I was out yesterday doing my door to door canvassing in Jersey, when I was presented with something that Im sure people like me, canvassing for Obama, have met up wth before. The most vocal, though rarely visible, PUMA supporter.  Normally you can still smell them a mile away by the still posted Hillary 08 lawn signs, Obama lawn signs crossed out, or the now fashionable Women for McCain lawn sign.  This house had neither.  Just a plain lawn, no adornments.  Follow me, below the fold for more

With all concern troll portions excised:

What is [   ] with the Obama Campaign?  Don't they know that [   ] means they don't have [   ]?  It's no time to [   ]!  Just because it's August doesn't mean [   ].  

If it were my campaign, I would [    ] immediately.  I would also [   ], fire [   ], and generally [   ].  I mean, there's no choice now but to [   ], even if Obama prefers to [   ].

How can you let McCain [   ]?  Even if [   ] happens, we still have to [   ], because [   ], [   ], [   ] and [   ] are at stake.

Several superfluous pictures, then jump, with what I really think.

From the August 18th speech to the National VFW convention by John McCain: "Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president."

So, can we agree that it is wrong to have the ambition to be president?  McCain certainly states it as a negative in this case.  Let's assume for the moment that this is actually what he meant, and see where it takes us.

So says Human Events.com in a recent e-mail to its supporters.  They plan to put signs up all over Denver with this statement, more detail below.

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point.

In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet. In the one indisputably authentic version of the story of a Vietnamese guard showing compassion, McCain talks of the agony of long-time standing. A quarter century later, Don Rumsfeld was putting his signature to memos lengthening the agony of "long-time standing" that victims of Bush's torture regime would have to endure. These torture techniques are, according to the president of the United States, merely "enhanced interrogation."

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

Crazy, huh?

NCJan raised an interesting point of discussion today about Barack Obama's appearance in Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum.

I'll keep this simple.

Obama is blowing it.

Faced with sinking polls and highly effective attacks from Mclame, he pretends all's well and no sweat.

In San Fransisco he promised donors he'd win.

Our guy is living in a bubble and doesn't even know it.

All his latest ads are ineffective.  He's always playing defense.  It makes him look weak and wimpy.

Because I live in South Florida, I have been volunteering my time. Several times I have tried to contact the campaign but to no avail. Finally, out of sense of frustration, I contacted my field organizer regarding the direction of the campaign and how can I communicate those concerns to the campaign.  Earlier this morning I had a comment regarding the conversation:

Obama needs to fight back. I just spoke with my field organizer who said that she has been hearing this refrain on the ground. She said that people are getting a bit demoralized because they do not see him fighting back especially against the celebrity meme. People want to see a fighter so they are willing to bat for him. She said that she’s been submitting reports expressing those concerns. From my impression the top people in the campaign are in a bubble. It also my impression that there’s a lot of crap going on within the democratic party that we don’t know about.

That's the date that I and many here will probably have a more clear picture of the electorate landscape and how the Obama campaign is doing.  I've tried to be patient and will continue to be patient.  I think polls after the Democratic and Republican conventions plus two or three weeks will provide us with a more clear landscape on where the electorate is going.  However, there are a few things that are bothering me now and I would just like to share.

Excuse me for this rant, but I'm quite angry with the lack of aggressiveness in the Obama campaign's responses to John McCain's personal attacks and the toll they've taken in some polls.
I've done everything I can to give Barack and his staff the benefit of the doubt, but based on what I've seen, the candidate is DEFINITELY being betrayed by those around him in not generating more aggressive responses to McCain's campaign tactics.
Barack deserves far better than this, and the American people deserve far better than a party that scares people every four years and screws them afterward.
More below.

Last night I wrote the following statement in response to another diary:

Is it just me, or is everyone totally freaking out right now?

Everywhere I turn there is a new diary, editorial or blogpost lambasting Senator Obama for not hitting back hard enough, losing Saddleback, getting outspent during the Olympics, and (here’s my favorite:) being too calm. Since all of a sudden being hotheaded and temperamental is presidential...

And then today, out comes the Zogby Poll, showing McCain up by 5 points, and the Chicken Littles are out in force.  Hence, I feel compelled to write my first diary to say the following  to my hyperventilating brethren:

Chillax. Brother Obama has got this sh*t.

Take the dog for a walk, play with your kids, go to the park and do pastoral dances, change the channel and watch some Olympics, read Taking On the System...

Why am I so confident?

The secrecy around Obama's choice for VP has created quite a bit of suspense. But, are there any suspects in waiting who are actually worth this kind of suspense. If Kaine, or Bayh, or Sebelius, or Biden is announced as the pick on Friday, how many people will be excited about that?

The announcement today that the United States will deploy up to 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan is just the latest signal of the Pentagon's seeming support for Barack Obama's strategy to fight Al Qaeda in the region.  Following by just weeks Obama's latest call to send at least two more brigades of American troops there, the request by U.S. commanders again confirmed Obama's assertion, one denied by John McCain, that Iraq represents a "zero sum game" for scarce American military resources.

CROSSPOSTED AT STRATEGY08.

I don't find much to quibble with on Slinkerwink's post critical of the Obama press machine (though I think the calls to fire Burton are premature). To my mind, the Obama Camp has been suffering though a number of missteps since returning from his overseas trip:

This is literally BREAKING news on World Net Daily.  Though they've lifted the report from the Telegraph

Since the report admits that George Hussein Onyango Obama is mentioned in Barack's autobiography and he last saw him in 2006, the headline doesn't seem quite accurate.

Barack Obama's 'lost' brother found in Kenya
Senator Barack Obama's long lost brother has been tracked down for the first time living in a shanty town in Kenya, reports claimed.

The Clintons and their people no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt with regard to putting their loyalty to the party above their pursuit of personal legacy. Two evenings ago, Tony Rodham and others met with...

Just wanted to post this to give a little hope in the dark times of this week.

Obama Outraising McCain 5:4

Obviously Obama is exceedingly unlikely to win Utah. But the fact that he is garnering more donations in the most solidly red state in the nation, not to mention one that border's McCain's (and my) home state, is heartening at the very least. While funds don't guarantee a win, it certainly doesn't put McCain in the best of positions after his convention, when he has to (is supposed to) take public financing only.