Obama lands on Frosted Flakes box

by Mark Silva

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The 'bounce'' is gone.

So says a new CNN/Opinion Research poll released just now.

With a survey of voters taken Friday through today, the results show that 49 percent said they support the Democratic presidential ticket Barack Obama and Joe Biden and 48 percent support the Republican team of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Maybe it was Palin?

Maybe, maybe not - the favorable rating on McCain's running-mate pick is running at 52 percent. The voters surveyed were asked to rate McCain's choice of Palin, announced on Friday after Obama's convention ended. Only 27 percent called it excellent and 25 percent called it good - that's a 52-percent positive. But 21 percent called it a fair pick and 25 percent called it a poor pick - a 46 percent negative.

Or maybe it's just a question of a different poll - CNN and Opinion Research also had portrayed a dead-heat between Obama and McCain heading into the Democratic convention early last week - a dead-even 47-47 in their survey of Aug. 23-24.

But the Gallup daily tracking poll found an eight-point advantage for Obama at the end of his convention, and today reported a six-point advantage - which includes the three-day average of surveys taken through Saturday. Gallup, which also had Obama and McCain tied heading into Denver, suggested that Obama had gotten an 8-point bounce.

Today, CNN/Opinion Research found another dead heat.

So much for bounce.

The equation doesn't change with the minor candidates in the picture either. Asked if the ballot included Obama, McCain, Libertarian Bob Barr, independent Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, 46 percent said they'd favor Obama, 44 percent McCain, 4 percent Nader, 2 percent Barr, 1 Kinney.

The potential margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 3 percent.

by James Oliphant

BATTLE CREEK, Mich--Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is blaring. The evening has cooled off. The sun is low. It is a picture-perfect postcard of the end of the summer in America. You can almost taste the ice cream.

Seventeen thousand people have jammed the baseball field here--and Obama has finally arrived.

Where's he been? Here is the report from Noam Levey, who writes for our sister paper, The Los Angeles Times.

Bottom line: Obama seems to have a new slogan: "Win or lose, we still booze."

Obama and Biden pulled into tiny Hamilton, Indiana at 5:40 p.m. after a long trip along narrow roads winding through the corn and soybean fields
of Northeastern Indiana.

The destination was Pier 32, a lakeside restaurant and bar with faux brick walls inside that advertises itself as "North of the Keys, South of the Pole."

As ski-jetters zoomed by under the late afternoon sun, Obama made his way inside and waded into the waiting crowd of sun burnt party-goers, shaking hands, posing for photos and kissing babies.

Julia Miller, who was celebrating her 75th birthday with family, also got a kiss. "It's so exciting," Miller said after Obama had moved on. ""I'm just an old country girl." She said Obama had her vote.

Kermit Dietsch, who used to own a furniture store, was talking to his son on his cell phone when Obama walked into the bar.

Dietsch's son, a big Obama fan, had missed the candidate's visit to the city earlier in the day. But as Obama passed, he took Dietsch's phone and chatted for several minutes.

"He wanted to talk to him so bad," said an obviously star-struck Dietsch.

Obama then joined Joe Biden, who had made directly for the bar when the two candidates arrived, at a table celebrating another birthday.

by Mark Silva

ST. PAUL, MIinn. - Now you know the story's moving.

Katie Couric is leaving town.

And Charles Gibson. Brian Williams, too.

Anderson Cooper, he of "360:'' Making a 180 for New Orleans.

FOX's Shep Smith? Heading South.

With a curtailed Republican National Convention, reduced to nothing but procedural business on its opening day here Monday, and a vicious Hurricane Gustav enveloping the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the Crescent City, the anchors of the network news programs are pulling up sets and heading South.

"Whether they will be heading north at all depends on the strength of the storm at Monday's expected landfall,'' the Associated Press' TV writer, David Bauder, writes.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney both have called off trips to St. Paul, with the president traveling to Texas early in the morning to see relief-staging efforts and then returning to the White House Monday night to monitor events.

