The campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama quickly seized on the report and issued a statement lowering expectations for their candidate’s performance. The statement argued that “McCain’s debating skills are unparalleled,” and that “the expectations for him tonight are sky-high.”

More: Read the statement released by the Obama campaign

TO:      Interested Parties
FR:      The Obama Campaign
RE:      Home-field advantage: John McCain
DA:     September 26, 2008

Already declaring victory before the debate has even started, in ads running on the Wall Street Journal website, John McCain meets Barack Obama tonight to debate foreign policy - McCain’s professed area of expertise.

The centerpiece of John McCain’s campaign has been his more than a quarter century of experience in Washington learning about and debating foreign policy.   If he slips up, makes a mistake, or fails to deliver a game-changing performance, it will be a serious blow to his campaign.   Given his unsteady performance this week, he desperately needs to win this debate in a big way in order to change the topic and get back to his home turf.

For eight years, McCain has marched in lockstep with every single major Bush decision, while Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning and has called for a focus on Afghanistan and al Qaeda.  Americans want to know whether John McCain will stop spending $10 billion in Iraq while the Iraqi government sits on a $79surplus and our economy is in turmoil.  Will he continue a policy that has taken our eye off al Qaeda and Afghanistan, and let Iran make progress in building a nuclear weapon?  Will he continue the cowboy diplomacy and empty bluster that has shredded our alliances and set back our standing in the world?  The fact is, John McCain will continue more of these same failed foreign policies. Barack Obama will lead us in a new direction.

On the economy, McCain’s words and actions over the course of the past week have illuminated his lack of expertise.  He admitted he does not understand the economy — his erratic, out-of-touch behavior this week, his failure to do anything of substance to move the agreement forward on the bailout, and his commitment to continuing Bush economic policies, demonstrate it.  But there are some questions we might see answered tonight after McCain’s misadventure to Washington and the phony ’suspension’ of his campaign.  For example, will McCain finally say where he stands on the unworkable and counterproductive House Republican plan?  Will he be willing to buck his own party?

According to the pundits, McCain’s debating skills are unparalleled, as you can see below, and the expectations for him tonight are sky-high.

MCCAIN DEBATE PERFORMANCE

New York Times: A Review Of Debates Show That McCain Is Most Comfortable And Authentic When The Subject Is Foreign Policy. McCain “heads into the first debate on Friday with a track record as a scrappy combatant and the instincts of a fighter pilot, prepared to take out his opponent and willing to take risks to do so. … A review of several of Mr. McCain’s debates shows that he is most comfortable and authentic when the subject is foreign policy. And in a stroke of good fortune, foreign policy is the topic for Friday, the first of three 90-minute debates with Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee.” [New York Times, 9/23/08]

New York Times: McCain Is Likely To Steer The Conversation To His Captivity In Vietnam Which He Showcased Triumphantly Last October In The Debate In A Discourse About Hillary Clinton’s Earmark For The Woodstock Concert Museum Where He Mentioned That He “Was Tied Up At The Time” Of The Concert. “McCain is likely to steer the conversation, as he has in prior debates, to his captivity in Vietnam. It was the bedrock experience of his life and is the organizing principle of his political identity. … He showcased it most triumphantly last October in a debate in Orlando, Florida. The moderator noted that while McCain had strongly supported the troop surge in Iraq, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then seen as the likely Democratic nominee, wanted to pull the troops out. McCain was asked whether the surge was a winning issue for Republicans in 2008. With a quick nod to the troops, McCain, characteristically, hijacked the question and skipped to pork-barrel spending, his favorite mode of attack. ‘In case you missed it, a few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock Concert Museum,’ McCain said slyly. ‘Now, my friends, I wasn’t there,’ he continued, letting it sink in why he had missed that festival in 1969. ‘I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,’ he deadpanned, pausing again to stoke the culture wars. ‘I was tied up at the time.’ The audience roared with approval and rose to its feet for an extended ovation.” [International Herald Tribune, 9/23/08]

Nate Silver: The Foreign Policy Debate Plays To McCain’s Strengths. “There is little doubt that a discussion on foreign policy is playing to McCain’s strengths. Even when Obama may be winning a foreign policy argument on points, it probably benefits McCain for foreign policy to be the subject of discussion, period, as it brings his experience, war heroism and purported readiness to the fore.” [TNR, 9/23/08]

Emory University Assistant Professor of Political Science Andra Gillespie: McCain “Enters The Debate As The Substantive Favorite.” Gillespie: “Because John McCain holds the issue advantage on national security, he enters the debate as the substantive favorite.” [Andra Gillespie, Atlanta Journal Constitution, 9/21/08]

Vanderbilt University Professor John Geer: McCain Has An Edge In The Foreign Policy Debate. Geer: “McCain has an edge in this debate, since the topic is foreign policy. Obama needs to show his own understanding of the international affairs.” [John Geer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, 9/21/08]

