Foreign hackers attacked Obama and McCain

Here's a fascinating report from Newsweek on espionage against the candidates:

"The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown "foreign entity," prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of "phishing," a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised. A top McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign's computer system had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved.

Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week."

Making and remaking of McCain and more

This is a fascinating article on John McCain's campaign. It provides perspective as to why John McCain lurched from issue to issue. It seems, his campaign manager missed one of the most important lessons of Bush/Rove strategy - message consistency, a lesson that Obama took to heart. Also, the selection of Palin was even more shockingly unresearched than I had first imagined. Here is the most telling exchange as recounted in the article:

The following night, after McCain’s speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign’s senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?”

The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

This is a fascinating perspective on Barack Obama from David Duke, former Louisiana state lawmaker, grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and onetime presidential aspirant. I probably need to make several corrections to David Duke's assertions. Suffice to say facts and statistics were bandied about by David Duke in ways that were often entirely incorrect.

Did attraction had anything to do with it?

This is a very interesting Op-Ed piece where Kathleen Parker speculates that McCain may have selected Palin because he was subliminally attracted to her. I wonder ...

What's up with the polling?

One of the interesting things about the election coverage are the polls. Like most people, I am intrigued by the daily movements, and love to speculate why the polls are moving. But, taking a step back and contemplating the polls a bit more rationally, you begin to realize that something is seriously wrong.

Most of these polls are supposed to have a +/- 3.5% accuracy. The 3.5% represents the 95% confidence interval. That means, that there is supposed to be only 5% chance that the actual result is outside the predicted range. Except that, when I look at the polls, the number of outliers are far more frequent, and the spread is far more than would be expected. So, it would appear that there is something seriously wrong.


I don't have a precise answer for why this is happening, I do have three potential hypothesis:

• The first is that the polls try to forecast "likely voters". A closer examination of the polls suggest that the polls that have Obama up by large margins tend to skew in favor of people who claim in the form that they intend to vote. In contrast, the polls which have Obama down in the dumps, appear to be overweighting prior election turnout ratios. Essentially, this suggests if the same people who voted lasted were to vote this time, this race would be a toss-up and Obama would probably have a high chance of losing. On the other hand, if all the voters who say they will vote turn out in large numbers, this could be an Obama landslide. They key uncertainty, therefore, is voter turnout, and the polls frankly are just getting at what will happen on this front.



• The second reason has to do with demographics. The historical polling data used a segmentation scheme that was appropriate for a white man running against a white man. Having an African American and a woman on the tickets has completely changed which demographics are relevant. For instance, do pollsters know which groups tend to be racist and which tend to be sexist? Pollsters have got better as they can extrapolate from state and local elections. However, it seems that different agencies are using different weights and samples of the various groups, thereby skewing the results differently.
  


• Finally, there is a systematic methodological error that may be hugely significant this time. Most polls are telephone polls, conducted over land lines. Unfortunately, land line use in the US has dropped dramatically in the last four years, particularly among young people. Pollsters were still confident in their results as they assumed that there were no statistically significant systematic differences between those with land lines and those without. That may not be true this time. If the people who use land lines behave differently from people who don't, then the polls could be wrong. Different pollsters have been oversampling different demographics to adjust for this, which may explain some of the variance.

Overall, all I can say is that currently the polls suggest that this race is anything from a toss up to an Obama landslide. It all depends on who votes. Beyond this, any inference from any poll, is pretty much meaningless.

One interesting side note is this article, which shows that the polls actually mirror Google Trends. Here is how McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden track on Google trends in October:

(Obama - Yellow, McCain - Blue, Palin - Red, Biden -Green)

McCain Transition Chief had ties with Saddam

Hmmm ... this is interesting news, and could have consequences for McCain. It seems the Chief of his transition team lobbied to have sanctions lifted on Saddam - many years ago, but doesn't look good when you declare Saddam was the evil incarnate who needed to be overthrown in a pre-emptive attack.

Racist, where art thou?

This is a clip from Countdown on MSNBC. If you had been wondering where all the racists had got to, wonder no more. They were all at the McCain-Palin rallies.



Palin has managed to draw all the racists and bigots to their fray.

