The Ashford Zone Blog

… you might want to put this on your front door.

* North Carolina has extended its early voting hours.

*  Former Sec. of State Larry Eagleburger, who McCain often cites as an endorser of his presidency, is no Palin fan.

*  Elizabeth Dole's attack ads on Kaye Hagan  — and specifically, on Hagan's lack of faith (Hagan is a church elder and Sunday school teacher) — is still being soundly denounced nationwide.  But Hagan isn't taking it lying down.  She's filed a lawsuit.  Normally, you can't sue another candidate because they make false statements in a political ad, but Dole's ad comes awfully close to being defamatory and crossing that legal line.

* The Washington Post exposes the McCain campaign's latest desparate attempt to link Obama to extremism.  The problem is that McCain himself has "ties to" that same "extremist", who, not surprisingly, isn't all that extremist.

* The fact that McCain has to spend campaign money to launch robocalls to get support in his home state of Arizona is a sure sign that he's in deep doo-doo come Nov. 4.

* I can't believe the McCain campaign is still campaigning the "Joe the Plumber" card.  They think that Joe is the iconic typical American.  While that is true, is that going to sway anybody?  "Look, here's someone just like you, and he's voting for McCain."  The problem with this is two-fold: (1)  Every American can find an America "just like them" by looking in the mirror.  Joe's no more special than anybody else.  So why will HIS vote influence OTHERS' votes? (2)  Joe the Plumber is no longer just a typical American.  How many "typical" Americans have a press agent, and are working on a record contract, and are considering running for Senate, ALL by virtue of his 15 minutes of fame?

* McCain to appear on SNL this coming weekend.  Can't hurt at this point, I suppose….

*  Aside from an Obama win, one of the nice things to come from this election includes the collapse of influence on the national discussion from the religious right, the death of neo-conservatism, the death of the theory that "negative advertising works", and the dethroning of of Matt Drudge as an influence on the media (If I were more ambitious, I could do a post on each of these….)

Obama is winning because… you ready?… he's hypnotizing us.

Yup. 

And here is a 67 page, 192 footnote pdf file entitled “An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches.” which proves it.

It's a remarkable piece of work, in its breadth, as the author analyzes Obama words (the pacing and inflection) and gestures from various speeches, all of which have — literally — hypnotized the electorate.

A screenshot from the PDF offers a typical example (click to enlarge):

Well.

Let's hope that Obama will be using his magic powers for the cause of good, and not evil.

UPDATE:  Here's a runner-up theory for why McCain is losing.  For those too lazy to follow the link, I'll summarize. 

You see, Obama has a cousin in Kenya named Odinka.  Odinka and his "tribe" of satanists, witches and warlocks "get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin".  These occultists are:

 "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot"

Uuuuuhhhmmm, yyyyeah.  Seems to be working, too.

And just to stack the deck, Obama's Kenyan grandmother sacrificed a white and black chicken so that blacks and whites would vote for Obama.

Don't doubt this!  After all, could a website with the word "jesus" in the url be lying???

UPDATE:  Oh, how could I forget?  The wingnut theory that Obama is really the secret love child of Malcolm X.  (Malcolm X was a scary black man, don't ya know… are you picking up on this theme?)

AmericaBlog nails it:

Let me get this straight. John McCain finds a guy to be his mascot for Americans who will be hurt under Obama's tax plan, when in fact Joe Mascot does better under Obama's plan than he does under McCain's. And to add insult to injury, Joe doesn't really pay all his taxes anyway – he's delinquent. But somehow that makes him a "hero" to Republicans, and it makes him John McCain's perfect mascot for the campaign – a guy who doesn't pay his taxes and who will benefit more from an Obama presidency. And now, "Joe" has hired a personal manager (read: agent) who hopes to get Joe doing Home Depot commercials and maybe even running for Congress (seriously). What's next, $150,000 outfits and $8,000 make-up jobs? Are there any Republicans left who appreciate the debasement of their party that is happening before their eyes?

…which is why this graphic made me laugh…

From the L.A. Times, regarding their recent poll:

The quote:

"I just don't see how [McCain] can win… He has lost his brand as a maverick; he did not live up to his pledge to fight a clean campaign."