Georgia State University Professor Mary Stuckey: Foreign Policy Would Seem To Favor McCain Rather Than Obama. Stuckey: “Foreign policy would seem to favor McCain rather than Obama, and I would expect McCain to rely heavily on his personal experience and biography as evidence of his foreign policy expertise.” [Mary Stuckey, Atlanta Journal Constitution, 9/21/08]

Heilemann: The Debate On Foreign Policy Is “A Lucky Break For McCain” And A “Chance To Move The Debate To Ground That Favors Him.” “But the story line of the campaign is about to pivot to foreign policy and national security. Why? Because those are the topics on the agenda at the first Obama-McCain debate this coming Friday at Ole Miss. A lucky break for McCain, I hear you saying, a chance to move the debate to ground that favors him. And you may be right.” [John Heilemann, New York Magazine, 9/21/08]

OBAMA DEBATE PERFORMANCE

DEBATES ARE NOT A GOOD FORMAT FOR OBAMA

New York Times: Obama’s Debating Skills Are “Uneven” As He Has “A Tendency To Overintellectualize And To Lecture” And “Frequently Rises Above The Mire Of Political Combat When The Battle Calls For Engagement.”  “Senator Barack Obama has shown himself at times to be a great orator. His debating skills, however, have been uneven. Some of his chief strengths — his facility with words, his wry detachment, his reasoning skills, his youthful cool — have not always served him well and may pose significant vulnerabilities in the series of presidential debates that begins Friday, according to political analysts and a review of his earlier debate performances. Mr. Obama has a tendency to overintellectualize and to lecture, befitting his training as a lawyer and law professor. He exudes disdain for the quips and sound bites that some deride as trivializing political debates but that have become a central part of scoring them. He tends to the earnest and humorless when audiences seem to crave passion and personality. He frequently rises above the mire of political combat when the battle calls for engagement.” [New York Times, 9/23/08]

AP: Obama Comes Across As “Lifeless, Aloof, And Windy” During Debates. “For a man known as a powerful speaker, Obama has rarely wowed people in political debates. He can come across as lifeless, aloof and windy.” [AP, 9/20/08]
Fallows: Obama Never Managed To “Receive Big Acclaim After A Debate.”  “While Hillary Clinton time and again beat expectations, Obama never managed to put her away or receive big acclaim after a debate.” [The Atlantic, September 2008]

John King Said Democrats Worry That Obama Is To Professorial Or Too Subdued In Debate Settings.  John King said on CNN, “While Obama excels at the big event, some democrats worry he’s too professorial or too subdued in debate- style settings like last weekend’s faith forum.” [CNN, 8/22/08]

The Sunlight Foundation has put together a fascinating animated graph that tracks the political donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sectors and to which party the money has gone. Utilizing Google Motion Chart and 20 years worth of data gathered by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the chart seeks to demonstrate how Wall Street came to carry such influence in our government.

More: Explore the Google Motion Chart

“The answer is revealed by the fact that the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) industries that collectively are at the center of the current crisis are the single-largest sector by far of all the major economic and interest groupings that give campaign contributions to federal politicians,” Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation explains.

TechPresident’s Micah Sifry documented the response and noted email campaigns from  MoveOn, CredoAction, TrueMajority, and the National Taxpayers Union. 

Sarah Lai Stirland reports that a protest, in which demonstrators plan to dump their trash in front of Wall Street’s Charging Bronze Bull, began with a single email sent by a journalist to a list of friends. Depending on how the federal government proceeds, similar protests could spring up across the country. TrueMajority has even put together “event kits” that provide everything a local organizer needs to demonstrate against the bailout.

Also receiving a lot of attention is the Sunlight Foundation’s Publicmarkup.org, which is described as an “ongoing experiment in preparing legislation more inclusively by opening bills to online, public review.” Proposals from the Treasury Department and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., have been posted in their entirety.

As serious as the financial crisis is, it also provides an ample opportunity for snark. BuyMyShitPile.com is the virtual way to have the federal government pay off those worthless impulse purchases and acquired liabilities. Items submitted include gently used padding for presidential flyboy suit, a 2006 Buffy the Vampire Slayer calendar and a used scent stories player.

Perhaps best capturing the collective contempt for the $700 billion dollar request is The Seminal’s faux Nigerian spam as written by the Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America, one Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. The letter reads as follows:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson Jr. is the United States Treasury Secretary and member of the International Monetary Fund Board of Governors. He previously served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.

Ballast is water taken on in a port of call to stabilize a ship and later discharged in a different port of call. It is estimated that ballast discharge from oceangoing vessels, known regionally as “salties,” has introduced as many as 180 invasive species to the Great Lakes ecosystem and beyond.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was forced to begin regulating ballast discharges throughout the entire Great Lakes beginning Sept. 30 after a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upheld lower-court rulings that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority in 1973 by exempting marine discharges of ballast water from the permitting system. Oceangoing vessels will no longer be able to discharge ballast water into the Great Lakes without a permit.

Minnesota’s permiting system and regulations are opposed by both the shipping industry and the EPA, who argue that a separate permiting system and regulations are redundant and restrictive. Many Great Lakes advocates remain skeptical of the EPA’s ballast efforts and believe the MPCA’s action is necessary to protect state resources from the onslaught of viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) and other invasives that have yet to arrive in Minnesota.

