows that it is double-digits in favor of Obama), so Obama has to only to hold a couple of states that are in the "Weak Dem" category (i.e. Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Florida) to win.

However, the level of negative attacks by the McCain campaign-and its supporters-is frightening. Governor Palin and others have embarked on a quest to make Obama and William Ayers sound like they were separated at birth, despite the fact that they were born over 30 years apart. Cindy McCain said that when she found out Obama voted nay on a defense spending bill because it didn't include a timetable "sent a cold chill down [her] spine"-even though McCain voted against an almost identical bill, that did have a timetable! Finally, smaller, local-level campaign managers have gone on to use incessantly Obama's middle name, Hussein. Bobby Maye, campaign chairman in Buchanan County (VA), went as far in an editorial as saying that Obama would "hire Ludacris to paint the White House black." The McCain supporters, though, are the scariest of all. Frequent chants of "terrorist" and "kill him, kill him" have been made by supporters at rallies when Obama's name is mentioned. Some supporters have gone so far as to call him "an Arab." Others have said, "Bomb Obama." The McCain has fear-mongered, and they have gone to far. McCain supporters have gone to the point where they will support killing Obama. The attacks on Obama's credibility have been so great that Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) declined McCain's invitation to have a joint rally (Coleman is in a very tight race, behind Democratic candidate, comedian Al Franken). The fearmongering must stop; people have to learn the facts. I respect Sen. McCain, but I think that he has gone to far, and has to go back to being reasonable in his attacks. This is an important point in history: we have seen the point at which people are most polarized in a presidential campaign since 1800.

We leave now with Senatorial projections. On FiveThirtyEight, the Democrats will have 56 senators to the GOP's 42, with the 2 independents, come January 2009, while Electoral-Vote has a projection of 58-41 Democrats, with the final seat, North Carolina, being a flat-footed tie between Former Gov. Kay Hagan and incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole. However, the states of Kentucky (where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is only up by 4 to challenger Bruce Lunsford), Mississippi-B(where Sen. Roger Wicker [who replaced Trent Lott after he resigned last year] is up by 4 to Former Governor Ronnie Musgrove), and Georgia (where smear artist Saxby Chambliss [I'll have more on him later] is leading former state representative Jim Martin by 6) are moving towards going blue.

Tomorrow (I just can't do it tonight), I will post my next feature, "On Maverick Status". Sometime this weekend, I'll also post the next of the Campaign 2008 Spotlights on Sen. McCain, handicap the hottest Senate races, and post the next feature post, "On the Importance to Impeach the President". Also, stay tuned to Notepad on Wednesday for the final presidential debate, from the Mack Sports Complex at Hofstra University on Long Island, NY. I'll be presenting not only pre-debate reports 30 minutes before the debate and post-debate reports 90 minutes after, but also a live blog during the debate-so I can show the points I generally write in my debate notebook for you, the reader.