Trevor Cook

McCain stuffs up on Pakistan

Max Bergmann: Major Gaffe: McCain Said Pakistan Was a Failed State.

McCain just badly misstated the history of Pakistan. For someone claiming extensive foreign policy knowledge, this is simply not acceptable. McCain said Pakistan was a failed state before President Musharraf came to power. That is not true.

Musharraf took power in a military coup in 1999 when he diposed Nawaz Sharif - who recently participated in the latest election. The coup followed the 1999 war in Kashmir with India and was due to a power struggle with Sharif, not due to Pakistan being a "failed state." The United States did not welcome the Musharraf coup. Instead the government of the United States imposed sanctions against this action.

Early voter reaction: Obama wins first debate

CBS poll of uncommitted voters:

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Insider Advantage / Poll Position

Opinions on who won the debate split almost evenly: 42 percent said they thought Barack Obama won the debate, 41 percent thought John McCain prevailed, and 17 percent were undecided.

The poll of 411 registered voters has a margin of error of plus or minus five percent. The results were weighted by age, race, gender and political affiliation.

CNN/Opinion Research Corp.

found that 51 percent thought that Obama won, while 38 percent thought McCain did. Respondents were generally impressed: 57 percent said Obama did better than expected and 20 percent said worse, while 60 percent said McCain did better than expected and 20 percent said worse.

One caveat for the poll: the party makeup was skewed toward Obama: 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans, and 30 percent identified themselves as Independents.

Sarah Palin free from 'witchcraft'

NEWS.com.au.

A YOUTUBE video has surfaced showing Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office three years ago.

Is the real agenda to hide Palin from Biden?

Link: Political Radar: McCain Camp: Let's Push Back Biden-Palin Match-Up, Too.

The Arizona senator would like the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, which is currently scheduled to take place on Thursday, Oct. 2 in St. Louis, Missouri, to be scheduled for a later unspecified date.

Quantity vs. quality in corporate blogging

Link:
Corporate Blogging: The Fallacy of Quantity vs Quality
.

As a corporate blogger I rarely post "off topic". There's a reason for that, and a reason why I'm doing so now. The core reason for doing so now is that it's a subject that's near and dear to me, having spent the majority of the past eight years writing and blogging in publishing and on the corporate side of the table, and I see far too many posts out there offering advice about blogging that's focused solely on "getting more hits".  While that might be sound advice for personal blogs, it's off-key when it comes to corporate efforts.

There is a belief, and it's wrong, that more is better - whether it's more posts or more hits - when it comes to corporate blogging. In fact, the opposite is true: quality is more important - whether it's readers or posts - than quantity.

Palin stumbles on McCain's regulatory record or 'let's face it, McCain is the cowboy capitalist candidate"

Letterman on McCain suspension

Link: Daily Kos: State of the Nation.

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

McCain's campaign crisis

Let's be frank. You don't pull out of a debate when you're behind in the polls and your opponent is gaining momentum every day. Unless, you're hoping for a circuit-breaker.

The Palin effect has washed through the polls and now they're starting to reflect a new campaign on the economy and that favours Obama because he's way ahead of McCain on the economy with voters. The McCain camp has come under intense criticisms for its lies and its reluctance to face media questioning.

The first debate was due to be on foreign policy and that's McCain's strength so he could have hoped for a bounce if he bested Obama in the debate. That would have been dampened by the current focus on the economic crisis, including Bush's address to the nation later today.

Plus there's another bind for McCain. Bush needs his support to get the bail-out package through but McCain can't be seen to be in lockstep with the incredibly unpopular Bush. McCain can't win this election if he looks like a mainstream maverick, that's why he has been reluctant to sign up to a package that is drawing a lot of criticism in mainstream and among all those people who have lost their homes and jobs (why bailout CEOs with million-dollar packages - that's suicidal for McCain).

McCain hopes that his campaign suspension will get him free of these horrible knots in one bound but it is just as likely to focus yet more attention on his deep links with the failed policies of Bushite republicans.