Of lies and politics

This is the latest from McCain. They clearly are stepping up the attacks. The problem is that almost none of it is true.



For instance, it is true that Obama served on the board of the Annenberg Challenge with Bill Ayers. It is also true that the Annenberg Challenge is an organization funded by GOP and former Nixon administration official, Walter Annenberg, and also has the GOP member Arnold Weber on its board. So, Obama gets smeared as a terrorist for working with a Republican funded organization.

It is also true that Democrats, including Bill Clinton, were also involved in pushing for more lax regulation. However, McCain now alleges that a law passed in 1985 requiring underwriting minorities is responsible, which seems bizarre to anyone except those who want this to some outsider or minority's fault.

They also put the blame for deregulation completely on the Democrats, which seems to conveniently forget that most of the legislations were passed by Republican Congresses to resounding cheers from the GOP. The "ownership society", i.e. housing for all, was in fact Bush's specific campaign promise which helped propel him to victory.

Finally, the NY Times reports that McCain's justification for linking Obama to the housing and financial crisis is a line from Obama's speech where he said, "Subprime lending started off as a good idea - helping Americans buy homes who couldn’t previously afford to." The problem is that this was the first line in a speech in which Obama explains the source of the mortgage problem and outlines a plan demanding more transparency and regulation. Most people who'll see the ad, of course, won't know all this. So, the ad will likely be effective.

Objectivity and politics ...

In Charles Krauthammer's recent piece he argues: "Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect. There is a difference between temperament and character. Equanimity is a virtue. Tolerance of the obscene is not."

Really? So, how does he justify Sarah Palin and John McCain smiling blithely and egging the crowd on as the crowd shouts, "Kill Him! He's a terrorist! Off with his head!" and various racial epithets? Well, he doesn't, of course. In fact, conservatives are apparently bewildered by the media criticism of Palin, and argue that both sides engage in this type of rhetoric. Really? No sign of such hate spewing from the other side, at least not as far as anyone covering the Obama campaign can tell.

However, while I jump to condemn him, might I also be permitted to recognize that Mr. Krauthammer is the victim of one or two common human failings (you can read Daniel Gilbert's book 'Stumbling on Happiness' for a a more humorous explanation of these).

The first fallacy is how we accept and reject information. Rationalists may believe that they are like Mr. Spock, absorbing information, evaluating it with an unprejudiced eye, and then reaching a conclusion. They may believe it, but they would be wrong.

Experiments suggest that human beings generally evaluate the worst characteristics when rejecting something, and the best when accepting. So, to Mr. Krauthammer, the relevant information about Obama is the worst things about Obama, i.e. every dubious association he has ever had, his lack of experience, etc. In contrast, the relevant information about Sarah Palin are the best things about her, i.e. her ability to connect with people, be positive, and be tough. Sarah Palin is experienced because she has "executive experience" a standard by which she has more experience than John McCain. Obama is not because he has only been a community organizer, college professor, state legislator and US Senator. The point is those who support Obama can't see what Mr. Krauthammer sees and vice versa, because they have already formed their judgments and are actually seeking only confirmatory evidence, and are dismissing the non confirmatory evidence. In some cases, in experiments, people with opinions are physically incapable of seeing the evidence that does not conform. Admit it, you have sometimes turned away from information because you didn't agree with it. We all have. That's why it is so hard to be objective.

The second fallacy has to do with how those preconceived notions and judgments are formed. There is no comprehensive theory that explains how that initial judgment is formed, but we do have a lot of concepts that explain some of it. I won't attempt to go through all of them, but let me touch on a couple.

We tend to believe things that are repeated often. It's the entire basis of advertising. Say something over and over again and after a while it feels true.

The other is that we make implicit associations that are based on unconscious frameworks. For instance, in test after test, people of all races have been found to unconsciously associate African American with criminal behavior. Even African Americans tend to exhibit this bias.

The fact that you have implicit assumptions or a biased framework does not in itself lead to overt racial bias. However, it makes you predisposed to believing adverse information. Couple that with frequent repetition of that information, and a complete lack of interactions where the counterpoint is effectively presented, and very soon you may actually exhibit overt racism. Now, if you actually worked with someone or frequently interacted with someone, over time, you'd come to realize that a lot of the opinions were wrong. However, it would not necessarily eliminate the framework nor replace the opinions of others. The unconscious view of the world is surprisingly resilient.

