We’re 29 days from the election (register to vote!) and the story for McCain is all negative. Or rather, it’s all about his campaign launching personal attacks on Obama and Obama’s reaction to it. (Chez Pazienza notes that McCain told us he was going to go negative, a move that he compares it to a 4 am ‘booty call’ in which you tell the person on the other end of the line upfront that ‘this is a booty call’.) Sarah Palin is John McCain’s mouthpiece for most of this mess, and she’s in Clearwater, Florida this morning. You can read an excerpt of her remarks here, but this is the nut of it:

This is not a man who sees America as you and I do — as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as “imperfect enough” to work with a former domestic terrorist who targeted his own country.

Palin’s idea here is to otherize Obama. “He is not one of us.” The idea that Barack Obama doesn’t see America as the greatest force for good in the world (who does he think the greatest force for good in the world is?) is an attempt to make him look unpatriotic, just like statements McCain/Palin have made in the past that accuse Obama of wanting to lose a war in order to win a campaign, or that he doesn’t want to “win” in Iraq (they’ve yet to actually define what “winning” means in Iraq).

According to Bill Kristol (by way of Mark Halperin), Palin wants to bring Jeremiah Wright back from wherever he’s been (I’m assuming somewhere in Steve Schmidt’s basement). She will likely face some questions about her own preacher as well. (note: some of those links are not safe for work, unless your office is cool with anti-semitic hate speech). There are lots of other honorable commentators weighing in on McCain’s decision to go negative, including this gem from Burt Prelutsky at Town Hall:

I am troubled by the thought that McCain’s reluctance to tell the unpleasant truth about Barack Obama is because the very junior senator is 50% blacker than he is. It’s bad enough that 90% of black voters decided on no other basis than race to vote for Obama, the allegedly post-racial messiah, when he was running against Hillary Clinton. It will be fatal for McCain if he continues to shy away from confronting his opponent, a radical Marxist and cheap political hack, simply because he lacks the guts to call a spade a spade.

Do you really have to call someone out for being racist if they use the word “spade”?

The problem with Wright and Ayers, and the reason it mattered during the primaries, is that it was at that time breaking news. ABC kept digging up more and more Wright tape, and it was fresh and interesting. Unless there’s something new, I think the narrative for the next couple of weeks will be simply that McCain is playing dirty and his unfavorable ratings are shooting up.

The other massive story is the way in which Obama is fighting back: by bringing out McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal in a big way. At 11 pm, his campaign is launching a short documentary at this flashy website about the Keating Five and — this is the important part — how it relates to today’s economic crisis. This attack is news, because I don’t agree with conservative commentators who imply that the Keating Five scandal has been beaten to death by the media in this election cycle. Also, this documentary will tie McCain and his tendency toward deregulation to the current crisis. As Ben Smith notes:

First, Obama’s campaign has been notably disciplined in not talking about Keating, so this rollout will perhaps have a bit more pop in the media than the Ayers story, which McCain started talking about a while ago, and which was raked over pretty thoroughly in the primary.

Second, Keating is a story both more and less damaging for McCain than the Ayers story for Obama.

More damaging because the story of McCain and Keating is not guilt by association; it’s guilt by guilt.

Whatever you think of Obama, this video and website is a prescient and stunning move by his campaign, and it will get some attention for that as well.

Some final notes: There’s an interesting article on Steve Schmidt, the strategist behind the McCain campaign, in today’s LA Times that’s worth a read. And the news on the Alaskan front is that seven employees that initially said they’d offer their testimony in the Troopergate probe, then changed their minds after Palin was selected as Vice-President, have now decided again to testify.

That’s it for today. Let me know what you think about the Keating Five documentary. Is it truthful? Does it matter?

Update: A couple of other links from the Moderate Voice: In one, a Managing Editor decides to vote for Obama (and tells us why), and another explores negative campaigning on both sides.

The big question in Alabama today is one that probably should have been answered a little sooner: Who is eligible to vote in Alabama? The state can block people from voting if they’ve committed crimes of “moral turpitude,” but the problem is that moral turpitude isn’t defined very well. According to this in-depth Birmingham News article, The office of Attorney General Troy King has a list of 400 (that’s a 4, with two zeros after it, though this article says exactly 444) crimes that, in his interpretation, qualify for the ‘moral turpitude’ exclusion. According to the Montgomery Advertiser article on the issue, some of the crimes that make the list include drug use and shoplifting, and even “conspiring to set an illegal brush fire.”

