There's a new meme in town and Peggy Noonan is here to tell you about it:

Despite the much-hyped "parity" between the candidates in national polls, myself and many others are expecting an Obama landslide come November. Why? One huge reason is the "ground game," a term used to signify get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in the final days of campaigning and on election day.

I hold no illusions, this is a republican state and has been for years. I live in one of the most republican districts in the state, Lexington County and it is represented by Joe Wilson R SC02, he is a retired reserve Army Colonel.  His Congressional biography can be read here.

He has been less than helpful in my personal dealings with the Veterans Administration on my claims for the exposures at Edgewood Arsenal. He is being opposed by Rob Miller as the Democratic nominee, if he wins it will have to be with the votes from outside the Lexington County area, he is from Beaufort, where he runs a small business with his wife. Hopefully with a large turnout for Obama, there will be enough down ticket momentum that Rob can unseat Joe Wilson.

Paul Krugman, writing in Friday’s New York Times, crafts a cautionary tale about the current political landscape.

[T]he debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

I wrote an earlier diary on this subject and with the release of McCain's new ad:

"It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed. They will call him The One" flash across the screen. The Antichrist of the Left Behind books is a charismatic young political leader named Nicolae Carpathia who founds the One World religion (slogan: "We Are God") and promises to heal the world after a time of deep division. One of several Obama clips in the ad features the Senator saying, "A nation healed, a world repaired. We are the ones that we've been waiting for."

the narrative has now gained traction in the GOP's campaign.  It would be worrying should McCain actually succeed in convincing the right-wing conservative christians that Obama is indeed the anti-christ.  As Time Magazine points out today McCain is consciously using the language of the right-wing including references to the o'so frightening "Left Behind" trash novels.

Please Rec this diary.

We've had a running battle for the last couple of hours with some other freepers (RedStaters?) Bad Dad started an effort to freep a poll at AOL that showed McCain in the lead at 100% of the States.

Even though we all know that's total BS, it could ultimately have some impact if we let it stand. We've been playing Whack a Mole with these Right Wing freepers but the previous diary just did not get enough attention to have an impact.

How come all the cool YouTube grassroots political activity is coming from our side alone?

Let's assume that the media advisers and producers who make a living, periodically, turning out advertising for political campaigns are imitative, like their peers who are employed full-time by the various media conglomerates, but not as talented.

This would explain, for example, why the soap opera that was the Clinton Administration, scripted by the Thomasons, was less successful than, for example, the longer-running "Friends."

I'm not trying to be snide, but have been struck for some time by the inferior quality of the output of the Wallywood transplants, as opposed to those who "make it" in Hollywood.

Note: I'm the author of the book, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama campaign.

David Freddoso's new book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate is a badly-written hatchet job, full of errors and distortions and smears. The author, who works for the right-wing National Review and published his book with Regnery (which printed Unfit for Command, one of the Swiftboating attacks on John Kerry in 2004), simply fails to prove his key assertions, preferring to rely upon a bunch of false attacks, McCarthyist-style denunciations of Obama's associations, and extreme conservative attacks on abortion rights, all of it padded with lengthy digressions on topics unrelated to Obama and his record.

Wow... things must be really bad for John McCain. Even a conservative bastion like the Wall Street Journal is out with an editorial praising Obama's support of a strong dollar. Is McCain losing his base?

The strong dollar used to be an axiom of US economic policy, until the current President. Somehow the administration still thinks they can sell the line that oil prices have nothing to do with the value of the dollar, but that is so ridiculous, it's surprising even this bunch of liars can say it with a straight face.

McCain of course would continue to allow the national debt to spiral out of control to fund his tax cuts, which cause the dollar to slide further. Let's see what the Journal has to say, over the fold.

I really hope this makes the rec list; Democrats are ignoring a goldmine  

This spring while Oil prices soared, debate festered between various factions as to whether supply/demand vs. speculators were causing the energy markets to rocket up.  In case you haven't noticed, Oil markets are crashing and only one real actual thing has happened to affect this situation, and that thing was predicted to cause this exact response.... what is it?  

The Democratic Congress CLOSED the Enron Loophole in the Farm Bill on June 22nd

Take Credit NOW PLEASE!!!  The MSM is claiming there is a fear of soft economic growth... This is laughable as oil went up and up through the spring and summer as it became common for the MSM and everyone else to talk slow growth, recession, etc... Something else happened, something the press is ignoring as well as our Party, at our own peril.

Paper trail and links to back this up below with graphs...

This is going to be a very short diary - because all that needs to be said is rather short.

To Everyone in America:

Both Barack Obama and John McCain promise to cut taxes.

John McCain plans to cut taxes on people earning over $250,000 a year.

Barack Obama plans to cut taxes for everyone else.

Where are you?  Do the super rich need a tax cut, or does everyone else?

According to First Read, the McCain campaign says the new ad called "Painful" will be run in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia (Northern Virginia), and Wisconsin.

It lies about Obama's economic policies, and the Obama campaign is calling McCain out on it:

This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam.

Obama Campaign Statement on TPM

Msnbc's First Read did some fact checking and backs Obama on this.  That, and more, after the fold

Apparently Obama is quite the draw.

He has sold out Invesco Feild in Denver for his convention speech in 24 hours, according to this item posted on CNNs political ticker.

Last night we attended the Grand Opening of the Obama office in New Philadelphia, the Ohio 18th Congressional District. There was about 200 people. Congressman Zack Space spoke and had some very interesting thoughts to share, and a little bit of interesting news!

Has Barack Obama become drill happy? MSM headline writers seem to think so: "Obama, In New Stand, Proposes Use Of Oil Reserve" claims the New York Times; "Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves: Policy Shift Is His Second In A Week On Energy Issue" sez the Washington Post. The content of the Times is more nuanced than the headline, but an actual reading of both stories make it clear that what Obama proposes is something less than a "stand" and by no means a "shift." The Illinois senator wants to replace light oil in the strategic reserve with heavy oil. What neither paper bothers to do is to explain what that means and whether the proposal amounts to much. (I certainly don't know.) John McCain, meanwhile, wants to "drill here and drill now." (It's unclear if by "here" McCain means directly beneath wherever he happens to be standing.)

Today's front page piece from Politico is a classic shell game for moral from the GOP.  McCain's campaign is widely considered a media creation with little or no actually ground game, such as Rove's vaunted 72-hour project.  Enter today's campaign sourced article on the McCain field operation with its exact figures trying to show some level of competence and growth.  This is lipstick on a pig...

A month ago, McCain’s campaign made a combined 20,000 phone calls and door-knocks. Last week, they made 324,000 — a sixteen-fold increase.

McCain’s political operation is also now building at the precinct-level. DuHaime said they have “a few thousand” precinct captains and would have “thousands more” soon.

DuHaime said that, along with the RNC’s Victory operation, they had 130 offices in their targeted states and 300 paid staffers in the field between the campaign and party committee.

What is the best part of this article is the coy response provided by the Obama campaign after Martin's inquiry... that below the fold.

Time Magazine Calls Out McCain Ad- Worse than Willie Horton

Three days ago I posted a diary breaking down McCain’s "The One" ad (I posted the ad at the bottom of this diary) – pointing out the multitude of similarities to the end-times Left Behind novels.  To many, not coming from an evangelical background or context, this probably came across as a conspiracy theory.  However, today Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine confirmed our worst fears.

The John McCain Campaign has reached a new low in presidential politics.  The McCain campaign is working to feed on people's fears and internet rumors that Sen. Obama just might be the Anti-Christ.  We have seen the Republicans swift-boat, conjure up affairs, and enact false investigations.  But, we have never seen anything this low.