But the anchors?

"We're going to go with the biggest story of the day tomorrow," says Jay Wallace, a news vice president at FOX News Channel, "and right now the biggest story of the day is the storm."

by James Oliphant

TOLEDO, Ohio--Political observers said adding Joe Biden to the Democratic ticket for president would do a lot of things for Barack Obama: provide him with a better connection to middle-class voters, shore up his foreign policy profile, perhaps give him a shot at winning a battleground state.

Add something else: Biden has taken the oh-so-serious, scripted Obama campaign into the realm of improvisational theatre

Take Sunday at a small-scale event in here in Toledo. Biden was doing his job, laying out the case for Obama, when he simply couldn't resist the urge to riff.

"There's a gigantic -- gigantic -- difference between John McCain and Barack Obama, and between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent . . . Well there's obvious differences," he paused. "She's good-looking,"

The crowd laughed, and one woman shouted that Biden was "gorgeous."
.
"Where's that person?" Biden asked. "Who said that? Who said that? Would you say that again for my wife?"

Obama, by contrast, has called Gov. Sarah Palin "compelling" and "dynamic." He's never mentioned the former Alaska beauty queen's appearance.

by Mark Silva

ST. PAUL, Minn. - It seems Michael Moore, the radical filmmaker, isn't the only one who sees God's hand in Gustav.

Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, suggested that the hurricane's predicted landfall on the day the Republican National Convention opens "just demonstrates that God is on our side.''

But unlike Moore, who said in an MSNBC interview that Gustav proves "there is a God,'' Fowler has apologized.

During a flight from his party's convention in Denver to South Carolina on Friday, Fowler, who served as DNC chairman in 1995 and 1996, was recorded telling a fellow passenger that it appears Gustav will make landfall on Monday.

"That just demonstrates that God is on our side," Fowler added, according to a video posted on YouTube under the headline: "Fowler Fouls: Hurricane is God's Favor To Democrats."

The recording artist was not identified in the video, but was named on the conservative Web site, www.redstate.com, as Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C.

Today, Fowler told The Associated Press that he had been making fun of comments made by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said the attacks were God's punishment for abortion, homosexuality and other sins.

"This is a point of national concern. I think everybody of good will has great empathy and sympathy for people in New Orleans," Fowler said. "Most religious people are praying for people in New Orleans. There is no political connotation to this whatsoever. This was just poking fun at Jerry Falwell and the nonsensical thing he had said several years ago."

If anyone was offended, he said, he apologized.

"I don't believe in a God that's vengeful,'' the South Carolinian said. "I believe in a God that's compassionate.''

South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson called Fowler's comments "disappointing and despicable."

"A storm is not a partisan event and that is what they've done. I am outraged," Dawson said from St. Paul, where the Republican National Convention is scheduled to opent Monday, but has been dramatically curtailed because of Gustav.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

by James Oliphant

BATTLE CREEK, Mich.--Barack Obama is expected to arrive at here at Bailey Park, home of the Bombers, here shortly.

And he probably can't get here soon enough for many of the attendees for this evening's rally, who have been baking in the hot sun in the outfield, some since 2 this afternoon.

Appeals to a higher power have gone out. A gospel choir is currently performing.

It's really warm.

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by Mark Silva

ST. PAUL, Minn. - After more than eight years of campaigning for the presidency, Sen. John McCain surely must be frustrated by the fact that his long-awaited nominating convention could be taking back seat to an impending natural disaster.

"Yeah. I guess in some ways,'' McCain says in an interview airing this evening on NBC Nightly News with Brian Willams. "But the fact is, you know, I just returned from a briefing down in Jackson, Miss. The president was on along with... Mr. Paulison, the director of FEMA and (Homeland Security) Secretary Chertoff and, but this, this is an overwhelming thing.