Alabama’s Administrative Office of Courts says they thought a shorter list of only 70 crimes was being used to strike voters, but the Birmingham News article says they thought wrong:

AOC Legal Director Griffin Sikes Jr. said the governor had no legal authority to classify so many crimes as crimes of moral turpitude. Sikes said that, for months, the governor’s office had assured the AOC that only the shorter list was being used, but Sikes found out last month those assurances were given “in error.”

This would be a fine debate to have oh, say, 6 months from the election, but we’re 29 days from voting on new Senators, Representatives, and other offices.

Electronic bingo pops up again, this time in Mobile, as does the referendum on what Alabama should do with its rainy-day fund.

An opinion on Trinity Hospital’s decision to abandon Irondale and move into the former (or would-have-been former) HealthSouth “digital hospital” property discusses the ramifications of the move, as they apply to regional cooperation.

The Mobile Press-Register details Artur Davis’ regret about not heeding warnings about problems with Fannie May and Freddie Mac.

In other news, Thomason Tracts finds low attendance at Talladega to be somewhat ironic, and Wade Kwon waits for the bus (probably for the same reason).

Update: The JeffCo County Commission Environmental Services committee makes a move towards bankruptcy, and Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Wachovia fight it out.

We’re 30 days from the election (register to vote!) and the story that’s been building is that McCain’s campaign has decided negative campaigning is the way to go. That’s no surprise, really. Early last month McCain’s campaign manager announced that “this election is not about the issues.” While the Obama campaign continues to attack McCain on some of those silly issues like health care, John McCain’s lipsticked pitbull has responded to sliding poll numbers by attacking Obama’s limited ties to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. Her favorite attack seems to be that Obama is “palling around with terrorists,” (she said it three times Saturday) which would be a great attack if it were true. Palin likes to cite a New York Times article about Obama and Ayers (that must be one of the many newspapers she reads) that states the two “do not appear to have been close.” Palin also enjoys ignoring fact-checking by “liberal media” outlets like CNN (they’re not one of those newspapers, I suppose).

It’s interesting to note that Palin is yet to address her support (as recently as last year) of an anti-American secessionist group called the Alaskan Independence Party, but no matter.

McCain spokespersons have gotten in on the attack as well, responding to Obama’s criticism on John McCain’s desire to “turn the page” on the economic crisis (another one of those “issues”) by stating:

“Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist, or had a convicted felon help them buy their house — because those aren’t smears, those are true facts about Barack Obama.”

Not that Obama isn’t going personal. He’s called McCain “erratic in crisis,” and plans to attack him on the way he responds to the economic crisis (one of those silly issues, again) and things like the Russia-Georgia conflict (“We are all Georgians!”).

So what’s the spin from the right? Well, it’s no less strong than the spin from the left. RedState seems to like the “palling around with terrorist” thing, and they’re running with it, attacking any publication that dares to suggest Barack Obama is anything but a terrorist by proxy. The folks at the Corner are getting in on the action too. They’ve also got a reasonable argument for why Ayers matters, though they do suggest that the Keating Five scandal has “has been very, very, very much explored and discussed by the press,” but I don’t necessarily know if that’s true for this election cycle, anyway.

It will take a while for these attacks to start sinking in, I think. We won’t know how they’re working, from a polling perspective, for maybe a week. Maybe Americans will be resistant to swiftboating this go-round. But then again, maybe they won’t. We’ll check some polls in a week and see what’s up.

In other news, Geraldo’ Rivera’s face caught on fire. He’s fine (no word on the mustache, which gives him his power). I respect Geraldo in a sort of living-caricature-of-the-TV-news-man way (I think he’s the basis for Will Ferrell’s character in “Anchorman”), so I hope he’s okay. I mean, he’s basically the only news anchor who is known almost totally by his first name (I had to look up the spelling for the last name).

Like the new daily “National Mix” feature (or, as it will be called until the election, the “[Number of days until the election] days out” feature), this new daily post will chronicle the happenings of the great State of Alabama and the Magic City through its newspapers and blogs. Comments are encouraged, as are tips and suggestions as to what blogs to read. So, lets get to it!

One of the biggest stories to break this beautiful weekend has to do with the Citigroup/Wachovia and now possibly the Wells Fargo/Wachovia deal. The FDIC had brokered a deal with the financially troubled Wachovia to be bought out for $1 a share ($2.2 billion) by Citigroup. Four days later, Wachovia announced a much more lucrative deal with Wells Fargo, and Citigroup balked. This Associated Press article, reprinted in the Birmingham News, says a judge in New York has temporarily blocked the deal, and explains why this is important to Alabamians:

Wachovia has thou­sands of Birmingham stock owners from its $14 billion ac­quisition in 2004 of SouthTrust Corp., then the second-largest bank in the state.