Mr. Krauthammer's inconsistency in evaluating Palin when she commits transgressions at least equal to Obama's, suggests that he is victim to one of the most common fallacies of human behavior - i.e. he is seeking confirmatory evidence. Was this driven by race? I don't know. Was this driven by the frequency with which conservatives sling mud against Obama? Again, I dont know. However, it would be surprising if Mr. Krauthammer's prejudice wasn't, at least in part, affected by race and his constant association with people who repeat his views.

However, turning from Mr. Krauthammer to the campaign strategies, it is clear that both campaigns are using these fallacies to their advantage, Obama has systematically rebranded McCain as a Bush clone, helped along in no small measure by McCain's erratic lurch to the right. Meanwhile, the latest vehement attacks by McCain and Palin against Obama linking Obama to Bill Ayers seem designed to exploit the implicit unconscious racial bias, which they hope to reinforce through repetition.

Here's the question - to what extent has Obama reinforced his image so that people will tune out McCain's allegations? To what extent is racial bias so deep seated that it could change people's opinions with just four weeks of mudslinging? To what extent can Obama blunt the attacks by tying McCain to the economic crisis and Bush? We will soon know the answers to some of these questions.

Errors and misdirection ...

No, this is not another post on Palin. Recently, Obama has released a few statements and ads that bear correcting.

In one recent radio ad, Obama alleges that McCain has consistently voted against Stem Cell research. This is misleading. Pre-2000, McCain was against stem cell research, and Palin has a position against it, but McCain has voted for stem cell research since 2000 according to NPR.

In the debates and ads, Obama's campaign also alleges that McCain's healthcare proposal would not help at all. If I remember correctly, it says, "One hand giveth, while the other hand taketh away." This is correct, but misleading inasmuch as the conclusion it draws is that McCain's proposal wouldn't help.

It is true that McCain has proposed to tax people's employer provided healthcare contributions. The average healthcare plan is probably around $12,000 on average. Which actually implies the effective tax on this is around $4,000. The tax rebate offered by McCain for families is $5,000. It's more complicated than I am making it, but this actually implies that it's possible that many if not most people with employwr provided healthcare may actually get a net tax rebate under the McCain scheme.

Obama, meanwhile, calls his plan universal healthcare. It's nothing of the kind. It does provide a government backed alternative healthcare package to anyone who wants it. He does also want to mandate that insurance companies cannot turn away people with pre-existing conditions. However, the savings for almost everyone else is largely supposed to come from computerization, data sharing, etc. most of which isn't going to be realized for years.

The problem with McCain's idea is not that it is not going to give a lot of people some rebate. The problem is that it makes no attempt to address the underlying issue. It doesn't, for instance, compel insurance companies to insure people with pre-existing conditions. So, there is no change there. It gives $2,500 in a tax rebate to individuals, when the average individual insurance plan costs more than $4,000, which will probably still leave a huge number of people uninsured. It does nothing to reduce the cost of healthcare. It does attempt deregulation to encourage more competition for health insurance, but lack of competition for health insurance has never really been the problem. So, his plan does reduce healthcare costs for a lot of people, but it does so by giving a $1.5 trillion handout (by some reports on NPR) without addressing the underlying issues.

Obama's plan also has a lot of flaws, but by creating a low cost government provided alternative, they can create a player that forces insurance companies to lower rates and keep rates low. It insures the uninsured. It does create some regulations that should ultimately lead to reduction in costs for all, and it addresses the issue of people with preexisting conditions.

So, all in all, McCain has a massive entitlement program that doesn't address the basic problems, but that does give more people cash back, Obama addresses the underlying issues better (albeit by using the government rather than markets), but gives less to those with insurance already.

This is not really explained by the Obama ads. McCain, I'm sure, will attempt to distort it the other way.

McCain interview and more ...

Very interesting interview with McCain, and its interesting to see the line of attack and the explanations that McCain offers.

And this explains why a lot of comics are praying for a McCain-Palin victory.

Sheer brilliance in comedy!!