"And let's hope and pray that it's not gonna be so severe, as (Mississippi) Gov. Barbour said, we're-- praying for the best and preparing for the worst. But look, this is just one of those moments in history where you have to put America first.

The opening day of the convention, which was to feature President Bush and Vice President Cheney, has been curtailed to nothing but a couple of hours of procedural business. Bush, after a tour of staging areas in Texas on Monday, plans to return to the White House Monday evening and monitor events from there. "They are taking it day by day,'' a White House spokesman says.

As for McCain, he too is taking this convention day by day, according to his campaign manager, Rick Davis. And the party is pivoting from its "Country First'' celebration of its presidential nominee to a nation call for community service.

"I know Republicans and Democrats will respond accordingly with generosity, with assistance and with volunteering everything they have to make sure that this blow is softened as much as possible,'' McCain tells NBC's Brian Williams in the interview airing on the evening news. "Just one of those things.''

by Frank James

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Democratic National Committee is suspending its counter-programming efforts in St, Paul in response to the Republican National Committee's decision to significantly scale back the GOP convention on Monday and to take the rest of the week's schedule day by day because of the Hurricane Gustav.

Here's the DNC's press release.

DNC Response to Revised Republican Convention Plans

St. Paul, MN - In light of the situation in the Gulf Coast, the Democratic National Committee announced that is has canceled its daily media briefing at the More of the Same Media Center on Monday, September 1. Additional scheduling updates will be provided when available.

(Our comment boards are broken so please send any comments by e-mail to theswamp@tribune.com and we'll get them up as soon as we can.)

by Frank James

BLOOMINGTON, MN -- Sen. John McCain tore up the Republican National Convention schedule today in response to Hurricane Gustav which is churning through the Gulf of Mexico ahd drawing a bead on New Orleans.

With concerns rising about the potential devastation the storm could produce and with the shadow of the Bush Administration's poor response to Hurricane Katrina still hanging over Republicans, McCain decided to abbreviate the convention's schedule.

Instead of the full schedule the convention's Republican planners had hoped for, the delegates will meet for at most 2-1/2 hours tomorrow to conduct essential business only. For instance, they must adopt rules, elect officers and adopt the party platform before they can nominate the party's presidential and vice presidential nominees.

There will be no evening session. Party and McCain campaign officials will decide each day precisely how much of the convention can proceed as they watch to see how the hurricane and its aftermath unfolds.

"I want to thank all of my fellow Republicans as we take off our Republican hats and put on American hats," said McCain who spoke to Republicans at the Xcel Center by live satellite video feed. "And we say America, we're with you... The time for action is now."

Republican officials also said that the convention would quickly pivot, transforming from what was supposed to a celebration of the Republican party and its soon-to-be presidential and vice presidential nominees, McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, respectively, to a fundraiser for hurricane-related charities.

(Our comment boards are currently broken so please send any comments by e-mail to theswamp@tribune.com and we'll get them up as soon as we can.)

Barack Obama and Joe Biden particpate in an economic "town hall meeting" in Toledo. (Photo by J. Oliphant)

by James Oliphant

TOLEDO, Ohio--Standing atop a downtown building in a city that represents the decline of America's industrial economy, Barack Obama continued Sunday to pound away on economic issues, sketching in broad strokes a plan he said would create jobs and enhance American competitiveness.

Speaking at a small-scale event at the city's public library, Obama engaged in a give-and-take with a select crowd of invitees. One theme that quickly emerged was the United States' ability to compete with rising global powerhouses China and India.

The Democratic presidential candidate linked global competition to improving American education.

"We're going to make sure every child in America has a world-class education," Obama said. "We can't compete against China and India when they're producing more engineers than we are."

He also spoke of the need to increase investment in basic research. Obama was joined in Toledo by his vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, who added that the refusal to invest in infrastructure such as roads, bridges and ports, had damaged the ability of American companies to deliver goods and services.

It may seem a stretch to connect competing with China to better parenting, but Obama made the leap. He repeated his assertion that improving education alone won't be effective unless parents take a more active role in the lives of their children.

