“Never Fool Yourself” Was Advice A Very Bright Statistician Told Me About Polling.

After weeks of intensive scrutiny and missteps, the glow around Sarah Palin has become light of flickering flames from blazes stoked by the main stream media. A Washington Post headline decrees she is now a drag on McCain.

When you burrow into the actual poll results McCain - Palin have have actually gained 3 points from 43% to 46% between September 22 to 29 while Obama has dropped from 52% to 50% among registered voters. Among likely voters it is Obama 48% to McCain’s 45%.  Rasmussen polling has the race 51% to 44% anibg likely voters based on a 3-day rolling average.

About half of all registered voters said they were uncomfortable with the idea of McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 percent of those voters said Palin does not have the requisite experience to be president.

Nearly two-thirds of both independent men and women in a new Washington Post / ABC poll said Palin has insufficient experience to run the White House. For the first time half say Obama has the experience to be President.

More than two-thirds of voters in a Pew poll said they plan to watch the VP debate, far more than said they were going to turn on the vice presidential debate four years ago, and maybe a record. The expectations are that Biden, a six-term senator, will win: Voters by a 19-point margin think he will prove to be the better debater.

(W)hom they’d consult for advice if they faced the “toughest decision of your life,” voters chose McCain over Obama by 50-34

Dick Morris’ analysis is recent developments in the Presidential contest goes like this. Fox News had Obama ahead by 42-39 in its August 19-20 survey, its poll for September 8-9 shows McCain ahead by 45-42. Obama hasn’t changed, but McCain has moved up six points. There has been a basic trend away from the Democratic Party in recent months. In an April 28-29 sample, 44 percent of voters said they were Democrats while only 30 percent said they were Republicans.

That 14-point gap in favor of the Democrats closed to a 9-point gap at the end of July and collapsed to only 7 points by September 8-9. Now, 41 percent say they’re Democrats while 34 percent identify themselves as Republicans. At the end of July, voters trusted the Democrats better to handle the economy by 11 points - 47-36. Now, the Democratic lead on the economy has dwindled to only four points - 46-42.

On Obama’s signature issue, the Iraq war, voters trusted the Republicans to handle it better by 52-39 in early September, compared with only a 46-40 advantage in mid-June.

Republicans have gained on the energy issue too. Asked which party they trusted more to achieve energy independence, the voters gave the Democrats an eight-point lead before the conventions and an only two-point lead now.

The Queen has become Sarah Palin. On the question of which of the four candidates for president and vice president best “understands the problems of day to day life in America,” Palin finished first with 33 percent, Obama second with 32 percent, McCain third with 17 percent and Biden last with 10 percent - a combined 50-42 margin for the Republican candidates.

Asked if Palin had been the object of sexist attacks in the media, 45 percent said yes, compared to only 33 percent who felt that Obama had been victimized by racist attacks. The more the Democrats and the media pour incoming fire on Palin, the more they polarize themselves as sexist and elitist, two things you don’t want to be in today’s America.

But, in perhaps the worst news in this survey for Obama, when asked whom they’d consult for advice if they faced the “toughest decision of your life,” voters chose McCain over him by 50-34. If the toughest decision is who to vote for president, McCain can take comfort in this finding.

Obama 14% Lead Among Women Halved

McCain is chipping away as Obama’s convention “bounce”, most of his gains have come among women voters. Obama still leads 51% to 44% among women, but that seven-point edge has been cut in half from the fourteen point lead Obama enjoyed last Tuesday. Most all of that is due to Sarah Palin’s pick as VP and the splendid job she did last week with her acceptance speech. In fact we are right back where we were before either convention, i.e., 46% for Obama and 45% for McCain. The trend is toward McCain-Palin and away from Obama-Biden.

McCain leads by 3% among men, little changed in recent days. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Obama voters now say they are voting with enthusiasm for their candidate while 17% are primarily voting against the other candidate. For McCain, those numbers are 65% for and 28% against respectively. Before the Republican convention, just 54% of McCain voters were voting enthusiastically for him rather than simply voting against Obama.

McCain is now viewed favorably by 58% of the nation’s voters while Obama earns positive reviews from 57%.

Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of voters including 40% with a Very Favorable opinion of her which is remarkable given the pummeling she has suffered by main stream media. Biden  has disappeared from the national conversation leading some pundits to observe it is a two-to-one contest against Obama. Others are saying Palin should debate Obama.

The Electoral College count currently shows Obama leading in states with 193 Electoral College votes while McCain leads in states with 183 votes. Data from rasmussenreports.com/markets.rasmussenreports.com blocked::http://rasmussenreports.com/markets.rasmussenreports.com rasmussenreports.com/markets.rasmussenreports.com blocked::” href=”http://rasmussenreports.com/markets.rasmussenreports.com” target=”_self”>Rasmussen Markets currently gives Obama a 57.1 % chance of winning in November. That has been trending toward McCain.

