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during the weekend I was talking with some over fifty fives, who asked me after discussing the economic situation, they sounded really conservative, and when they asked me "Well how's your 401k doing young man." cringing I replied "I don't have a 401k I have a AFL-CIO pension, so I guess my money is in some some casino somewhere."
"Well good for you, young man, that's definatly the way to go."

says something doesn't it?

its funny because one of the DailyKos diarists had a great point about the huge flaw in moving us from the pension to the 401(k) system. Not only is the sponsor company not obligated to keep pumping cash in to ensure viability but the burden of administration fees moves squarely on to the shoulders of the employee freeing the company from a huge continuous cost.

It looks like the republicans might be abandoning Wisconsin. The RNC at least stopped purchasing TV ads for next week.

WisPolitics: No RNC ads for the next week, TV stations report
10/15/2008

By WisPolitics Staff

The Republican National Committee hasn’t booked ads for the next week in Wisconsin TV markets after running a series of spots attacking Barack Obama and congressional Dems, according to TV sources.

The decision comes amid speculation on whether Republicans may pull back in Wisconsin after several polls in the past week showed Obama up over John McCain by double digits. An RNC spokesman referred calls to the party’s independent expenditure operation, which is in charge of the TV ad buys.

An official with the party’s IE arm did not immediately return a call from WisPolitics seeking comment.

Sources at Wisconsin TV stations in Eau Claire, Green Bay and Milwaukee said the RNC's latest buy ended Tuesday and no new purchases had been made for the week of Oct. 15-21. McCain’s campaign has TV buys in Wisconsin at least through Sunday.

A source at a Green Bay station said the RNC didn’t have anything running statewide for the next week. The group had been booking air time from week to week, but the RNC hasn't indicated if it will return to the air after the week of Oct. 15-21, the source said.

One Milwaukee station source said he had expected an RNC buy and said he was "shocked" that it hadn't reserved time for the rest of this week

Republican National Committee halting ads in Wisconsin, Maine; focusing on red states

If McCain is indeed pulling out of WI, he's in full retreat. Unless he has a miracle turnaround right now, election night could be over very quickly for him.

irishmick79 wrote:It looks like the republicans might be abandoning Wisconsin. The RNC at least stopped purchasing TV ads for next week.

The election is in a little over two weeks, so yeah, this is another pull-out. The triage is likely to continue, because it looks like Barack is starting to take all of his pickup opportunities and is turning on the heat in places that should be safe for them. The GOP will probably husband their resources and try to save Florida, because if they lose Florida they will be completely fucked. Not to say they aren't already. 538.com has McCain's win percentage at less than 5% right now. Ouch.

There's also the matter of the down-ticket races. The GOP is going to lose seats in both houses. The question is how many. In a worst case scenario they could lose the ability to filibuster the Senate. Think about how fucked that is--and know that the RNC is also thinking about how fucked it is.

The funny thing is that McCain is playing ANY offense. All he had to do from the beginning was hold the Bush states. IA was almost a foregone conclusion but NM wasn't and neither was CO. Right now he HAS to hold both OH and FL. If he losses either then its over and if he losses both then its a rout. He needs to get his ass out of MN, WI, and PA, and in to OH, FL, CO, VA, NC, and MO. The ONLY offense he should even be looking at is maybe NH.

That being said when Montana and North Dakota are freakin' tossups and WV is moving that way after Obama's problems in Appalachia I stand by my previous assertion that the only quesito left is hwo big and broad of a mandate will Obama have and how many Senate seats will the Dems hold.

All you people going on and on about these "supposed" gains by Obam in key states, you mindless pleebs! Why, thanks to our friends at Foxnews, we can clearly see Obama is LOOSING ground on all fronts!!!

Just for fun, let's take a count of their so-called toss-ups. Polling data is from electoral-vote.com, my preferred electoral polling site.