Those stock owners are probably pushing for the Wells Fargo deal, in which Wells Fargo would pay 7 times more than Citigroup to purchase all of Wachovia.

Birmingham News columnist John Archibald harps on Birmingham’s staggering murder rate, mixing in obscure Alabama history with ease. Birmingham has had 71 homicides this year according to BhamWiki’s running list, which puts us on pace for 93 for the year. May we never reach that number.

James L. Evans penned a revealing opinion piece in the Mobile Press-Register this morning regarding politics and the pulpit. According to Evans, “33 pastors from all across the country deliberately broke the law” today by endorsing a political candidate from the pulpit. It’s illegal for tax-exempt organizations to endorse a candidate. The pastors were encouraged a conservative organization called the Alliance Defense Fund, which hopes to challenge the law in Supreme Court.

The churches risk losing their tax-exempt status, which Evans points out is not “an inalienable right.” He states clearly that “tax exemption is a privilege.” Here’s Evans’ succinct opinion on the subject:

If preachers want to play politics from the pulpit, to throw the full weight of the Divine Presence behind some measly political party, that’s fine.They should renounce their tax exempt status and become what they truly want to be: a precinct house for local politics. Just don’t expect the rest of us to pay for it.

There has been some consternation about the loss of 11,760 endangered watercress darters due to the mangled removal of a beaver dam at Roebuck Springs. The dam’s removal cause the pool to drain rather quickly, and the darters were left beached. Katherine Bouma details the story here. Mac Thomason of Thomason Tracts adds his commentary: “In other words, you’re screwed, fishies.”

Other stories include an opinion piece on a panel debating whether or not Alabama should elect its judges on a partisan basis anymore, and questions from former Gov. Fob James on how Alabama should treat its rainy day funds.

See you folks on the morrow.

Because Palin’s already mentioned Bill Ayers today…

DemfromCT at DailyKos has a post up gloating about Obama’s current poll numbers. Since this is my first post on this new blog, I should state that I am an Obama supporter, but not one of those wide-eyed ‘messiah’ supporters. I realize that he’s a politician. I happen to think he’s a damn fine one, and an example of the kind of politician that will move this country forward, protect our constitutional rights (or at least acknowledge them) , and bring about peace, and protect and encourage the middle class. I expect to be disappointed by him, but only because I hope for a lot. And because he must compromise.

Anyway, I’ve been paying extremely close attention throughout the race and I’m not much for the kind of post that appeared on DailyKos today. The idea is that the media isn’t acknowledging Obama’s recent success in the polls, and didn’t (in a timely fashion anyway) acknowledge Obama and Biden’s wins in last week’s debates. I don’t feel like Obama’s got anything locked up just yet. We’ve seen polls make 10-point swings in either direction in a matter of weeks several times during this race. And as of today, we’ve still got a month to go.

With McCain down considerably in almost every poll, and battleground states looking more and more like easy Obama wins, what is McCain to do? Go negative. That’s the headline on HuffPo anyway. Turn the focus to Obama’s biography:

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here,” said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity. [...]

So to get off the economy, the “honorable” McCain campaign is going to focus on Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. Take the focus off Palin, who seems to work well only with the entrenched Republican base, and the economy. I don’t know how it will work, really. There’s already been a pretty strong “McCain is nasty, has a bad temperament, is vicious” meme in the media. And I think people are tired of swiftboat politics. What if McCain goes dirty dirty dirty, and all the media talks about is how dirty he is? Obama and his campaign have already answered all the questions there are about Wright and Ayers.

But there’s a chance that kind of thing could work. The target of those types of ads is the 10% of folks in the middle, the undecideds and independents. They are notoriously fickle. If it starts working, does Obama get dirty too? Does he start talking about the Keating Five, Carol McCain, McCain’s five crashed planes and his terrible class position at the Naval Academy? Does Obama start talking about Sarah Palin’s crazy witch-hunting preacher, and the ties she and her husband have to an Alaska secessionist group? I don’t know. That’s not the kind of politics Obama says he stands for. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

There’s also questions about what happens if McCain goes dirty, and then loses. His career is over (granted it’s almost over anyway), his legacy is smashed. He won’t be looked at like Bob Dole. He’ll be done.

It’s going to be an exciting month.

What if Obama wins AND Alabama wins the SEC championship? It’ll be a strange year for me…