The Rasmussen polls are conducted by telephone nightly among 1,000 likely voters nationwide and compiled on a three-day rolling average.

Obama Earmarked $300,000,000 in first 200 days; Biden bagged nearly $100,000,000 in one year.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and McCain VP pick employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group including: $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and the biggest chunk of $15 million for a rail project. intended  to connect Wasilla with the town of Girdwood, where now disgraced Senator Ted Stevens has a house. Although neither the watchdog group nor the Washington Post it is unclear whether Palin had anything to do with that project.

Palin did oversee hiring Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska’s most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts.

McCain’s crusade against earmarks — federal spending sought by members of Congress to benefit specific projects — has been a hallmark of his campaign. He has said earmarks are wasteful and are often inserted into bills with little oversight, sometimes by a single powerful lawmaker.

Palin has also railed against earmarks, touting her rejecting the $223 million so-called bridge to nowhere in the state as a prime credential for the vice presidential nomination. “As governor, I’ve stood up to the old politics-as-usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good-ol’-boy network.

(Palin) certainly wasn’t shy about putting the old-boy network to use to bring home millions of dollars,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “She’s a little more  savvy to the ways of Washington than she’s let on.” In her final four years as Mayor she raked in $1,000 per resident - nearly $7 million - before getting elected Governor.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, secured $300 million in earmarks, in less than 200-days in the US Senate including 7-figures for the “non-profit” hospital where his wife was employed that raised her salary to over $300,000 a year. He requested over 100 more for 2008 adding another $100 million or so. Then he announced that he would no longer seek earmarks for any entity. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Obama’s VP running mate, co-sponsored $85.6 million in earmarks for 2008, according to one study.

John mCCain refused to earmarks anything, and always has done so.

Kaveh Mohseni, a spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, calls Biden “a great friend of the mullahs.” says a copyrighted NewsMax.com article.

Kaveh notes that Biden’s election campaigns “have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California and by the Silicon Iran network,” a loosely-knit group of wealthy Iranian-American businessmen and women seeking to end the U.S. trade embargo on Iran.

“In exchange, the senator (Biden) does his best to aid the mullahs,” Mohseni argues.

Biden’s ties to pro-Tehran lobbying groups are no secret. But so far, the elite media has avoided even mentioning the subject.

Just recently, Biden was one of 16 U.S. senators who voted against a bill that would add Iran’s Revolutionary Guards corps to the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations, because of its involvement in murdering U.S. troops in Iraq.

Biden offered to sponsor a meeting of Iranian and American parliamentarians in Washington - or any place else, if the Iranians had problems coming to the United States. No one in Iran ever took up his offer.

Several Congressional Democrats attempted to travel to Tehran last December to meet with Iranian parliamentarians, but were denied visas by the Iranian regime, one of the Members of Congress involved in the initiative told Newsmax.

While Biden has condemned the human rights abuses of the Iranian regime, his decision to address the American-Iranian Council and other pro-Tehran groups has angered many Iranian-Americans.

“Biden has been too cozy with the supporters of the Iranian regime, which is anti-American, anti-Iranian, and has a horrendous human rights record,” said Sardar Haddad, an Iranian pro-democracy activist based in Texas.

The American-Iranian Council was founded by Hoosang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers University professor of urban studies who tried to run for president of the Islamic Republic in 2005.

Funded in part by oil giant CONOCO, which hoped to secure lucrative oil contracts, AIC has lobbied consistently to get U.S. trade sanctions on Iran eliminated.

In a recent interview with the popular Persian-language netzine, Tabnak, run by the former head of the Revolutionary Guards, Amirahmadi complained that he wasn’t getting enough credit for lobbying Washington.

“This is because the Iranians, instead of empowering the lobby supporting them, undermine it,” he said.

Biden’s ties to the pro-Iranian regime lobby are not a haphazard affair, but a matter of conviction.

Biden told Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway in 2005 that the United States should address Iran’s “emotional needs” and conclude a “nonaggression pact” with the Tehran regime.

“Senator Joseph Biden said that even if Iran was a full democracy like India, it would want nuclear capability, like India. What the world needed to address was Iran’s emotional needs, he said, with a nonaggression pact,” Greenway wrote.

Biden hasn’t shied from asking wealthy Iranian-Americans with known sympathies for the Tehran regime for campaign cash.

When Iranian-American pro-democracy activists learned that Biden planned to attend a fundraiser organized on his behalf by an Iranian Muslim charity in California, they phoned his U.S. Senate office to warn him about the group’s pro-Tehran sympathies.

But the Delaware Democrat swept aside their concerns and attended the Feb. 19, 2002, event at the California home of Dr. Sadegh Namazi-Khah, which brought in an estimated $30,000 for his U.S. Senate re-election campaign.

Several people who attended the fundraiser said that Biden delivered a sweeping condemning of President Bush’s recent State of the Union speech, which identified the Iranian regime as part of an “axis of Evil.”

