Okay this is a simple action diary.  What's the action?  Getting off your rumps, coming out tonight, and meeting each-other at the OSU Rally!

Come on, there's not too many days left in the election! Let's go from net-roots to grassroots in Central Ohio!

Is it just me or are most of the pundits out there bashing Obama some middle aged white dudes who long ago lost all relevance or credibilty because of their glaring partisan natures? This is part rant, part substantive diary.

UPDATE: ABC 6and NBC 10 are reporting that Carcieri has cut a check tonight!  Projohas the story now:

   The matter came to light yesterday in a piece written by Patrick Crowley, the assistant executive director of the National Education Association’s Rhode Island unit, and posted on the political blog www.rifuture.org.

   After Republican presidential candidate John McCain had trouble answering a question about how many houses he owned, Crowley wrote that he asked the same question about Republican Governor Carcieri. Crowley wrote that Kempe directed him to the financial statement that Carcieri had filed with the Rhode Island Ethics Commission.

Now the next question: Why didn't Carcieri list both condo's on his financial disclosure report?

Dear Senator McCain:

As a poor service industry worker over the age of fifty, there are a myriad of problems for which I have concern in this election year. Yet, I am a one issue voter.

With all due respect and humility, I ask you to revisit something I am sure you do painfully every day.

I don't have the tools or know the right people to actually film this, so if anyone wants to make it, you're certainly welcome to the idea...

Veteran 1:  "My name is XXXXX.  I was a POW in Viet Nam for 3 years, but I DIDN'T vote to attack Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11."

Veteran 2:  "My name is XXXXX.  I was a POW in Viet Nam for 4 years, but I DIDN'T vote to allow the government to use the same techniques that the Vietnamese used against me."

Veteran 3:  "My name is XXXXX.  I was a POW in Viet Nam for 2 years, but I DIDN'T cheat on my wife while she was in the hospital and marry my rich mistress."

Veteran 4:  "My name is XXXXX.  I was a POW in Iraq for 2 years, but I DO know how many homes I have.  I'm homeless."

Text:  John McCain, we honor the sacrifice you've made, but being a POW will never excuse your poor judgment.

The sweat equity (literally) of Alan Grayson supporters paid off Tuesday night when he announced to a standing-room-only crowd at campaign headquarters in Orlando that he had won the Democratic nomination for U.S. House District 8.  

The people don't want to shake hands with the GOP candidate while McCain's stepping on their chest.  Blood needs to fly.  

Here's how and why:

Funny, I always thought that having so many different news mediums and sources to refer to would make it easier to find out how the convention and the campaign in general is really going.  But actually it makes things more confusing.  All the different filters and opinions and spin makes it difficult at times to determine what is just perception and what is reality.  Are the media and/or the blogosphere accurate representations of what people are really thinking about all this and how this is actually playing out?  

Some people say we shouldn't worry about the polls, others say we should definitely worry about them, some say it's going great, others say it's not.  I might feel one way about something only to find out that I'm dead wrong only to find out that maybe I was right, only to find out that I don't know what the fuck I know.

If you're in the Cary, North Carolina, area, join your progressive brothers and sisters at the Obama campaign's official Mile High in Cary Convention Watch Party!

Obama for America's Official Mile High in Cary Acceptance Speech Watch Party
Galaxy Cinema
770 Cary Towne Boulevard, Cary NC 27511

Tickets are free, but seating is limited.  Reserve your spot at myBO.com.

We REALLY need to bring down the Rethug presidential nominee John McNicotine.  The only way to fight back against his attacks on Obama is to attack his qualifications for the presidency.  Kerry should have done that against Bush.  Well, as long as the Rethugs insist on telling lies about our nominees, we need to spread the truth about theirs.

Look, diaries like the top rec'd diary by Leevank are totally missing the point.

Kossacks, we will not win this election by insulting people.

We're not going to win back the White House with the old bare-knuckled tactics of the past.