Michigan: Obama +16
Oregon: Obama +14
Pennsylvania: Obama +13
Iowa: Obama +13
Wisconsin: Obama +10
New Mexico: Obama +10
New Hampshire: Obama +10
Virginia: Obama +7
Minnesota: Obama +7
Colorado: Obama +5
Florida: Obama +4
Missouri: Obama +4
Ohio: Obama +3
Nevada: Obama +2

Every single so-called toss-up is leaning for Obama.

Ghetto edit: Just the toss-ups that are leaning Obama by ten or more points total seven states with 82 electoral votes. And one of their so-called red states is leaning blue (North Dakota) and another is tied (North Carolina).

Is it an actual picture from Fox News or a photoshop? I can't believe that even Fox News would indicate Iowa as a tossup state, it's been blue all year.

That is in fact what Fox is calling the electoral map.

Here's WaPo's map. Note all the 10-20% Obama lead 'Battlegrounds'. Blatant. Media. Bias.

McCain is running his Primary campaign right now, during the General election. He's sucking up to the base, courting the loonies, racists, hard-cores and other Rightists at the expense of the middle.

During the Primary phase, McCain ran a slightly more centrist-appeal campaign (comparatively speaking). He's totally put the cart before the horse; it was when he picked Sarah Fetuschrister Palin as his appeal to the base that he began his retreat from any middle ground appeal he might have had so he could afford the healthy adoration of the Bible Humpers.

He's being backed down to the solid rock of dedicated Republican Rightists, and that's it. It's no boastful feat; these are the folks that would vote for a Doberman Pinscher so long as it promised to pee on a welfare mom somewhere.

The last X-factor in the race is the media's obsession with Samuel Wurzerbacher. The Democrats have pulled ahead when the issues are at the forefront and people are made to look at facts and figures, but the Republicans excel when the political discourse becomes vapid and the focus is on personalities, insipid buzzwords, and gut reactions. I'm sure he'll be forgotten in a couple news cycles after the Dow goes down another 700 points, but if he keeps going on the news shows while being presented as "Joe The Real American Undecided Joe Heartlander Six-Pack Plumber", it might dumb down the campaign enough for McCain to close the gap.

I'm not so sure. It is easy to distract people when the economy is all well and good, but that might not work right now. People seemed more annoyed with Joe than anything else, and already are starting to crack jokes about him not actually being an unlicensed plumber.

It just doesn't seem to be grabbing people's attention like McCain obviously hoped it would. I, of course, have no scientific evidence to support my claim, but that's the way it seems here. Even the McCain supporters could care less about Joe the Plumber.

You really have to love the fact that Joe the Plumber is neither named Joe, nor a plumber. His first name is Sam and he doesn't have a license to be a plumber.

Oh my christ

link

NEW YORK (AP)—Major League Baseball has agreed to push back the start time of a potential World Series Game 6 by eight minutes to allow Democrat Barack Obama to purchase a half-hour of air time on the Fox network.

Baseball spokesman Pat Courtney said Thursday that the game time would now be set for 8:35 p.m.

The Obama presidential campaign said Oct. 9 that it had bought the 8-8:30 p.m slot on CBS and NBC.

“Fox will accommodate Senator Obama’s desire to communicate with voters in this long-form format,” network spokesman Lou D’Ermilio said in a statement. “We are pleased that Major League Baseball has agreed to delay the first pitch of World Series Game 6 for a few minutes in order for Fox to carry his program on Oct. 29. If requested, the network would be willing to make similar time available to Senator McCain’s campaign.”

The World Series has not gone to a sixth game since 2003.

The decision was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

RNC response

“It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch. Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he’s putting it before our national pastime.”

I'm sorry, but elections are more important than some dumbshit sports game.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:The last X-factor in the race is the media's obsession with Samuel Wurzerbacher. The Democrats have pulled ahead when the issues are at the forefront and people are made to look at facts and figures, but the Republicans excel when the political discourse becomes vapid and the focus is on personalities, insipid buzzwords, and gut reactions. I'm sure he'll be forgotten in a couple news cycles after the Dow goes down another 700 points, but if he keeps going on the news shows while being presented as "Joe The Real American Undecided Joe Heartlander Six-Pack Plumber", it might dumb down the campaign enough for McCain to close the gap.

