The Hollywood Liberal

Late Late Nite FDL: McClinton On Love
Delbert McClinton on Austin City Limits performing Giving It Up For Your Love.

Delbert McClinton on Austin City Limits performing Giving It Up For Your Love.   What’s on your mind tonight?

Pet Food Politics: Why Our Pets Still Aren’t Safe
The author of Pet Food Politics exposes how the ’07 pet food crisis happened and why it is a sign of a larger problem with our own food system.

U.S. Military Is Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers’ ‘Suicides’
Our soldiers’ families deserve better than that.

Obama’s Overseas Success: What’s His Secret?
I think I have read every word Barack Obama uttered on his visits to Israel and Palestine and I’m struck by his ability to navigate this tricky issue with such dexterity. After all, everybody is just waiting for him to…

The Ted Stevens Story On Today’s TPMtv
One year after the feds searched his Alaska home, and one day after a grand jury handed up a seven-count indictment, Sen. Ted Stevens is the subject of today’s TMPtv. Muckraker reporter Kate Klonick recaps Ted’s troubles and tells us…

Get To Work

We’ve had five polls taken since the Republican National Convention was completed, not counting tracking polls which are not designed to reflect accurate snapshots of public opinion.

Below are the results for “Registered Voters” in those five polls. (I am not relying on “Likely Voter” results because I am not convinced any polling outfit knows how to determine who is a likely voter is in this unprecedented election.)

NBC/WSJ
Obama: 47%
McCain: 46%

ABC/W. Post
Obama: 47%
McCain: 46%

CBS/NYT
McCain: 46%
Obama: 44%

CNN
Obama: 48%
McCain: 48%

USAToday/Gallup
McCain: 50%
Obama: 46%

Before both conventions, I wrote:

If we start seeing McCain consistently break 45 after both conventions, that would indicate McCain was having success sowing doubt about Obama among undecideds, which would likely make this a very close race to the finish.

McCain breaks 45% in all of the above polls, a clear success. More than I expected after watching their convention.

I had thought at best McCain rallied the conservative base. But surpassing 45% shows he — or perhaps more accurately, Sarah Palin — made some inroads among the swing.

But I caution that these polls were taken right after the RNC.

A roundup of polls taken at the end of this week or next week would give a better sense of where the race stands after everything from both conventions was fully processed. But tracking polls aside, we may not get such data.

And regardless, even a temporary bump over 45% says to me that a portion of the swing electorate is at least giving McCain-Palin a fresh hearing.

What does that mean?

It means do the one thing that has nothing to do with the polls: get to work and turn out the vote.

ThinkFast: September 9, 2008
Speaking yesterday to the annual Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that there are too few African-Americans in her agency. “I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State — and actually rarely see somebody who looks […]

Speaking yesterday to the annual Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that there are too few African-Americans in her agency. “I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State — and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me,” Rice said. “And that is just not acceptable.”

President Bush “has accepted the recommendation of his senior civilian and military advisers to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq by 8,000 in the early months of next year.” Bush will unveil his decision today in an address to the National Defense University.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) claim to have opposed the Bridge to Nowhere “comes with a serious caveat,” the Wall Street Journal reports, since she “endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006.” The Journal further notes that, as governor, Palin has requested $750 million in earmarks, “which the AP says is the largest per-capita request in the nation.”

“The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that it would no longer ban voter registration drives among veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country,” reports the New York Times. In May, the department had banned the registration drives, saying they would be “disruptive.”

On the trail today: John McCain will hold a campaign rally outside the Golden Lamb restaurant in Lebanon, OH. Barack Obama will appear at Stebbins High School in Riverside, OH. (more…)

Immigrants and the Safety Net
The conservative economist Milton Friedman famously said, “You can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” He was right. You can’t flood our labor markets with illegal workers paying little in taxes — and provide good government benefits for everyone. But perhaps the opposite is also true. Perhaps you can’t have open borders if you have a high level of benefits. That’s the case in Canada and much of Europe. Canada has a large immigration program and guaranteed health care for everyone, including foreigners who are legal residents. Canada does not tolerate illegal immigration. It can’t afford to extend its expensive benefits to people who don’t belong there.