News Digest--Sunday, September 14

TODAY'S RECOMMENDED READING:
** A QUICK READ FOR ALL OF YOU WHO WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW TO HELP PERSUADE UNDECIDED VOTERS TO GO FOR OBAMA/BIDEN: "Frightened by McCain's Post-Convention Bounce? Three Things You Can Do Personally to Affect the Outcome of the Election" The Huffington Post (Robert Creamer): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/frightened-by-mccains-pos_b_125111.html Excerpt: "The race today is about even, with McCain having a slight advantage in the popular vote, and Obama having an advantage in electoral votes. The effect of exposure to the convention itself will likely diminish over the next several weeks. In 2004, Bush moved to a nine-point lead after his convention and most of that gap disappeared within a few weeks. The long-term effect of the Palin factor is less certain. Much depends on what all of us choose to do now."
** A THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED ARTICLE ON PALIN'S RAW AMBITION AND HOW SHE HAS GOVERNED--LET'S CALL IT "BUSH/CHENEY SQUARED": "Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes" The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin Excerpt: "...four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
** A QUICK READ AND AN ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF THE "THREAT LEVEL" PALIN POSES:"Palin a Threat, Not a Distraction" The Huffington Post (Tom Hayden)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/palin-a-threat-not-a-dist_b_126214.html Excerpt: "Sarah Palin is a mortal threat to the possibility of Obama winning, not a distraction. The reason is simple: if she can add a couple of points to McCain from defecting white women and the newly-energized right wing religious base without losing more independent votes, McCain pulls ahead in some key states. The dangerous tendency of the Obama campaign and its Democratic surrogates is to not fight back, but treat Palin as a "distraction" from McCain, the economy, the issues they feel familiar with, etc. If they assume that the Palin bubble will return to earth naturally, or that the mainstream media and Saturday Night Live will do the job for them, the Obama campaign is mistaken. There needs to be a controlled message that treats Palin as an extension of McCain, not a bobble-head to be laughed at. The message has to cut off independent and women's support for McCain-Palin and, if possible, divide some of the right-wingers. Not an easy task."
"EXTRA CREDIT" READING :)
** FOR FOLKS (ESPECIALLY THOSE OF YOU IN BRAND STRATEGY/MARKETING/PR) WHO WANT TO SPEND A FEW MORE MINUTES GETTING A BIG PICTURE VIEW OF THE CURRENT PLAYING FIELD: "What Obama Needs to Do In the Final 60 Days: Avoiding President Palin" by Drew Westen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/what-obama-needs-to-do-in_b_125051.html Excerpt: "...the Obama campaign needed to brand McCain as reckless and impulsive, having selected a running mate who wouldn't have been on anyone's shortlist of, say, 1000, to be a heartbeat away from the leadership of the free world on the ticket with a 72-year-old man with recurrent melanoma; that it needed to brand McCain as a hypocrite who was running as a maverick but had just selected a woman who makes George W. Bush look like a feminist to pander to right-wing religious extremists, and who had been hammering Obama relentlessly for months for his lack of foreign policy experience and then picked a person whose only foreign policy experience consisted in knowing where Russia was on the map and applying for a passport; and that it needed to brand Palin herself as an extremist who reserves for herself and her family the right to make painful, difficult, highly personal decisions but believes the government should make those decisions for every other family struggling with the question of whether to carry a troubled or unwanted pregnancy to term. She would even force teenage rape victims to bear their rapists' babies--something 85 percent of Americans find morally abhorrent, including the majority of evangelical Christians, and something every American should hear about her over and over. There is, in fact, a country where people with the hubris to believe that they know what's in the mind of God use the instruments of state to enforce their interpretations of scripture on other people's lives..."