The World Around You

I have been having a challenge in getting rid of an ad for John McCain from my Google Ad bar…hopefully it will disappear soon…John McCain does NOT have the experience (or the temperament) to be president.

Cindy McCain will be on This Week this morning to respond to the Obama convention speech, claiming that her father had his own version of the American dream story…uh, no:

On March 10, 1948, the two brothers and an associate went on trial in Federal District Court in Phoenix. Prosecutors accused the defendants of conspiring to conceal the details of their transactions by falsifying federal forms some 1,284 times between 1945 and 1947. They believed the Hensleys were selling larger-than-permissible amounts at higher-than-permissible prices–in a word, bootlegging.

The feds demonstrated that the Hensleys went to elaborate, if sometimes crude, lengths to hide their illicit sales. A former United Distributors office manager named J.F. Ratliff testified that he noticed dozens of cases of whiskey missing when he showed up for work one morning. “I thought we had been robbed,” Ratliff told the court, until he found a pile of phony invoices on his desk in Jim Hensley’s handwriting.

The jury found Jim guilty of seven counts of making false entries, and Gene of 23 counts. It also convicted both men of the conspiracy charge. The court sentenced Gene to one year in federal prison and Jim to six months and fined both men $2,000. (An appeals court eventually suspended Jim’s sentence and sent Gene to a prison camp but affirmed the convictions.)

Hensley continued working for Marley’s liquor interests for several years after his conviction–long enough, in fact, to earn another indictment in 1953. (The court dismissed his portion of the case.) The previous year, he and Gene had bought a racetrack in Ruidoso, New Mexico, along with a Phoenix gambler named Teak Baldwin. Baldwin was a known criminal, and the New Mexico authorities were concerned enough about his possible involvement to investigate. By 1955, the investigation had triggered a statewide scandal. Fortunately for Jim, he’d sold his stake in the track a few months earlier. It was, perhaps not coincidentally, less than a year after the birth of his second daughter, Cindy.

Cindy McCain is Being a Little Rich - The Stump.

The Swing State Project has changed it’s rating of the Alabama 2nd CD race from “Leans Republican” to “Toss-up” and offers the following reasoning:

AL-02 (Open): Lean Republican to Tossup
Despite all the hype surrounding the DCCC’s recruitment of Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright, we have until now been skeptical of Bright’s ability to seal the deal in this conservative R+13.2 district. No longer.

Republicans emerged from their primary with deep divisions - divisions that Bright is now capitalizing on, as most recently evidenced by his endorsement from the Republican mayor of Dothan, the second-largest population center of the district. With two recent polls showing Bright leading by 10 points, the Republicans can no longer claim a clear edge here.

Those poll numbers are indicative of what is happening with this race, but we still have a long way to go to election day.

And in CD-03 they offer the following:

AL-03 (Rogers): Safe Republican to Likely Republican
This race is certainly still a long shot, but Alabama’s 3rd District was drawn to elect a Democrat, and it almost did so in 2002. GOP Rep. Mike Rogers has held this district since then with ease, but attorney Josh Segall’s fundraising (he’s raised $521K since starting his campaign earlier this year) and the district’s demographics can’t be ignored.

Josh is trailing in the latest polls, but he has assembled a great campaign structure and I hope to see some movement in those numbers over the next several weeks.

Swing State Project:: SSP's Competitive House Race Ratings (8/29/08).

I have to hand it to the McCain camp, they played the VP pick brilliantly. And my regular readers know I love me some Sarah Palin…

Obama’s bounce will be minimized and no one is going to be talking about his speech this afternoon on the cable nets. This is going to be one hell of an election played out as Chris Matthews said last night “at the highest level of political skill”. If the Democrats think this is going to be a cakewalk, they are sadly mistaken.

Marc Ambinder (August 29, 2008) - Palin, Pro And Con.

Sometimes your roles are reflective of real life…

David Duchovny in rehab for sex addiction | Opelika-Auburn News.

I slept on it, but Barack left no doubt last night about who should be the next president of the United States. If America misses this opportunity to make history and put our country on a different course, we will regret it forever. As big a mistake as the debacle of 2000 was, not putting Barack in the White House would be a bigger mistake.

What a Speech! — Political Wire.

Thanks to Susan we now understand that Troy “the Boy” King is walking around sans wedding ring…is there a meaning or did he just forget that day?

Left In Alabama:: Does Alabama Know Yet? AG Troy King is Getting Divorced?.

Bobby Bright had a good feature on NPR’sAll Things Considered yesterday. The story also features on interview with my favorite Republican State Rep. Mac Gibson.

Alabama Rep. Artur Davis got the opportunity to give a seconding speech for the nomination of Barack Obama for president. He used his time in the spotlight well.

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, I have never seen a moment like this. I have never seen a sense of urgency like this. In my 40 years, I have never seen my country as energized as this. As our next president has said, from the places where people hurt to the places where people dream, “Our time is now.”

Davis seconds Obama s nomination | TuscaloosaNews.com | The Tuscaloosa News | Tuscaloosa, AL.

Good stuff from the folks at NPR’s Day to Day: A Game of Political Karaoke