We could win the battle (for the White House), but we'll lose the war (for a progressive agenda to change the nation, break partisan gridlock, etc.).

There are people out there - for whatever reason (there are many!) - who don't like Obama and don't want to support Obama.

Update, in honor of SteamPunkX: Most voters in the T of Pennsylvania, or the U of Ohio, or in Michigan - and even across the south - are not racists.  They just don't like being talked down to.  It's not even about being anti-intellectual.  It's about not feeling respected.

I was watching media coverage of Hillary's convention speech this morning, and what was more disturbing than the way it was being characterized was what came immediately after it -- a segue to a lede about whether "a new cold war is about to begin."

This wasn't Fox News.  I think it was CNN, but I was switching around.  What's disturbing about it is both the fact that the media is more than willing to take their narratives from conservative talking points if it makes for a good cock fight, and that it is so incredibly wrong.

Something needs to be done to make sure this election does not become a referendum on a hugely outdated model of Russia.

BREAKING:  McCain logs on

John McCain, eager to show that he is part of the new generation and understands the internets, logged on this evening.

And, OMG, I was able to get a copy of his first email, sent to Karl Rove.

Karl:

I thought I'd email you to bring you up to date.  I've been spending time between campaign stops practicing how to send an email and learning all the different parts of a computer, just like you said. This email will be short because, as you know, we're having a meetup at one of my homes tonite to watch the Hillary speech and Cindy is already giving me the eye that it's almost time to throw the steakburgers on the grill.  

As you know, we had a leak in our roof earlier today and I had roofers running around here all day today so that the rain doesn't put a damper on this evenings' gathering.  The landscapers are cutting the lawns and I think Mitt may be arriving soon.  He's a little late......I got the kiddies out front monitoring the road for him.   I'll continue logging this email later after the guests leave........Later.

I really hope that the people who are out there feverishly supporting Hillary and won't back off their position finally do at this point.  With Hillary's speech tonight and Bill's tomorrow, I hope this will be the change in the Democratic Party.

Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, pollster John Zogby, my aging relatives, and (I suspect) millions of other Americans deduced that if Obama moved to appeal to Republicans and evangelicals after the primary, he would rapidly lose momentum and perhaps even drop in the polls.  

Obama proved all those people correct to a shocking degree.  He was more than 100 electoral votes ahead, with 6 pickup states relative to 2004.  Now he has lost about 75 of those electoral votes and half those states, and is astonishingly tied with elderly temperamental idiot McCain.

There's still time.  But it's hard to tell what Obama has learned from this.  

Moore has been proven prescient again and again -- about Iraq, the economy, health care, and about Obama - who Moore has endorsed.

If Obama follows Moore's instructions on "How to Lose the Most Winnable Election in History", Obama's next move will be to Denounce Michael Moore.

Then we're toast.

Take the poll.

I'll admit that I don't know much about Mark Warner, but I remember reading about him when he won the election for the governor of Virginia. But this speech tells me that he has his priorities in the right places, especially on education and science.

If you've wondered what the Big Tent looks like from the inside, here's a shot of the blogging area at high noon.

As you might imagine, the sound level and activity in the tent is incredible. At any one moment, you've got people on stage, others conducting interviews, news cameras passing through, knots of folks collecting around celebrities, and lots of bloggers heads down reporting their take on convention events. It's an atmosphere that can inspire... or make you nuts, as trying to concentrate on writing a story can be hard when you're being interrupted by requests to conduct an interview, requests to be the subject of an interview, visits from Democratic politicians and their staff, and the general exchange of names, cards, and handshakes among dozens of organizations.

Still, your valiant editors are doing their best to stay focused.

That's BarbinMD, MissLaura, brownsox, and Plutonium Page sharing a couch and pounding the keys.

I propose that at the Democratic National Convention I would like to see a one-act play about McCain.

The Players:

Reporter played by Janet Napolitano

John McCain played by Jim Webb

come along,