NSW Premier believes in the big, black cat theory

Panther may be no urban myth, says Premier - National - smh.com.au.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees believes something big and furry is roaming Sydney's west.

Incredible, where does the ALP get its politicians and do they get psychological testing?

Apparently, Nathan 'garbo' Rees fears for the kiddies:

“Of particular concern is if there are little kids out there, and there actually is one of these things,” Mr Rees said.

“It is easy for all of us to dismiss these things … but if we’re actually wrong then there is an altogether different set of scenarios.”

Meanwhile, the NSW economy, transport system, hospital system and much else are all still stuffed.

Palin: it's going to be HER administration

Rudd heads to New York as Wall Street collapses

And the digital age winner is? Public broadcasting

Mark Day Blog | The Australian.

The ABC costs Australians $850 million a year. When the next triennium funding arrangements are put in place in the next few months, the bill will almost certainly go through the billion-dollar barrier.

At that price, it amounts to 13.5c a day for every Australian, up from the famous 8c a day of the 1980s.

It’s not a cost that I quibble with: Scott has the ABC in a purple patch at the moment with near record radio and television ratings, new digital services, online innovations such as iView internet TV, and an amazing 60million podcasts and vodcasts a year.

And there’s more coming: a big push into mobile news services, a digital children’s channel and a 24/7 news channel designed to show democracy in action by becoming a kind of town square for debate and discussion. Scott says he needs only a marginal increase in funding to make these things happen.

A surprising outcome of all these fancy new technologies and platforms is that it can re-invigorate public broadcasting. Scott is doing a terrific job of exploiting that opportunity.

BTW the ABC also deserves huge plaudits for its coverage of the paralympics - the coverage was superb and they really presented the games as an appealing event, more appealing in many ways than the overblown Olympics itself. A sense of sportsmanship and pure joy in participation shone through in the ABC coverage.

NSW Labor stuffs up, commuters punished

Six rail projects face axe as budget falters - National - smh.com.au.

SIX rail projects worth a combined $14.4 billion are on the chopping block as senior bureaucrats and a new cabinet team frantically search for a new transport strategy in the face of a faltering NSW budget.

Treasury officials are sharpening their knives in preparation for the November mini-budget promised by the new Premier, Nathan Rees, which will be forced to balance a huge revenue shortfall against the state of rapidly decaying transport infrastructure.

Absolutely disgraceful. Millions of dollars have been spent on announcing these projects but they can be canceled just like that. The NSW Government is unsympathetic to public transport and has no idea how to ease Sydney's traffic congestion.

Race swings back to Obama

The race has been tight for months and it is tight now. During the Democratic National Convention in the first week of this month Obama's lead in the Rassmussen tracking poll blew out to 6 points. Then came Palin and suddenly McCain was up by three points. Gradually, since then the Palin effect has dissipated and Rassmussen currently has McCain up by one point.Gallup has been slightly more pronounced. Obama's lead this month went out to 8 points and flipped to a McCain lead of 5 points. Since then the Palin effect has dissipated and today Gallup actually has Obama back in the lead, by one point. A poll done for Reuters also has Obama back in front today (by 2 points). Other tracking polls also have Obama back in front. The state polls are slower to come in so there is a lag and they show McCain slightly ahead on electoral college votes but that will drift back too.

In the meantime, of course, a sea of ink has been spent on why Palin has changed the race, how she has re-energised the republican campaign, how the Obama campaign is floundering, why Hilary should have been the nominee or at least the VP pick, and so on and so on. Perhaps, we can now expect a flood of breathless coverage acknowledging that the Palin effect has washed through, in just a fortnight, and we're pretty much back where it was before the conventions started. The fascinating struggle goes on.

Palin drives increase in political website traffic

Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog.

Looking at U.S. Internet users’ interactions with political websites for the week ending with August 30, 2008 (the week of the Palin announcement), visits to over 800 campaign and blog sites grew 33.8 percent to reach the highest level of online political activity in the last three years.