To hear some journalists tell it, Obama supporters can begin to relax: it'll be almost impossible for McCain to win this election.
I'm not seeing that, in the polls or anything else. This morning, Obama's ahead by 5.6 points in the...

It's a tense time.
We're entering the last four weeks of the presidential campaign in the midst of enormous financial uncertainty. What we need is calmness, thoughtfulness. I thought both candidates at last night's debate were calm and...

For the last two days, the expectations for Governor Sarah Palin's performance in the vice-presidential debate have been so low that as long as she didn't belch between answers, it would be deemed a success. Senator Joe Biden, in...

The intrepid and irreverent folks over at Grist.org have put together a game of Talking Points Bingo for tonight's VP debate. Go have a look. The debate's at 9 p.m.
 
 

Only a few months ago, rumors were flying that former Today Show host Katie Couric was about to be cut from her CBS evening news anchor slot due to low ratings.
Couric should be asking for a raise instead.
CBS has taken the one-hour interview...

Sooner or later, Washington conservatives get around to blaming the crisis of the day on the Clintons.
The crisis on Wall Street, which is being compared to a second "Grapes of Wrath"-style depression, is no exception.
Republican hack Tucker...

It's official: the state AFL-CIO is now supporting Alice Kryzan in her bid for the 26th Congressional District seat. This is a very important endorsement for Kryzan because it means that the unions are turning their attention away from Jon Powers, whom they endorsed for the September 9 primary. Unions also have significant influence with Democratic voters, and often mobilize manpower on a candidate's behalf.Speaking of Powers, he's gone completely silent since his primary loss. He still hasn't officially conceded or endorsed Kryzan. His campaign hasn't returned calls and e-mails from City Newspaper, and it appears he hasn't talked to

After several days of political theater where Senator John McCain turned the financial crisis into a cameo role for himself, we have to assume he has re-started the campaign he suspended, because the first presidential debate went on as scheduled tonight. The first half of the debate was framed around the financial crisis and essentially became a question of cost control or reasoned spending. McCain would continue supporting the military, corporate America, and veterans. Senator Barack Obama challenged corporate welfare. He wants to rebuild the infrastructure and provide better health care options for all Americans,  something,

Congressional Democrats have caved on offshore drilling and it's not going to be good for America. It's not so much action as it is inaction that's the problem here. Democrats are allowing the ban on offshore drilling, as well as the ban on oil shale production on federal lands, to expire on October 1. Politics had to play a part in this disappointing act. Dems know energy prices are a key election issue. Republicans have been pushing for more domestic drilling for years, but this summer they hammered on that point. Now they're taking credit for

The 20th century has been dubbed the "American Century," the connotation being that was our moment in time. Maybe what we are seeing instead is the end of Reagan era: free-wheeling capitalism, sky-high CEO salaries and bonuses, mergers, and leveraged buyouts. A 12 to 20 percent annual profit wasn't enough. Shareholders wanted 30 and 40 percent growth or you were out and another CEO would take your place. Now we have Congress dithering about what to do in the face of the financial crisis. Many of them don't understand it. Should we regulate?

  It's still way, way early in the planning stages - "just an idea we're investigating," as Bill Cala puts it - but yesterday's public information meeting on a proposed metropolitan school drew a big crowd, nearly filling a chapel at Nazareth College.Cala, former Fairport schools superintendent and, last year, interim superintendent in Rochester, has been meeting with several area superintendents, Nazareth representatives, and others to discuss the possibility of creating a public school on the Nazareth campus. It would be unusual in two respects: its students would come from both the city and suburban districts. And it would reject

How well the media has been covering this election depends a lot on who you talk to. The Republicans' drumbeat has been: don't believe the liberal media; they're against us. Democrats have been saying: they're not asking the tough questions; they're not going for the real story. We may be - in addition to an energy crisis, a health-care crisis, and a financial crisis - in the middle of an information crisis. Few of us really believe there is much truth in advertising. But much of what passes for