Jon Stewart again. The Daily Show Team is brilliant. 4 mins 50 sec into the clip there is an brilliant juxtaposition of McCain and Bush. It shows better than I ever could what I was trying to express a few days ago, that McCain has no new ideas.




... and this is probably best introduction to McCain you'll see. Its irreverent, but very funny. Enjoy.

What was he thinking?

Amidst all this talk about "executive experience" in this time's Presidential elections, one question that the GOP had to answer was what ideas do they have to turn the US around? After all, dire predictions abound for the country, with people expecting America to be plunged into a third place behind India and China by middle of this century.

McCain's performance has been criticized as one of the worst ever by a Presidential candidate since Carter in 1980. To me though, the hallmark of the speech was a complete lack of direction. What does he stand for or intend to do?

For instance, one theme John McCain brought up was bi-partisanship after the GOP spent 3 days rolling out speaker after speaker to level character attacks against Obama, Biden, liberals and the DNC. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were singled out. So, this is bi-partisanship? Did the rest of the RNC not get the memo? Is McCain in charge, or did he just suffer amnesia?

He talked a lot about reforming Congress, but what reform? What specifically does he believe is wrong with Congress? The only thing he mentioned was that people came there with selfish motives, but then, how does he hope to fix that? Why, in his 25 years in that body, has he not proposed the changes before?

He distanced himself from Bush and the Congress, yet all he could offer was some old examples of rebellion. But, if he's different, what's different? What does he stand for the Bush did not? What does he hope to do that Bush did not? In fact, his only real explanation was that there are good ideas out there and we should trust him to find them. Obama offers change as a fruition of hope. McCain offers the hope that he can change. Is that all he has to offer?

He said he cared about the plight of the economically disaffected, but then went on to offer not a single substantive policy proposal for the future. The tax cuts he touts are an extension of Bush's tax cuts with a few tweaks. How is that different? What will he do in the next four years that Obama will not, or for that matter Bush would not have proposed?

He brought up energy independence, but if you actually scratch under the surface, he doesn't have a single idea apart from opening up more reserves for drilling and a token gimmick for a fuel efficient car. If America had enough reserves to be energy independent, they would have already. The fact is America doesn't have the reserves to meet all its needs. All McCain is offering is a bunch of distractions.

He hailed Obama for his achievement of being the first African American candidate, but did not use the term African American. Instead he cited "all men are created equal, ..." just before praising Obama's achievement. I may be paranoid, but the first thought that struck me was that is he trying to remind people that Obama is "uppity"?

He also used "civil rights issue" as a description of the school voucher program, which is a veiled reference that the GOP has been successfully using to suggest that the voucher program enables people not to attend schools dominated by people who they don't want to associate with, i.e. other races. This is straight out of the Rove playbook - prima facie irreproachable and compassionate, while achieving the completely indefensible effect of exploiting race.

He said he was the person who could bring peace, yet spoke more of war and fighting, rather than diplomacy and alliances. He mentioned he would protect Georgia from Russian dominance. How? What does he actually plan to do? I don't seriously believe anyone has an easy answer, but then he brought it up.

He promised to cut pork, but what pork will he cut? How does he expect to get legislation passed if he angers all the Senators and Congressmen? How can you believe he will do something no one in history has managed to do, including his hero Ronald Reagan? Also, the bulk of government expenditure isn't pork, it's interest and allocations to defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Unless he reforms those, he won't really affect the deficit. Does he have any plans to reform those?

Tax and spend liberals are a danger to a nation. Left uncontrolled, profligate spending could result in burgeoning debt, economic malaise, and a sense of entitlement among workers that reduces productivity and growth. However, if what McCain said was that the best the GOP has to offer, its singularly underwhelming and depressing. Obama has a plan. I don't like everything in it, but its better than no plan and 'I'll figure it out as I go'.

'Worst speech ever' may be an exaggeration. However, the speech illustrates that the GOP has a much more fundamental problem. They have, under Bush, implemented almost every one of their agenda items except disbanding social security, banning abortion and banning gay rights. They have no more ideas to offer. McCain may yet win. However, it might be better for the GOP that he does not. They need to come up with a revised recharged platform. Not this old fatigued set of ideas.

Changing the paradigm ...