"You walk into the classrooms in China, all those kids are paying attention," Obama said. "If parents don't parent and turn off the TV set and instill in their child a thirst for knowledge, we will not succeed."

He also called for increased enforcement of international trade agreements, saying that China needed to be prevented from stealing the U.S.' intellectual property.

Obama also took what probably was his first public swipe at GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, saying that she didn't believe in equal pay for women, and suggesting a new line of attack in an effort to prevent the McCain camp from drawing Hillary Clinton supporters.

by Mark Silva

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican Party's presidential candidate, is a lot younger than Sen. John McCain - 18 years younger. But she still is a lot older than McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin - 10 years older.

McCain is disputing Democratic criticism that the senator has chosen a woefully inexperienced running mate in the first-term Alaska governor and former major of Wasilla: "I completely disagree,'' the candidate's wife said in an appearance this morning on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, "and I know my husband does, too. She is heavily experienced in what she has done.

"You know, she -- the experience that she comes from is with what she's done in the government,'' McCain added, with a certain geography lesson meant to underscore Palin's national security bearings: "Also, remember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So it's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here.

'She started out like everybody else -- a member of the PTA, small government at home, then a mayor, now the governor,'' she said. "She comes with the kind of experience behind her. And also, I might add,'' said this mother whose own son has served in Iraq: "a son who is about to deploy to Iraq.''

She also rejects the notion, voiced by Democratic rival Barack Obama, that her husband is out of touch with common Americans, what with the seven or eight homes the McCains own: "I'm offended by Barack Obama saying that about my husband.''

On the family fortune which the Democrats like to talk about, she said her father had lived "the American Dream,'' making a fortune as a beer distributor in Phoenix and making her his heir. And as for her husband, she said: "My husband was a Navy boy. His father and mother were in the Navy. I mean, there's nothing elitist about that.''

In a special edition of the broadcast from the Xcel Energy Center, where a Hurricane Gustav-altered Republican National Convention is about to open, McCain spoke at length about the campaign and her husband. Here, courtesy of ABC News, is a transcript:

by Mark Silva

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- We're reliably told here that the book, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear, is a well-illustrated account of Sarah Palin's remarkable career.

Palin, who studied journalism at the University of Idaho, also apparently had a pretty good sense of humor as an undergrad - as the illustration from the book above shows.

A source has relayed to the Swamp the published portrait of the governor, and now vice presidential candidate, as a dorm-dweller, displaying the T-shirt: "I may be broke, but I am not flat busted.''

And John McCain says he was the "original maverick''.

Photos from the book courtesy of the Associated Press, including this undated picture of Palin with her husband's 'Stang:

by Mark Silva

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - President Bush, who plans to travel to San Antonio tomorrow to oversee hurricane preparations, said today that the people of New Orleans should prepare for serious flooding and heed orders to evacuate the area.

But Bush, maintaining he does not want to get in the way of relief efforts, will not travel to Louisiana until conditions permit.

"This storm is dangerous. There is a real possibility of flooding,'' Bush said today in a shirt-sleeved appearance at the Washington headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where he received a briefing about the Category Three hurricane, Gustav, which threatens New Orleans as an even stronger storm.

Standing beneath the fluorescent lighting of the urgent FEMA command center, the president, who has scrapped plans to appear this week at his party's presidential nominating convention in Minnesota, declared: "We will face this emergency together.''

This is a starkly different tableaux than the one Americans saw three years ago, when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The president, who had been on vacation at his Texas ranch, was returning from an appearance in California when he made a low flight over New Orleans in Air Force One to observe the scene from on high. He did not travel to the area until days later, and stood in a darkened New Orleans square floodlighted with stage lighting two weeks alterward with a televised address to the nation.

"I will not be going to Minnesota for the Republican National Convention,'' said Bush, who instead will travel to Texas on Monday to coordinate government efforts. He will travel to San Antonio, where state and federal officials are pre-positioning relief material.

