Bird’s-Eye View

Here’s what stands out in the newest Franklin & Marshall Keystone Poll, which shows Barack Obama pulling away from John McCain:
Among Central Pennsylvania voters, McCain and Obama are statistically tied.
Read that again.
No joke.
The breakdown is McCain 43 percent and Obama 42 percent in areas where President Bush defeated Sen. John Kerry by as much as […]

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The same FOX News/Rasmussen poll that had the candidates tied nine days ago shows Barack Obama with a 3 percent lead over John McCain in Pennsylvania.
Notes from the poll:
Obama is trusted more than McCain on the economy by a seven-point margin in both Michigan and Pennsylvania. The candidates are evenly divided on the issue in […]

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That would be Lancaster’s Lois Herr, former Democratic congressional candidate and currently executive director of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee. Herr, a former Hillary Clinton supporter, is part of Democrat Barack Obama’s Womens Steering Committee here in Pennsylvania.
Herr and the rest of the committee have an interesting job. Mainly, it’s to help Obama hold onto […]

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The three most frequent things I heard about Sarah Palin last week were:

“She’s just like one of us.”
“Has anybody taken a close look at her record? People need to know about this stuff.”
“How soon before Tina Fey returns to SNL to spoof Palin?”

Ask and ye shall receive. Fey helped open the new SNL season last […]

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According to the Associated Press:
On Tuesday, Obama criticized McCain’s policies as similar to those of President Bush, saying: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.”
Let me put this plainly and […]

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Anything, anything, about the economy beyond the simple message about lower taxes. The Bush tax cuts have been in place since 2001 and 2003, and yet here the economy is with higher than 6 percent unemployment, a weak U.S. dollar and a housing crisis. Why would continuing the Bush tax cuts and giving middle- and […]

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Well, this CNN story answers at least one of the questions I posed in a previous post:
The Obama campaign is planning to send out some high-profile female supporters, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, to blunt Sarah Palin’s potential to draw women’s support to the Republican ticket.
Besides Clinton, Governors Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of […]

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I know this will get lost in the analysis of John McCain’s acceptance speech and local buzz about Barack Obama’s appearance, but think about this:
McCain spoke to about 18,000 in St. Paul, Minn.’s Xcel Center for his convention speech. On the same night, in the Republican stronghold of Lancaster County, an area U.S. Sen. Bob […]

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Initial impression following Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight: The most important part was when she addressed her supporters directly, asking them why they became involved in the spring primary in the first place. Was it because 47 million people are without health care? Was it because somehow the Iraq war has to end? Was it because […]

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A movie released in 2007, a remake of the classic 3:10 to Yuma, provided not only a superb, tense and well-acted contemporary western but a look at the human psyche. A humble, hobbled and poor rancher (played by Christian Bale of The Dark Knight fame) accepts a wealthy contract to deliver an infamous, deadly and […]

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