And you base those twin assumptions, that campaign will dumb down and that will go drastically in McCain's favor, on what? I get that some people here are hopeless pessimists and stuck in a rut but jeez. If you stop and look for a second what you're saying pretty much answers itself.

You nailed the first half of the answer when you called this a media obsession. The race has gone from being a relative squeaker to Obama having a significant lead and McCain doing very little in response. They could cover the increasingly ugly tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign but no one will risk alienating up to half the country like that. So instead we get a manufactured sensation regarding some random guy that got mentioned a lot at the debates. Like the previous coverage of hockey moms or Joe Six-pack it's largely hot air. It's a way of filling air time and I see no evidence this guy has become an issue.

Second of all, Obama and the Democrats are doing so well largely because of facts and figures that average Americans can't ignore. It's coming in the form of increasing bills for food, gas, health care, and the whole range of necessities. The Republicans are justly taking it on the chin for the policies which have lead the present economic crunch. It will take a huge blunder on Obama's part for people to consider McCain-Palin as the better option. Obama isn't likely to screw up and unlike Al Gore or John Kerry he can manage to be concise. He manage to make "change" the buzzword of his campaign for pete's sake. Even if this absurd tangent gets legs (which I doubt) it's unlikely to actually tilt things McCain's way.

SirNitram wrote:Here's WaPo's map. Note all the 10-20% Obama lead 'Battlegrounds'. Blatant. Media. Bias.

Well, I think they're probably using some idiotic definition of "Battleground State". Like they decided six months ago where the election would probably be fought out via lots of ad buys and personal appearances, and they just refuse to make any updates. At least the map indicates correctly that many of the battlegrounds are solidly in the Obama camp, whereas the inanity of the Fox map is shocking even for Fox News. Michigan (16 points) and Oregon (14 points) are toss ups? What the fuck? Obama's margins are actually tighter than that in some states that Fox News gives him (e.g. New Jersey at 12 points).

I think what they did was, they took an electoral map, asked themselves which states were so obviously Obama's that even someone who had never even looked at a poll report would know it, and then gave him only those states. Even somebody who watches only Fox News knows instinctively that California and Massachusetts are deep blue, and would be confused to see them listed as tossups. But if you were totally ignorant of real trends, who's the say that Iowa couldn't go either way?

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi wrote:The last X-factor in the race is the media's obsession with Samuel Wurzerbacher. The Democrats have pulled ahead when the issues are at the forefront and people are made to look at facts and figures, but the Republicans excel when the political discourse becomes vapid and the focus is on personalities, insipid buzzwords, and gut reactions. I'm sure he'll be forgotten in a couple news cycles after the Dow goes down another 700 points, but if he keeps going on the news shows while being presented as "Joe The Real American Undecided Joe Heartlander Six-Pack Plumber", it might dumb down the campaign enough for McCain to close the gap.

The thing is that voters aren't buying it this eleciton. All three of the debates so far the media and the prognosticators have called it a "tie" or lent only their partisan weight but universally the voters in snap polls and focus groups have given wins to Obama followed by gains of 2-3 points once the tracking polls fully incorporate post-debate polling. Simply put the only style over substance (that folks are buying this eleciton is that McCian looks like he is an off his rocker old man while Obama couldn't be more cool if you stuck him on a glacier. When you win post debate polling 2:1 it means you get all of your base and more than your share of the independents so no matter what the media narrative the voters are actually looking at the issues and personalities. It may not hold true for every eleciton but this year every indication is that the average voter has wised up and cares a shit load more about where the country is headed than where it was 40 years ago when Obama was 8 and Ayers knew some guys who blew some stuff up.

“It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch. Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he’s putting it before our national pastime.”

I like the passive voice in the first sentence. Didn't it occur to them that FOX, of all networks, is letting him do it?