This is one of the most insightful pieces of analysis on McCain's ploy and why it might work. Essentially, it argues that McCain is trying to change the conversation from who is the most qualified and has the better answers to who has the right values. Ultimately, the article argues it is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals. Sarah Palin upends Obama and Biden's appeal to family values and blue collar ideals, by putting a truly woman of the people. It also puts a person with truly Western conservative ideals, putting Obama's Western strategy at risk.

There is early evidence at Rassmussen report that Palin is generating the type of enthusiasm and lift for McCain that he must have hoped for. The question is, will this survive an intense scrutiny of Palin.

It'll be interesting to see how Obama and Co. respond.

More updates on Sarah Palin ...

Hmmm ... now it turns out that Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter, a senior in high school, is pregnant. Sarah Palin says Bristol, her daughter, is planning to marry the father of the child. The salacious aspects of this story aside, it's fascinating that Sarah Palin has decided to run for VP at a time when she has a newborn baby with Down's syndrome and a pregnant teenage daughter. Obama threatened that he will fire anyone on his staff exploiting this story. He says its a purely personal matter.

There is another interesting rumor that earlier this year Sarah Palin had traveled to Texas to speak at an energy conference when she was seven months pregnant when her water broke. Rather than cancel her speech and go to a hospital, she decided to give her speech and take a flight back to her home town in Wasilla (a 14 hour delay). Interesting level of concern about her son. Here's a very funny decision map of what she did.

On Sarah Palin's qualifications, she's supposed to be a big tax cutter, and has fought pork. As an example her introductory claim was that she had said, "Thanks, but no thanks!" to the bridge to nowhere. Really? As an Alaskan newspaper reports, that the facts are somewhat different. Ms. Palin basically supported the bridge wholeheartedly all through her election campaign and even thereafter, and only backed down after the money had already been cut by Congress. It's a bit like saying, "You can't fire me! I quit!" Very different from her claim!

This is even more interesting. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the aggregate earmarks for Alaska in 2008 (i.e. under Sarah Palin's watch) was ~$379MM, about $100MM more than any other state in the US. Also, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she hired the firm of Hoffman Silver Gilman & Blasco to help secure spending projects for her town and from 2000 through 2002, Wasilla received more than $5.5 million in federal cash for transportation and social service projects.

On her clean image, the current troopergate is not the first controversy she has faced. She was almost recalled when she was mayor for firing her police chief and library director for not supporting her in the elections. Sort of akin to the Justice department scandal. Also, she was part of 527 group associated with the indicted Senator Ted Stevens, someone she was publicly supporting until recently.

Oh, and there might be some even more explosive material. It seems that Governor Palin was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), a party reportedly dedicated to the secession of Alaska. Here's a video of the head of the AIP boasting about it (around 6 minutes into the video). Here she is again saying relatively nice things to the AIP in an address after becoming Governor. Makes you wonder about her comments about putting Alaska first :) At least, that's what the GOP would have said had she been a DNC candidate. Luckily she is from the patriotic party, so the question will probably never arise.

The GOP candidates ...

Governor Sarah Palin is a surprising VP pick in more ways than one. However, her relative inexperience could lull people into underestimating her, which could be a mistake.

She has negotiated the extraordinarily corrupt Alaskan system for many years (first as mayor of a town with about 4000 to 8000 people, then, for the last two years as Governor of the state), which is commendable, and at the very least, suggests she's an extremely astute politician (perhaps the fact that she has relatively little to lose helped).

She has clearly brought good luck to the campaign, with Hurricane Gustav providing the excuse to get Bush and Cheney off the GOP convention agenda, which must be a huge a relief to McCain and distressing to Obama.

She is a pretty good speaker. An example of her effectiveness is this speech she gave after her gubernatorial election.

After taking office, she was responsible for signing the deal with TransCanada for a gas pipeline. The deal is interesting, because of some of its terms. For instance, it offers a $500MM subsidy to TransCanada. There is also some debate about whether building a pipeline to Alberta, CA was consistent with putting "Country First". This is likely to be spun by both sides. The GOP will sure tout her independence from Big Oil and her executive experience. The Democrats will point out she just shipped US jobs abroad and gave a handout to the oil companies (giving subsidies like this to oil companies is pretty normal, but seems extraordinary in a year when so many people are likely to be in foreclosure).