It'll be on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, and a few others (not, however, ABC)

I guess I'll watch it, seeing as how my show was cancelled. 

But the infomercial, taped last week, sounds kind of dry and dull, the kind of pablum that they play at the national party conventions.  It'll focus on the stories of four American families, with Obama's narration, and him speaking driectly to the camera.

Listen, I'm the one who decries "politics as entertainment", but — man, if you're going to soak up the TV for half an hour?  In this era of short attention spans?  You just gotta have more pizazz than that.  I mean, even a really good Powerpoint presentation sounds more exciting (and probably more informative, too).

But far be it for me to give advice to the Obama campain.  They seem to know what they're doing.

Here, by the way, is McCain's "response ad" to the half-hour Obama infomericial

I can't, for the life of me, think why the McCain campaign figures this ad will help. McCain is harkening back to an old theme he tried back in September — i.e., that Obama is a "celebrity". Then, as now, the meme seems to acknowledge — even embrace — the fact that the majority of Americans have warmed up to Obama.  It reinforces that notion.

Oh sure, the main message of the ad is that Obama needs more experience, but that hasn't worked for McCain in the past either.  (Pssst — didn't work when it was tried on Bush in 2000 or Clinton in 1992 either).  Americans DO want change, and McCain's "experience" in Washington hasn't brought it about.  To the extent that Obama is wet behind the ears, some might even see that as a GOOD thing.

Most importantly, the ad says nothing about McCain will do if he were President.  A bad counterpunch to an Obama informercial which, I assume, will talk specifics about what Obama will do.  I suspect more people would prefer a presidential candidate, even an "inexperienced" one, who has a clear plan for change, than an "experienced" presidential candidate who offers no plan but merely retorts, "But he doesn't have experience".

At least Obama has the experience to know that the American people want solutions, and the experience to lay out his ideas.

Perhaps the most curious part of the ad is the tag line — the final statement saying that Obama is "not ready…. yet".  It's the "yet" that makes me tilt my head aside like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle.  Who stuck that word in there?  It's almost like McCain is saying, "Yeah, Obama is great — really he is — but vote for him in 2012.  Not now." 

Not exactly the strongest response ad.

Very odd.

POST-INFOMERCIAL THOUGHTS:  A little too pre-packaged and heavy-handed for my taste, and he name-dropping of battleground states (state-dropping?) was none too subtle.  But he hit a lot of right notes, especially the parts where he called on Americans to do things for themselves a little (i.e., energy conservation, "government doesn't have all the answers").  The humility ("I'll make mistakes as President") and the biographical stuff should help, too.  

ONE FURTHER THOUGHT:  In retrospect, after seeing the Obama informercial, the McCain response ad (above, which aired on MSNBC eight minutes later as a commercial, and then on the Olbermann's show at 8:42) looks petty and ugly and just too negative.  And perhaps worst of all, really devoid of McCain's idea.  Ironic, in that after seeing both, one is left with the impression that we don't know where McCain really stands.

AND FOR THE WHO MISSED IT…

Obama added a new zinger to his standard stump speech. 

It comes at around 1:05, but you need to listen to the set-up.

UPDATE: On the other hand, if Obama is going to go off-script, as he did in Raleigh today, he needs to bone up on his T.V. trivia:

Barack Obama, in Raleigh, N.C., was doing a riff attacking John McCain for supporting the idea of putting some mandatory retirement money into the stock market.

"If Senator McCain is elected, we'll have another president who wants to privatize part of your Social Security. Could you imagine if you had your Social Security invested in the stock market these last two weeks, these last two months? You wouldn't need Social Security. You'd be having a — like, what was it, Sanford and Son. `I'm coming Weezie!"

Memo to Sen. Obama:

Weezie was on The Jeffersons. Louise "Weezie" Jefferson — played by Isabel Sanford.

And it was Redd Foxx's Fred G. Sanford who used to feign heart attacks to guilt trip his son, Lamont:

"Oh, this is the big one! You hear that, Elizabeth?! I'm coming to join you, honey!"

Yeah, Wonkette is right….

The New Pepsi logo does have a familiar ring to it…