At any rate, it's not going to matter, because the Phils are going to win in 4.

I'm sorry, but elections are more important than some dumbshit sports game.

I love baseball. I go to a school that's got a huge number of Phillies fans and has been described by the Princeton Review as one of the most apathetic major universities in the country. But that seems to be changing now - there were many more people watching the debate on the quad than there were in the sports bar next door. It made me happy.

Well, I think they're probably using some idiotic definition of "Battleground State". Like they decided six months ago where the election would probably be fought out via lots of ad buys and personal appearances, and they just refuse to make any updates. At least the map indicates correctly that many of the battlegrounds are solidly in the Obama camp, whereas the inanity of the Fox map is shocking even for Fox News. Michigan (16 points) and Oregon (14 points) are toss ups? What the fuck? Obama's margins are actually tighter than that in some states that Fox News gives him (e.g. New Jersey at 12 points).

Speaking of New Jersey, I'm almost surprised that they didn't list that as a battleground state if your account is right they did decide which states were battlegrounds 6 months ago. I remember a whole bunch of pundits, including Chuck Todd, who is normally not full of shit, were going on and on about how Jewish NJ voters aren't going to vote Obama because they think he's Muslim and anti-Israel. Because obviously, the best-educated demographic in the nation is going to be totally taken in by bullshit passed around by Fox News and email forwards.

At any rate, nothing I've seen so far explains why granola-eating Oregon has so frequently been listed as a toss-up. I know they have idiotic hicks in the east, but AFAIK it's so sparsely populated that they just don't matter very much. You might as well list Delaware as a toss-up because we've got rednecks in the lower two-thirds of the state.

Part of it also logistics. Jersey will never be listed as a tossup until consecutive polling puts it under 5 points. Its because you cannot advertise in Jersey. What I mean is that any advertising in New Jersey requires ad buys in neighboring states and not just small chunks but massive swaths of neighboring states. The entire state is comprised of two media markets: Phildelphia (solidly Dem) and New York (solidly Dem). While the state itself has a fairly large populace of exurban cowboys who are lean Republican it would be incredibly expensive and likely economically disastrous for a naitonal Republican candidate to spend money there. Given the cost of New York and Philly advertising its a boondoggle when half your dollars (essentially) are being spent in territory so blue you could sail a tanker on it.

JLTucker wrote:I'm sorry, but elections are more important than some dumbshit sports game.

Of course they are. What's telling is that such a move by the networks —particularly the one hosting the World Series— and such a move by both Major League Baseball and its corporate sponsors, would have been unthinkable even for the Republican candidate or the incumbent four, eight, twelve years ago. Some very high-dollar people have done the calculus and have concluded that McCain is Dead Man Walking, the GOP is Dead Party Walking, and that it's time to start making nice to the people who are very likely to be the next government on January 20th.

JLTucker wrote:I'm sorry, but elections are more important than some dumbshit sports game.

Not neccessarily to programmers. All things aside if they didn't see money or influence at the bottom line they wouldn't do this. Advertising time in the World Series may not be quite the pemium of other events but its damn high. Shifting the start time even 10 minutes later puts a lot of ads out of circulation which means less money to the network. there is another loss in revenue since Obama, by virtue of this being political advertisement, is allowed to purchase at a much lower typical weekday rate on the same airtime. So in other words MLB (which won't see adime out of this deal) and FOX (who stand to lose money) did this anyway. it may make sense to us from a "good citizen" standpoint but that doesn't sell to the corporate line so you can bet money that this is only because folks at both of those groups already smell President Obama and would rather not piss him off.

CmdrWilkens wrote:So in other words MLB (which won't see adime out of this deal) and FOX (who stand to lose money) did this anyway. it may make sense to us from a "good citizen" standpoint but that doesn't sell to the corporate line so you can bet money that this is only because folks at both of those groups already smell President Obama and would rather not piss him off.

For FOX, you'd think the boat would have already sailed on that.