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

So how did President Bush, who once gave himself the nickname “The Decider,” decide to abandon his party’s platform and launch the largest government market intervention in history?

Look, I’m sure there are some of my friends out there saying, ‘I thought this guy was a market guy. What happened to him?’

Well, my first instinct wasn’t to lay out a huge government plan. My first instinct was to let the market work until I realized, upon being briefed by the experts, of how significant this problem became.

(h/t)

If approved, the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment will implement a 0.375-percent sales tax increase beginning July 1, 2009. More than $300 million is expected to be generated over the tax’s 25-year lifespan. A third of the monies raised will be deposited in an outdoor heritage fund and will be spent only to protect and restore wetland, prairie and forest habitat. Another third will go to a clean water fund to protect drinking water, groundwater and the state’s many lakes, rivers and streams. Twenty percent of the remaining receipts will go toward arts and heritage preservation, with the remainder directed to parks and trails.

The initiative is receiving strong support from the arts and environmental communities, but outdoor sporting enthusiasts are also playing a leading role. Prominent organizations like Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever are testing their political strength by asking their generally conservative membership to support a tax increase, a risk worth the potential benefit to their cause. Whether the efforts are successful or not, sportsmen are paying close attention to the issue.

Many opponents claim not to take exception to idea of funding for the environment and arts but instead argue that a voter referendum supplants the constitutional role of the state Legislature and would hamstring the state with an inflexible budgets. Others simply oppose the tax increase or see the money going to special interest groups.

Regardless of the civic and political interests at play, voters are likely going to make their decision with money in mind. Just as this year’s presidential election was thrown for a loop with the collapse of America’s investment banks, the economic turmoil will likely impact this campaign as well. Many people may give second thought to the significance of an increase that will add nearly four cents to every $10 purchase.

More details, plus video, below the jump.

Democratic nominee Barack Obama leads Republican nominee John McCain 47 percent to 45 percent in Minnesota. Obama also leads in his home state of Illinois by 17 and maintains slim margins in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. Pennsylvania and Iowa are tied, meaning McCain leads only in Indiana.

Individual surveys of 600 registered voters in each of the states were conducted by phone from Sept. 14-17 with a margin of error of +/- 4 percent. The poll was conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professors Ken Goldstein and Charles Franklin.

Bloomberg examines lobbyist Harold Ickes’ privately-owned Catalist and how it is being used by its biggest client, Democratic nominee Barack Obama, to narrowly target likely and undecided voters.

Both Catalist and Voter Vault contain information from voter rolls and tax filings, as well as consumer information that ranges from the media subscriptions to the shopping habits of over 200 million people. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) estimated in 2006 that there were nearly 226 million people over the age of 18 in the United States.

But some information — say, for example, the private emails of an Alaskan governor using Yahoo e-mail for government business — needs to be taken the old-fashioned way. It apparently took some devious hacker all of 45 minutes to guess Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s password. The woman who came up with unusual names like Track, Bristol, Willow and Piper apparently chose the word “popcorn” to guard her confidential communications.

Those hoping for incriminating documents and sordid affairs in the Palin e-mails will be disappointed, but those interested in a humorous account of hackers wrestling with the ethical dilemma of invading the privacy of someone who is trying to avoid public disclosure will enjoy this Arts Technica article.

On the legal side of snooping, Google Labs has launched a new audio search engine called Gaudi. The site currently only indexes political video from YouTube, but as Internet micro-celebrity Rex Sorgatz points out, that alone allows the average person to play Jon Stewart by producing so-called supercuts like the one below in which multiple clips on the same topic are sewn together to highlight hypocrisy or bamboozlement.

If Nader’s contemplation of dressing up like a bear because “they cover animal stories all the time” seems a bit out of left field, Tech President provides the context:

Obama has already expressed support for the Great Lakes Compacts and a separate $26 billion Great Lakes restoration plan that has been stalled in Congress for the past three years. His campaign stressed that this proposal is in no way a replacement for that legislation.

“We need to recognize this as a great national treasure that needs to be protected,” said Heather Zichal, energy and environment policy director for the Obama campaign. ”It’s the largest freshwater system on the planet, and therefore we need to put the power of the federal government behind restoration.”

In a conference call with reporters, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar claimed that Obama has been a consistent advocate for the Great Lakes.

“As a state senator, he was a leader in helping to clean Lake Michigan and, in the Senate, he has been a key leader in the Great Lakes compact,” she said.

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow cited yearly cuts to Great Lakes programs under the Bush administration and hit a familiar theme by connecting them to Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. McCain has pledged to support Great Lakes restoration but has yet to commit to funding levels for any legislation.

“It’s very reassuring to us in Michigan to have a Great Lakes senator running for president of the United States,” said Stabenow.

That in turn must be reassuring to Obama who would like very much to win Michigan’s 17 electoral votes. The candidate can only hope the same holds true in the other Great Lakes states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.