On the other hand, she apparently got her passport only a year ago. Has not really traveled around the country.

She has several right wing views that directly contradict McCain's. She believes creationism and is pro teaching of 'intelligent design' in school. She believes that all forms of stem cell research should be banned. She believes that global warming is not man made.

She takes an extreme view that abortion should not be offered to rape victims, and should only be offered if the mother's life is in danger. This is from an Anchorage Daily News article on the Alaska gubernatorial debate:

The candidates were pressed on their stances on abortion and were even asked what they would do if their own daughters were raped and became pregnant.

Palin said she would support abortion only if the mother's life was in danger. When it came to her daughter, she said, "I would choose life."

Sum total, if her daughter is raped, Sarah Palin intends to make her bear the rapist's child.

And this is from the Juneau Empire:

Palin, however, isn't interested in talking about her views.

"She would not seek out this issue. She feels like there are several other issues that are paramount to the future of the state," said Curtis Smith, spokesman for the Palin campaign.

Smith said Palin is opposed to abortion, but believes an exception should be made if the health of the mother is in danger.

That's the only exception Palin would make, though, Smith said.

"She doesn't make exception for rape and incest, only for health of the mother," he said.

There is slight nuance here. A health exception could include something that would consider the quality of health of the mother. A life exception is only if the mother's life is in danger. Palin herself advocated the latter. So, if a pregnancy would only, say threaten the mother's ability to bear more children, I assume her answer would be it should not be terminated.

By the way, she also opposes all forms of birth control, including hormonal treatment, condoning only traditional Bible approved approaches. She has advocated criminalizing abortion and banning birth control.

Many conservatives are echoing a view that Geraldine Ferraro expresses, that smart people can learn the issues on the job. However, consider the contrast between the reaction to the two candidates. In Obama's case, he was considered inexperienced despite literally pages of opinions expressed by him on virtually every major national issue dating back, in some cases, more than a decade. In Sarah Palin's case, there is almost nothing on most issues of note, apart from social issues and a few issues that affect Alaskan's. The most astonishingly creative explanation for her experience on foreign policy was Michael Barone who notes, "Alaska is the only state with a border with Russia. And it is the only state with territory, in the Aleutian Islands, occupied by the enemy in World War II."

As a campaign ploy, this is brilliant. It means that she can morph into whatever position McCain wants to occupy. As a former beauty queen pageant, she should have the poise to carry it off. However, it reminds me of the movie The Dead Zone. In the movie, Christopher Walken's character has a premonition about an up and coming star politician (Martin Sheen) who he realizes would plunge the world into a needless nuclear war. In this case, similarly, the US is faced with selecting a VP whose views on most subjects are completely unknown. In fact, in most of these cases, she has probably never thought about the issues at all, and will rely on her advisers. It will be a complete roll of the dice.

It was interesting to note Geraldine Ferraro's unwillingness to endorse Obama was telling of the resentment some Hillary supporters feel. In her case, she is still smarting for having been called a racist. However, the analysis she repeats in the interview, while factually correct, ignores a larger reality. Obama does get 90&+ of the Black vote (although, he got substantially less at the beginning of his campaign and it increased to nearly 100% by the end). However, not even ALL the black votes alone would have won him the election, when Hillary was receiving more votes than any other candidate in history. In fact, Obama led Hillary among every demographic under 45. Its only in the over 45 population that Hillary made it up, by winning both the majority of women and the majority of white working class men. The big divide in the election was age, not race.

It is this fact that McCain may be attempting to address by selecting an even younger and attractive running mate. It may, after all, be what helped Palin to win the position over her more qualified female conservative counterparts.

Meanwhile, McCain is busy reinventing himself. This site is liberal and so biased. However, a look at the sources suggests that even adjusting for the bias, McCain has clearly flip flopped on virtually everything imaginable. He has been very maverick is cavalierly moving from moderate positions to a completely right wing one. As Michael Kinsley so eloquently points out in connection with the experience issue, all this raises the question which John McCain should we believe? Either way, as Michael Kinsley puts it, one of them is, what's the word I'm looking for ... ahh, lying!