"I will not be traveling to Louisiana tomorrow,'' Bush said, "because I do not want my visit to impede in any way with the response of emergency personnel.... I hope to be able to get to Louisiana as soon as conditions permit.''

A lot of work is underway in preparation for the storm, the president said, asserting that local, state and federal leaders "have taken the storm very seriously and are working very proactively.''

Officials have pre-positioned teams of doctors and nurses and millions of meals and millions of liters of water, he said. And authorities as far away as New Mexico are opening shelters for evacuees. The Army Corps of Engineers has advised him that "while the levees are stronger than they ever have been... people need to understand that with a storm like this'' flooding is possible.

by Frank James

We've gotten a few comments in by e-mail to theswamp@tribune.com, which I'm posting. (As I reported earlier, we have a technical glitch which has knocked out our comments boards. The people responsible for fixing it haven't been able to do so.) When you send in comments, please let me know which posting I should attach it to. Otherwise, I'll just throw them into a catch-call posting like this.

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David L: What were you thinking, disabling comments at the height of the comment season??????

Then being so inept as to not know how to undo the damage?

Huffington Post, you're not.

Sun 8/31/2008 12:28 PM

(Frank James: Let me answer you, David. We had huge traffic on Wednesday-Thursday because a posting on the Obama campaign's spat with with WGN radio was linked to the Drudge Report. Our site was so overloaded, it actually became inaccessible to many, including us. Our technical people took down the comment boards to ease the strain. Then when they went to restart the comment boards, nothing happened. They have been working the problem the whole weekend but nothing has worked. Believe me, Mark Silva, I and the rest of The Swamp's team are very upset. But we're not going to let that stop us. So if you work with us, we'll make the best of a bad situation. You're right, we aren't Huff Po. They've had a lot more money invested in them than we have. But we a scrappy bunch and we're not going to let this get us down. And our tech people tell me that we're going to be adding some server capacity that will prevent this from happening in the future. Can't happen soon enough.)
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Remember the evangelical preacher who was going to pray for rain for last Thursday in Denver so it would literally rain on Obama parade? Well, it didn't, but it does look like Hurricane Gustave may wash out a large part of the Republican convention even though it is a thousand miles away. Hmm? Is God sending a message? Julie M

Sun 8/31/2008 12:17 PM

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ITS BAD ENOUGH YOU BACKED OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT, PLEASE DON'T LET HIS CAMPAIGN LOW LIFE STOP OUR FREE SPEECH ON "THE SWAMP'.
BECAUSE IT WILL BE BAD ENOUGH IF HE IS ELECTED PRESIDENT-

REMEMBER "CHANGE" MEANS THE END OF FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA

THANKS

A FORMER READER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE-

Sun 8/31/2008 12:09 PM

by James Oliphant

TOLEDO, Ohio--Barack Obama Sunday refused to criticize opponent John McCain for taking a campaign trip to Mississippi even as residents of the Gulf Coast flee the approaching Hurricane Gustav.

Outside a Lutheran church in Lima, Ohio, where Obama attended services, he said, "A big storm like this raises bipartisan concerns and I think for John to want to find out what's going on is fine."

McCain is making the trip to Jackson, Miss. at the invitation of Gov. Haley Barbour.

Saturday evening, however, Obama had ruled out making a similar trip because he didn't want to interfere with evacuation efforts.

"The thing that I always am concerned about in the middle of a storm is whether we're drawing resources away from folks on the ground because the secret service and various security requirements sometimes it pulls police, fire and other departments away from concentrating on the job," Obama said Sunday.

"I'm assuming that where he went that wasn't an issue. We're going to try to stay clear of the area until things have settled down and then we'll probably try to figure out how we can be as helpful as possible."

To that end, Obama said his campaign would use its massive email fundraising apparatus to recruit volunteers or send donations once the impact of the storm is evident.