In less than a week, the American taxpayer has been saddled with nearly $1 trillion in debt. And the worst thing - it's not over yet. Investors are panicked and running away from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley faster than Republicans have been running away from George Bush. You can thank Newt Gingrich for at least some of this mess. Gingrich and the Republican Revolution of the 1990's was largely built on stirring mistrust of government, demonizing government workers, convincing the public that taxation was evil, and tossing government

Election campaign articles worth reading:1) "The State of Sarah Palin," Philip Gourevitch's thoughtful article in the current New Yorker. It's primarily a study of both Palin and Alaska, a region that obviously has had a strong influence on her. But Palin critics will take sadistic pleasure in some parts of the article.For instance: Gourevitch says Palin initially promised "full cooperation" with the commission investigating her firing of the public safety commissioner. "Hold me accountable," Gourevitch quotes Palin as saying. "We would never prohibit, or be less than enthusiastic about, any kind of investigation. Let's deal in the facts."Yesterday, though, CNN

A note to the national media: give us our scandal name back. "Troopergate" belongs to New York, not Alaska. It belongs to former Senate leader Joe Bruno and former Governor Eliot Spitzer, not Alaska governor and VP nominee Sarah Palin. Here's a bit of a refresher. Our Troopergate revolved around Spitzer, whose staff directed state troopers to compile Bruno's state travel records so they could be used to smear him. But interested waned after "Hookergate," when Spitzer was caught up in a federal prostitution ring bust.Palin's scandal revolves around allegations that she fired the state public safety commissioner because he

The presidential campaign is getting more bizarre, and much more worrisome.Here's what we've learned about Sarah Palin since John McCain picked her to run for vice president:McCain has said that Palin hasn't sought federally funded earmarks in her time as governor of Alaska, but the Wall Street Journal says she has sought $453 million worth of them.Her campaign said that on a trip to visit Alaska troops in Kuwait, she also visited Iraq. Now she agrees that she did not. Her campaign said she visited Ireland; "visit" is a bit of an exaggeration. National media report that she was on an airplane

Agreeing with Karl Rove isn't easy. But he's absolutely right. Senator Barack Obama can't win this election, Rove said in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, if he continues to get distracted, defensive, and ends up running against Governor Sarah Palin.The Republicans have once again ignited the Culture Wars. And true to form, the strategy is to attack and then cry victim. It worked in 2000 and 2004.They're baiting Obama with comments from Palin, hoping he'll implode into the angry black man. So far, it hasn't worked.But every minute the Obama camp talks about Palin is time he isn't speaking about McCain

ABC has started airing Charles Gibson's interviews with Sarah Palin, and so far, there've been no surprises. I can't imagine that these interviews will change anybody's mind about her.As many of the media were reporting this morning, Palin has a tough approach to foreign policy. Based on her answers to Gibson's questions, if she were president, we'd have a repeat of the Bush militaristic approach to the world. She stands by Georgia's Saakashvili, favors admission of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and yes, if they were admitted and Russia attacked one of them, the US would need to go to

I spent far too much time this morning trying to find out what time tonight ABC will air the first excerpts from Charles Gibson's the interview with Sarah Palin. It's at 6:30 and again on Nightline at 11:30. (There'll be more on "20/20" at 10 tomorrow night.Despite the interview's importance - and, I assume, big public interest - as far as I can tell, there wasn't a word about it in the D&C this morning. Couldn't find it in the Times, either. Or on CNN.com. Finally found the time on the ABC website, but even that took some doing.Palin's October 2

Another Bush problem for John McCain to run from?Today's New York Times is reporting that the US Interior Department, which is responsible for collecting oil and gas royalties, "has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal - including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.""A culture of ethical failure" besets the agency, the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in a memo accompanying three reports given to Congress today.The news breaks as Congress debates permitting more offshore drilling.