“He really impressed us by his grasp of world affairs,” Namazi-khah told me at the time. “He encouraged us to make our views known and to get more involved in American politics.”

Biden also impressed many of those present with his friendly attitude toward Iran.

Biden said that “Iran always wanted to be an an ally of the United States and to have good relations with the U.S.,” said Housang Dadgostar, a prominent lawyer who wrote Biden’s campaign a $1,000 check.

“As Iranian-Americans, we don’t want anything to happen to the Iranian government or to the Iranian people as a result of this war on terrorism,” said Mohsen Movaghar, a Los Angeles businessman who also attended the event and contributed $1,000 to Biden.

Both men belonged to the 70-member board of directors of Namazi-khah’s Iranian Muslim Association of North America (IMAN), which hosted the event.

Namazi-Khah and other IMAN board members told me that the idea for the fundraiser came from Biden, who apparently learned about the group after attending an earlier event sponsored by the AIC.

Both Namazi-Khah and Movaghar also belong to the Board of the American-Iranian Council, the Washington, DC-based lobbying group pressing for an end to U.S. sanctions on Iran.

So does Japeh Youssefi, who traveled from Scotsdale, Ariz., with his wife to attend the 2002 fundraiser in California.

Between the two of them, the Youssefi’s gave $4,000 to Biden’s U.S. Senate campaign, the legal limit at the time.

“Mr. Youssefi has earned the reputation of being a vocal supporter of Iran-US rapprochement and détente,” a biographer on the AIC Web site reads.

“In March of 2000 he created FAIRPAC - the Foundation for American Iranian Rapprochement, a political advocacy council - as a means of informing and educating interested persons everywhere of the benefits of improved U.S.-IRAN relations,” according to the bio.

Another key Biden contributor is Hassan Nemazee, a New York money-manager who chaired Hillary Clinton’s finance committee, personally raising over $500,000 for her campaign.

Nemazee also has served on the board of the American-Iranian Council, and more recently set up the Iranian-American Political Action Committee (IAPAC) along with a group of Silicon Valley billionaires, many of whom have close ties to the Iranian regime.

Because of the controversy Nemazee and IAPAC members have generated within the Iranian-American community, the PAC’s Web site includes a bald disclaimer of any ties to Tehran.

“IAPAC has no relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran . . . and is not focused on U.S. policy towards Iran, establishing ties with or legitimizing the government of Iran,” it says.
Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his running mate “highlights the need to really investigate the web of Iranian influence in the United States,” Iranian-American political analyst Hassan Daioleslam told Newsmax.

“What you have here is a group of people who have been working together through different groups and organizations for the past ten years” to promote the interests of the Iranian regime.

“It’s deeply troubling to have a vice-presidential candidate raise funds from people whose ties to the Iranian regime raise such serious questions,” Daioleslam said.

He can’t.

Joe Biden has been described by friendly media

sources with the words:

Lunch bucket, blue collar, Catholic, plain spoken, now disciplined, Iraq war supporter, critic of Obama inexperience, lots of legislative (35 years), judiciary and foreigh policy committee (Chairman) and foreign travel experience, meeting with foreign leaders. He is also an Amtrak commuter, born in Pennsylvania.

Gloria Berger of CNN from Denver, CO, says he is a great VP pick, but that has not always made a difference (clever and full of gravitas, Lloyd Bensen “I knew Jack Kennedy and Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy”) but Biden probably was one of the best picks Obama could have made to minimize Hillary hurt.

Biden is somewhat charismatic, plain spoken, (but capable of “going off the reservation” a common liberal expression ironically”)and while older than she is he also does not seem to be a political “threat” to her in any way beyond the age issue. Speaking of age, in eight years, he will be 73, older than John McCain is.

All in all a great pick for Obama. It will be hard if not impossible for McCain to help his ticket as much as Biden helps the Obama campaign, even though he once said he would be proud himself to run with McCain. McCain considers Biden a friend and has called to congratulate him, but of course the political campaigns are already out with adds that showcase Biden’s own words, devaluing an Obama candidacy. It will run it’s course and not suppress the positive attributes of the selection.

12 month campaign averaged 750 total votes per month - just 9,000 and no delegates

Barack Obama has cornered the arrogance vote by picking one of the most garrulous members of the U. S. Senate - Joe Biden (D) Delaware. The sixty-five year old Biden has been in the U. S. Senate since 1972. Biden serves on the Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees and is chairman of the former. He brings experience to the ticket that is woefully absent in Obama’s portfolio.

Biden unsuccessfully ran for President in 1988 and earlier this year first declaring in January 2007 and discussing it publicly as early as 2004. Biden dropped out of the race on January 3, 2008, saying it would be his final Presidential try. After Biden captured a paltry 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus he quit; having attracted no delegates, and having averaged 750 vote per month for president during his 12 month campaign - for a total of 9,000 costing $915 per vote.